Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

I am not looking forward to filling out a census in 2010.  I feel like they are a reminder of my current position in society.  I am regarded as a number; when filling out a census, I would be designated "Person 1."  Female; second rung on the gender hierarchy.  Living in an apartment.  I suppose that is considered more respectable than a mobile home, but it is definitely not the supreme option; it is not a house.  I have never been someone's wife; again, the lowest rung according to the census.  The list goes Married, Widowed, Separated, Divorced, Never Married, as if to assign values to each level, with married being the ideal point and never married being the lowest of the low.  I am white, a citizen of the United States, without an enviable income, without children, working on finishing my B.A. in college, earning minimum wage. 

Censuses make everyone feel typical.  There are options, boxes or circles to fill, and then your answers are compared with the data of everyone else.  If you think you have something different about yourself, there's that "Other" box to challenge, with a tiny line that hardly provides adequate space for a detailed explanation.  It is the language used in conjunction with this "Other" option that bothers me the most about the census form.  The language is cold, almost uninterested.  If you served for a period of time in the military that is not listed on the census form, your time becomes regarded as "Some other time:____."  Similarly, if you identify with an ethnicity not listed, you become "Some other one____."  The small blank space becomes almost mocking.  By providing this option, the census people feel that you will appreciate the consideration they have extended to you by giving you an option to fill in your own explanation of who you are.  At the same time, they don't want to know too much; a detailed account is not needed.  You have this miniscule spot in which to describe who you are, what you've done in life.  When you complete a census, you do not feel accurately defined and represented by the many, often invasive questions about your income, education, fluency in English, and country of origin.  You just feel like you are one little mechanism clarifying the componenets that you are made up of, so that the people reviewing the census can fit you in with all of the other mechanisms that work together to make up the ever-productive, always bustling apparatus of American society.