The breast is NOT the disturbing part!

i think the fact that crudups charachter at the start and throughout film shows interest in sexual favours from women shows he wasnt homosexual but bisexual ... so therefore i dont really think it showed him as being converted, just that hes fallin in love with a women (which i think is supported by the fact that when danes asks him who he is now he replies "I dont know".

I would tend to agree with this analysis. Most of the Gay men I've associated with enjoy being with men as a man. Not many gay men are attracted to the sissy types. K is more of a transvestite than a gay man and his occupation and place in society allows him to be very out of the closet with that. He worships and identifies with all things feminine. Furthermore, his sense of self is almost completely associated with playing a role. He discovers something about himself by playing a new role, but this is really just the beginning as his sense of self is still associated with this role (which he plays with great skill as well). As the playwrite said 'All the world's a stage'. The question is asked of the audience "how much of our identity is dictated by the role we choose to play"?

dude, I just can't be more agree. Kynaston seemed long been locked in the cage of his characters as Desdemona or so. This is the movie telling us how to reveal the real "me" through all the confusion.

Wonderfully put, jaded_angel. I think this film was a really interesting and daring portrait of someopne with a confused sexual identity. If it really seemed that K was a gay man, i'd be the first to decry the notion that he just needed "straightening out". But he just wasn't. Look at the conversation between him and the Duke in the sauna, where the Duke says "I always saw you as a woman". Look at the gender-roleplaying in the love scene between K and Maria. He was a straight man trained to be a woman - not a gay man. That's how i saw it, anyway.

Here is what I just submitted in the reviews section:

A few earlier comments express the concern that the film does not "let the GAY man be gay". Some viewers feel that "Stage Beauty" sends a message that only hethero sex is normal and if there was sexual ambiguity at the beginning, all ends "well".
Some of the negative critics’ reviews on rotten tomatoes also have a problem with the representation of androgyny and sexuality in the movie.
My perception is that the movie did not try to send a message or convey a judgment. Throughout the movie Ned Kynaston did not self-identify as either gay or straight, or as a man or a woman. This constant confusion was made clear in several scenes including the end of the movie.
Today we understand that sexuality is better described on a continuum (Kinsey) and therefore it is almost absurd to classify anyone as gay or straight. In the case of Ned Kynaston the lack of self-identification was both in terms of sexual orientation as well as gender. Although the two identity crises were clearly related.
A critic on rotten tomatoes begins his review with: "Stage Beauty" is "the ultimate fantasy for women who tend to fall in love with gay men". This statement is based on at least two wrong assumptions: 1. Ned Kynaston is gay 2. Ned Kynaston stops being gay.
I think one of the many strengths of this movie is exactly this non judgmental, factual representation of the complexity of sexual identity. We seem to be making some progress in understanding these issues better as they are being addressed by more and more movies, like "Alexander", "Beautiful Boxer", "Brokeback Mountain".

Oh my lord , I DO FOR your perspective. But homosexuality does have a long history.

good point potolo, but not even that, i don't think kynaston is actually homosexual. not only was it basically the norm for men to have women and male lovers, maybe it wasn't talked about openly, but it happened all the time. not only that, he didn't really have issues about his sexual preferences, it was more his actual sexuality. he felt he wasn't complete without this woman inside of him, he was taught to be a woman in every sense of the word, and he was extrememly feminine. so he was following society back then by taking a male lover, but he was always doing what he believed to be true, that he was a woman in a man's body. transgendered, which is prob why the review talks about contemporary issues, which this is. transgendered people, specifically man to female, are not always gay as in sexually attracted to men, many are attracted to women, so theyre heterosexual as men, so when they become female then theyre lesbians." he had been with women and slept with women, though not literally slept as in overnight, but he fell in love with maria. he wasn't "changed" or "brought to the other side," not at all.