This is a little late, but I don’t have internet at home so I have to find ways to sneak this into work or from my phone. Either way, I’m sorry.
I had other plans for what to include here, but while I was driving home on Wednesday after work for the holiday I started to think more about this specific concept of performance of self. So, I’ve been really unhappy lately about my appearance, both physically and what it implies. I feel way more self-conscious about my body lately, way more as in I haven’t felt this way in a long time. One place that it definitely comes out is when I’m commuting, riding the bus to and from work on the week days when I’m with all the other worker bees being shuttled into down town. Now, I get it, my line of work (not that I’m just office support) with public service is not glamorous and no one around here wears a suit or anything as nonsensical as that. But, I can’t help but look around and see all of these other people on their way to work, and outwardly they look like they are really making something of themselves. That they must be happy, because they sure look like things are going their way. They’ve got nice leather bags or shoes that they’re probably the first owners of, ever. They have that aura of success and it’s like that Lord of the Rings ring I want it! But, like I’m pretty sure that’s dangerous or whatever.
Okay, so performance. Judith Butler is a feminist theorist and is AMAZING. She’s also kind of hard to work through, it’s all theory. She’s a huge person in the line that gender is a social construction, gender is something that is performed and is created by our clothes and actions. Society has created boxes in which it is acceptable to perform this gender and have your gender identity be widely accepted as that gender. Where woman = dress and man = flannel shirt and steel toe boots. It’s a construct.
I’ve always liked Judith Butler because I strongly identify as a woman, and on top of that a very “femme” woman. One of my queer pals here said I’m the most hetero-femme she’s met (whatever that means) but while I was driving home it’s like I embrace the performance of my gender. I wear heels almost daily, I paint on my face every day. One of my coworkers laughed at me the other day for standing like a dainty flower. I wake up every day and choose to be this image of a woman, and I love it. It’s something that people recognize as visibly “woman” but at the same time it’s something that I have crafted to be my own interpretation over the years. Now, if the foundation of a huge facet of our social knowledge of ourselves has been designed by what society has deemed as correctly corresponding with said aspect of life, wouldn’t it then be possible to extend this elsewhere? An almost “Fake it ‘Till You Make It” thing? Or to quote my 20 year old self “Don’t Dream It, Be It”?
I want to be well dressed/respected/employed. I believe I’m all of these things, but my brain looks around at all of my used up life and thinks that I should be happier about the place I am currently in.
So what if I get a nice coffee mug for my morning commute. Wear my nice shoes every day. Use my planner. Go through the motions and have even buy some of the tokens of success, then will feel that way?
I feel like, if I were to start participating in these things on a daily basis that actually my life will be better. That I will be happier, but maybe I have to make it this game to myself. Where I am performing this role of a successful and happy person because I can’t recognize it as being my actual life? I can’t take things when they are good, and look around and smile at the accomplishments my hard work has allowed me to achieve? I almost have to trick myself into being the person that I want to be, because I always get in the way.
I want to trick myself into working out by getting a YWCA membership to use the sauna and pool, and maybe then I’ll find myself on a rowing machine one day.
I want to trick myself out of thinking that I want more brand new things in my life. Buying a bed frame felt so amazing, every piece of furniture in my house was either given to me or purchased for under 5 dollars from a thrift store. I started to value my worth in the number of brand new things I have, and needless to say that even my clothes and books would in that case reflect a pretty low value.
I want to trick myself into happiness and fulfillment.
Deep down somewhere I am a power bitch. I think my friends see that. But for now I’m going to pretend to be CEO of the Audradome (I’m also currently working on what I want to name my existence and life that I’m creating, and I kind of like ripping off the “Thunderdome”) and play pretend that my life is on the up and up. Hopefully after a few months of this intentional rewiring of my thought process I’ll be queen of my world again.
Does that sound crazy? Am I going to build myself a house of cards, where one small breeze could blow the whole thing down?
Do you trick yourself? What are you doing to recognize your success or happiness?
Book Recommendation: I think that one really cool way to link a book with this type of thinking is to explore how we create our own realities? Reading Yo by Julia Alvarez or As I Lay Dying by (my nemesis) William Faulker would be a good pairing, not because either is about anything I just wrote about, instead they are multiple perspective novels. Written from the points of view of many different people, further exploring how we each have our own experiences and create our realities.
Below is Judith Butler discussing her ideas on kind of what I was talking about.
Thanks for listening to my crazy rambles.
I love you all,