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Oct. 31st, 2008 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sebastiennePantomime dames (Oh yes, we are!) raises some very interesting points, many of which I agree with. However, I'd take issue with its central analogy. Women are not all pantomime dames. We are not consciously mocking a certain kind of middle-aged lower-class femininity, we are not trying to make people laugh at our ridiculousness, and we are not trying to elicit heckling, although we often get it.
If any transgender-umbrella icon stands for all women, it is not the pantomime dame, but Hedwig, of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Certainly, she's a less well-known symbol than the panto dame, and so would have served less well for Penny Red's article, but just for you lovelies here (a significant number of whom, I hope, will have seen the film in question), I'll explain why I think she works so much better.
Women (and, just to be absolutely crystal clear, even though I should not have to state this, I mean anyone who considers herself a woman and/or experiences the world perceived as a woman) are constantly made to feel in need of fixing. This is how they sell us make-up, epilators, hair-straighteners, botox, diet food, feminine deodorants: through the feeling that we fail at being women if we do not conform. Just to clarify, any suggestion that hair or sweat emerges from our skin is enough for us to fail this test.
Hedwig is an extreme example of such "failure". She has "tits of clay" and an "angry inch". The song "Wig in a Box" goes through the list of things that she has to do before leaving thehouse trailer as a socially-acceptable woman. Tellingly, this socially-acceptable woman ("Miss Midwest midnight checkout queen" or "this punk-rock star of stage and screen") is not an identity in which Hedwig is particularly comfortable ("until I get home, and I turn back to myself"). Her tirade which finishes the song, an explosion of hate towards overly-complicated women's hairstyles, resonates very strongly with me, and with other women I know. This is the kind of woman that we all are - forced, by societal pressure, to be things that we are not.
The film ends with Hedwig walking, naked, out into the streets of New York. All her make-up and artifice stripped away, she is finally able to face the world as herself, angry inch and all. This is the kind of woman I aspire, one day, to be.
(I am eliding nuance somewhat, but my essays about Hedwig and duality, Hedwig and "I am large, I contain multitudes" will have to wait for another day as the bus will soon be coming into Oxford.)
I will be protesting Stonewall's continued refusal to accept that their remit to serve LGB people means not supporting transphobia, by handing out flyers outside the V&A from 6.30pm next Thursday. I will not evangelise, but thought that you should all be aware that it was taking place.
If any transgender-umbrella icon stands for all women, it is not the pantomime dame, but Hedwig, of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Certainly, she's a less well-known symbol than the panto dame, and so would have served less well for Penny Red's article, but just for you lovelies here (a significant number of whom, I hope, will have seen the film in question), I'll explain why I think she works so much better.
Women (and, just to be absolutely crystal clear, even though I should not have to state this, I mean anyone who considers herself a woman and/or experiences the world perceived as a woman) are constantly made to feel in need of fixing. This is how they sell us make-up, epilators, hair-straighteners, botox, diet food, feminine deodorants: through the feeling that we fail at being women if we do not conform. Just to clarify, any suggestion that hair or sweat emerges from our skin is enough for us to fail this test.
Hedwig is an extreme example of such "failure". She has "tits of clay" and an "angry inch". The song "Wig in a Box" goes through the list of things that she has to do before leaving the
The film ends with Hedwig walking, naked, out into the streets of New York. All her make-up and artifice stripped away, she is finally able to face the world as herself, angry inch and all. This is the kind of woman I aspire, one day, to be.
(I am eliding nuance somewhat, but my essays about Hedwig and duality, Hedwig and "I am large, I contain multitudes" will have to wait for another day as the bus will soon be coming into Oxford.)
I will be protesting Stonewall's continued refusal to accept that their remit to serve LGB people means not supporting transphobia, by handing out flyers outside the V&A from 6.30pm next Thursday. I will not evangelise, but thought that you should all be aware that it was taking place.
