Cross-dressing by men during public festival. Ibadan, Nigeria

"Equally significant is that in ritual there is some amount of cross-dressing by both men and women, and in possession trance there are more literally gendre transformations. So even with rigidly structured gender roles, both men and women in Yoruba society have institutionalized opportunities within ritual contexts to cross gender boundaries and to express the traits assigned to the opposite gender." [Thompson Drewall M., 1992: Yoruba Ritual. Indiana University Press]. This photograph was taken when Eliot Elisofon was on assignment for Westinghouse Film and traveled to Africa from October 26, 1970 to end of March 1971.