At first I kind of wanted to debate the meaning of the phrase “in drag” but it turns out it means just what I think Joy meant it to mean, “clothing that is conventionally worn by the opposite sex.” I guess when I think of dressing in drag, I think of Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, or to borrow from Joy’s example, Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot. We could also put into that category the whole mantle of gay men dressing in drag as performance art. But my dressing “in drag” has always felt different than that.
What I see in those examples are men appropriating some of the stereotypical aspects of female culture and applying it in grotesque, almost hamfisted proportions. This is probably for a number of reasons, either they wish to entirely obscure their underlying sex, perhaps they don’t well understand the elements of female dress and make-up, or in many cases they may wish to queer the accepted standards of gender identity through exaggeration. None of this I have any issues with, but none of this is what I see myself doing.
My approach has been to use Halloween as a chance to appropriate some of traditional dress and makeup of the opposite sex in such a way that it might actually look good on me. Or at least interesting. I’d prefer hot. I don’t want to be a woman, I don’t like prothestics (fake boobs), I’m not interested in shaving my chin. I’m certainly not interested in revealing any aspect of my body that would be unsettling for others to see. In some sense I think that’s very much a part of being an American or Western heterosexual female: displaying the parts of your body you find particularly attractive and obscuring others.
I think what’s at stake here is the notion of a mask, in particular a physical one, and what freedoms it offers from various social pressures and expectations. For example, I never felt comfortable dancing. Part of that’s just me, but part of that I believe is what it means to be growing up male in America. I was extremely self-conscious of how I moved my body if I was doing something that wasn’t strictly utilitarian.
One Halloween a few years ago I dressed in my unique interpretation of drag, and I went with some friends to a dance party at a local bar. I was wearing a dress, wearing eye makeup and lipstick, so not much of a mask, I had a few drinks, nothing out of the ordinary, and I started to feel totally free to just move however I wanted to. Granted I was in some ways emulating what I thought were particularly feminine movements, but at that point I would have avoided any dance-related movements for being too effeminate.
Since then it’s something I’ve felt much less self-conscious about. Whether I’m wearing a skirt or not.
The fun thing about being growed up is that if certain holidays (like Halloween, my birthday, etc) don’t fall on an optimal day of the week (Friday, Saturday, or Sunday) I can have the holiday on any day I want. Instant gratification. I like how being an adult means making my own reality.
So yesterday night we celebrated Halloween at Mark and Monica’s place with copious libations, dance music, horror movies, and a small dog. Here are our lovely hosts looking ghoulish:
The wonderful thing about that picture (realize I work with Mark at O’Reilly) is how thoroughly disguised he is. This is how Mark looks the other 364 days of the year (or at least when he’s transfixed by savory Dutch pancakes).
I have to give them mad props for transforming their house into a parlor of horror. They did a killer job of decorating, especially the bathroom:
I’m curious what it was like for the first one to take a shower this morning.
Here’s my boy Matt. Dude’s always in character. Consummate professional. That was actually take 2, the first shot didn’t have enough “gut.”
But of all the photos, this is my favorite, because you’ve got to guess, which legs are Justin’s?
I can’t seem to get to Google. Or Gmail. Yahoo is slow too. And I was having trouble getting to my blog.
It makes me wonder, what would it be like if Google went down for an hour. Or a day. Or a week. What would be the economic repercussions? Or the social ones. Would people step out of their apartments en masse and ask each other “Is Google down for you too?”
Given the recent spat of hurricanes and earthquakes, I’m curious about the hundreds of thousands of people having to rely on strangers as much for their basic needs as for a sense of common reality.
On NPR this evening I heard a report that there are 100,000 new people living in Baton Rouge, LA. They focused on the increased traffic, but I’m more interested in hearing about the new relationships forming as a result and the “Katrina babies” we’ll start seeing 8 months from now. In a few years I expect a lot of people will admit that Katrina was an awful catalyst that changed their lives for the better.
Is the fact that it takes a natural disaster to break us out of our routines a uniquely American phenomenon? Kind of makes me want to engineer a national kick in the pants just to mix things up. But even that would be hard to force above the noise of daily life. Something has to be at stake. Everything is so explained and anticipated nowadays that it seems to take large-scale destruction of life and property to pique our interest in the people around us.
I see this pattern when it comes to meeting people. I could meet someone once and be interested, but if things are such that it’s unlikely we’ll cross paths again, it makes no sense to rearrange my life to improve the probability of a second chance encounter. Instead I’d rather that any future interaction be dependent on who I really am (the places I go and the things I do) and leave it up to chance (much like a natural disaster) that our paths cross again.
This poem is the kind of eye-opening, social consciousness inspiring sentiment that I probably first read on a poster in high school. At the time I found it quite moving, but now it bothers me. In retrospect it’s easy to look back at Hitler’s policies and see how each small Nazi atrocity led to the next. But what about the present? This poem often comes to mind when I’m reading the news, because it’s not so obvious to determine which developments now will add up to some great injustice later.
The poem supposes that it’s easy to see the slippery slope, and that all you need is simple vigilance to fight it. But for most people, vigilance (especially in modern American politics) is tiring to the point of sisyphean. How many times on Boingboing has an alert gone out about the broadcast flag getting slipped into another bill? What are the long term implications for two Bush appointments to the Supreme Court? What will be the final effect of the Christian Right on American politics and culture? What are the real risks of the FBI diverting resources from national security to fight a “war on pornography”? What is the long term effect on civil rights and privacy of a permanent “Patriot” Act?
Every day it seems there’s a new injustice, and every day I let many pass while trying do something about one or two. Usually all I have the energy for is a link. A simple link to point to an injustice and vote no. Less frequently I’ll write a letter to a senator about something I feel distinctly passionate about, and post their idiotic form letter response to my blog. But so often I do nothing, and I think that’s alright, because I believe bad ideas, bad laws, even bad presidents (thank god for the 22nd amendment) are corrected over time. Is it worth my time and effort to fight the president at every step or can I hedge my bets that the current administration will hang themselves by their own rope (exhibit: Karl Rove).
I find some solace in this quote, whose source is unknown, “no one ever said democracy is the most efficient form of government.” It suggests to me that not every disappointment necessarily means we’re going to hell in a handbasket. I guess that’s always been the hardest lesson of adulthood to accept, that life is less like an ascent to some platonic ideal and more like a constantly equilibrating pendulum. However comforting that knowledge, it doesn’t ease the apparent cost of that inefficiency, in terms of both capital and most importantly, human life.
