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

Audience is mixed genders, races, ages--many different types of bodies are preferred.

Setting is a minimalist stage, I imagined the Recital Hall on campus...

Lighting focuses on slightly left of center stage.

Character is me.

Props include a vanity with a mirror that doubles as a TV screen; the vanity has drawers with very specific items of clothing inside.

There is a projection of the images that are shown on the mirror-tv behind me, so that the audience can clearly see. The images shown will be a compilation--almost a composite image but the images are not superimposed upon each other, just a fast moving repetitive slide show--of women's faces, a bust-up portrait that shows each woman to be wearing very specific items of clothing that I will be dressing up in as I look into the mirror-tv. The women are, like the audience, representational of a pluralistic society and hopefully inclusive of many different types of women. (By the end of the workshop, I'd decided that the images may not even be limited to classically categorized female bodies, but all persons need to be reflecting an idea or image of Woman.) The performance is me getting dressed with an item of clothing from each of these women, all the while staring into the mirror-tv--which obviously reflects more than my face.

There is no dialogue, I think. But here's what is running through my head when I envision this:

Gender is a representation. I cite Woman in my image and appearance. I'm getting dressed each morning and I'm citing Woman. I'm citing the idea of what a woman looks like. Because there is no one Ideal Woman Capital-Dubya Body (this is not to insinuate I'm merely trying to look pretty or hot), because there is no composite image of what Woman is. (Sign signifier signed.) Why do we act like there is? Like there is some Woman, some idea I need to be? What makes me a woman? What makes my body "woman"? Is it, more or less, clothes and physique and behaviors--boiled down to image, to appearance, to my material visual presence in social realms? "Passing" for a woman? Why do I dress like a Woman?

And it is a performance, getting dressed. Do I like to wear "feminine" things? Or does that feel natural because I've been told how to dress for my Body, my Womanity, and I've been encouraged by everyone to try for Pretty? How do my clothes and my appearance give an audience (real, theatrical, social, all) the authority to perceive me as part of a group categorized as Woman? Why should I ever know how to dress like a woman?