When the legendary Umm Kulthum began her singing career, she disguised herself as a bedouin boy.

While biographers have said this costume was donned in fear of her father's wrath, it also existed within a popular Egyptian trend of the day. Young women often dressed and performed as men while young men dressed and performed as women. Today, we might call it drag.

Within the world of performance and theater, as often remains the case today, an individual's gender has much less to do with who they are on stage than their physical appearance and how it could be manipulated does.

Historians trace the cross-dressing trend within the Middle East and North Africa back to the height of the Ottoman Empire, with Kocek (boys who danced and sang in female dress) and Cengi (girls who did the same in male dress) dating back to at least the 16th century.