Muxe may be "vestidas" ("dressed", i.e. wearing female clothes) or "pintadas" ("painted", i.e. wearing male clothes and make-up). It has been suggested that while the three-gender system predates Spanish colonization, the phenomenon of muxe dressing as women is fairly recent, beginning in the 1950s and gaining popularity until nearly all of the younger generation of muxe today are "vestidas".