Three Dollar Bill
No. 3: Performance art
Laura Blakely
Wherein the writer asks who determines your style and what part you’re playing.
I always thought that the idea of performance art was really cool. There are those videos posted on Yahoo! about a performance troupe that posed motionless in a mall, as if frozen in time, just to see the reactions of other (presumably normal) shoppers. In various cities in Canada, people dressed as zombies and invaded neighbourhoods, sometimes “feeding” off of predetermined people along the route, transforming them into zombies as well. These are all examples of hilarious and stupid things you can do in the name of performance art.
It’s a cool idea, but I don’t have time to be a performance artist. The time required to put on crazy makeup and costumes and devise a script to follow or a persona to be when going out into the real world is too much. I have enough things to worry about without having to put on an act just for the hell of it.
I put on makeup every day, yes, but it’s different than art. I put on foundation and concealer to cover my blemishes and the redness around my nose, and mascara to make my eyes look open, and blush to make me look healthy, and eye shadow because more people tell me I look pretty when I do. I fight against my naturally curly hair but I look sleeker when my hair looks like everyone else’s. My clothes are chosen carefully so that I look approachable and friendly but kind of professional and not slutty. One of the most common arguments I hear against uniforms in schools is that people express themselves through their clothes. Doesn’t this mean that every time we get dressed it’s a little bit of a performance?
What do your clothes say about you? What does your makeup (or lack thereof) tell the world? What lines do we dare not cross? Do you determine your own style without any outside influence? For women, the line seems to be more strictly defined and more commonly talked about, ideas of fashion and expressing oneself through one’s appearance. For women, it also seems to be common knowledge that you will be judged by the way you’re dressed and the way that you look. Men are judged, too, and if you don’t believe me, see what happens when a man wears a dress in a public place. Even on Halloween, even when it’s a kilt, even if he looks better in it than I do, a guy in a dress makes some people feel weird (that’s why we think it’s funny). There’s a person who looks to belong to one gender (in this example, through a masculine face, and/or hair, and/or body) who is violating the unwritten rules (by wearing clothing designated for women) that we have all known since the first day that we started learning about the world around us.
How did we learn these rules, and what it is that makes us look feminine or masculine? I don’t recall there being a lesson on it in school, except when my friend’s teacher told her that she had to wear hair clips so she’d remember that she is a girl. There isn’t an open discussion that you have with your friends, unless you wear something that makes you look too butch or (for guys) too effeminate. Then they’ll let you know. I don’t remember my mom telling me to wear a dress or makeup; but I certainly watched her put on makeup and get her hair done and saw her and other women wear dresses with heels, and my dad and other men wear suits and ties for formal events.
There are a million ways that these things can slip into our subconscious, and uncounted numbers of rules that we may feel compelled to follow, and if this is something that we are taught our entire lives, is there any way to separate ourselves from it to figure out how we really want to look, dress or act?
In the conclusion of the divorce trial between Heather Mills and Paul McCartney, Mills poured a pitcher of water over the head of Fiona Shackleton, the (female) lawyer who was representing McCartney. She didn’t punch the lawyer or scream in her face, she just poured water over her normally coiffed and styled hair as if taking away her hairdo would strip her of her powers. While this scene is ridiculous at best in civilized society, try picturing the same scene happening between two men. One guy might break the other guy’s nose if he couldn’t control himself but he probably wouldn’t bother to mess up the other guy’s hair. Even in our most petty and crazed acts, we still observe the rules that say there are ways that girls are supposed to fight, and that is different than how boys are supposed to fight. Heather Mills is a woman first and a crazy enraged ex second; this is what makes her stay within the lines her gender has drawn.
While I don’t have time to be onstage or part of a roaming theatre troupe, I have almost always found the time to put on makeup and act according to the gender norms that are set out in the cultural setting where I live. Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have broken or bent the rules. But seriously, who wants to act like any one thing, even if it’s a cool zombie, if they have to put on that act all the time?
