Just a quick recount of a personal masquerade moment. As women, we embark on some form of masking, veiling, and self-construction everyday, to varying degrees and with different intentions. Wednesday morning I had a very specific intention as I “created” myself, with Jane Gaines and Dietrich in mind, “By creating herself through masquerade and performance, Helen Faraday and Marlene Dietrich are part of a process in which the woman obtains power through her knowledge of how others see her…This cannot be interpreted as liberation by any means, but it does locate a certain resistance to patriarchal norms…” (24).
I appreciate this concept, with its tentative suggestion of a possible subversion (or at least a survivor’s alternative route in negotiating a male world). While the more dour authors have invoked the Foucauldian panopticon to reveal how women have internalized an external, appraising, and ultimately sanctioning gaze, there may conversely be some empowerment in that very embodied double consciousness. Yes, we are always painfully aware of ourselves as images and of how we look to others, but that very cognizance can lend itself to purposive and sometimes highly useful manipulations of our looks. No, this is not going to reverse a history of normative patriarchy and subjugation and it is double-edged, but it’s something.
So back to this morning: I had an interview at DDO Agency in their print division, since I’m looking for representation as a fitness model. Now to be very very clear: I am not modelesque in any sense; I am not tall, willowy, Brazilian, Ukrainian, or particularly symmetrical—fitness work is a small and highly specific niche market for dance wear and athletic apparel or gear, usually relying on dancers and athletes to model for it. It just requires muscles and some proficiency in a sport, and I have friends who have made nice money off it. So, I as put on my face to meet John Robertson, head of the print department, I did so with all the knowing and tactical foresight of a Dietrich character.
I was trying to preemptively guess what he was looking for, what I needed to convey, and then shaped my face and body in accordance with that. Fitness espouses a “healthy” look, so I translated that into slightly shiny skin and flushed cheeks (all faked since I had 4 hours of sleep and was looking particularly sallow). As for the eyes, I decided that a stoke of black would be too harsh in the daylight and winged or liquid liner would look too “done,” so I attempted a “natural” look (the well-established irony is that that look takes just as long or longer than visible traces of female ornamentation) and I decided on a smudged line of brown, flirty lashes and glossy lips. I picked a tank top that showed both muscles and bit a cleavage (had I been meeting with a woman, I may have reconsidered the décolletage). I topped it off with a sleek ponytail and elastic band (look, I’m sporty! I’m athletic! Hire me!) All this was done with the intensified knowledge that I was constructing myself for one purpose only: to gain the approval and eventual acceptance of another, without any mediating or contributing factors.
I could not rely on my accomplishments, my academic background couldn’t help me, and no amount of personality or articulacy would change the fact that when I met John he was going to judge me solely on my image, in one moment of appraisal and decision, There was nothing I could do except try to mould myself in to what I believed he wanted to see. So there was the double-edge in action: yes, as a woman I have the ability and socially approved (required?) tools of feminine ornamentation that allow me to inhabit different roles or refashion myself. This can be playful, liberating, and enjoyable like a childhood game of dress-up, but then like yesterday it can also be nerve-wracking and fraught with self-doubt and a sense of trying to compensate for or cover up deficiencies. As I waited in the lobby and checked my face in a compact for the billionth time, I had a fleetingly resentful thought that a man in my position would only have to smooth his eyebrows and make sure he had no errant nose hairs.
So, masquerade? It is one of the powerful weapons in our arsenal, or is it a self-imposed shackle? If I can make some money out of this, I guess I’ll call it a draw ;)
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