The key theme McCabe explores in Breakfast on Pluto is one which has been controversial for many decades: transvestism. Transvestism is the act of dressing in a way that is associated with the opposite sex, oftentimes in pursuit of sexual arousal or, in Braden’s case, as a form of gender reclamation. Braden begins to dress in women’s clothes as a very young child as a way of expressing his exuberant personality and creating a sense of pleasure for himself, although the townspeople assume it is a ploy to engage the attention of his father. Even when discovered, Braden never ceases to explore transvestism because the performance of dressing and behaving as a female brings him closer to his inner self, which, as the novel progresses, is transgender. The courageous and at times dangerous persistence with which Braden continues to pursue transvestism, first within a very small, highly religious, and close-minded community and then in a big city, indicates that Braden is pursuing a truth rather than a desire to shock or scandalize.

In relating the events of his life, Braden repeatedly switches pronouns that describe him, thus pointing toward the idea that he experiences a gender duality that only blossoms into full femaleness in Braden’s fantasies and at the end of the novel.