Last weekend I attended a screening of Miss Representation, a documentary examining the ways in which the portrayal of women in the media creates unrealistic standard of beauty, disempowering women on multiple levels. These images are used, instead, to create an influential consumer group of women who invest in beauty products, clothing, surgeries, and diet supplements in an attempt to meet these standards.
Watching the film, I asked myself how susceptible I am to this cycle. Certainly my femme identity adores my wardrobe, makeup brushes, nail polishes and hair dye, and the performer in me even more so. I enjoy mimicking an idealized type of woman and worried that this meant I was a puppet of advertising. I realized, however, that if I had asked myself this question 5 years ago, I would have struggled to accept my answer. Yet now as I watched the film I felt a growing sense of control over my femininity and presentation, both on and off stage.
When I began coming out as queer I was unsure of how to approach my gender. I knew I was femme- but I didn’t know what femme meant. Reading through queer-femme theory, I realized that, to me, a queer femme identity meant I was controlling my femininity. I had a consciousness about what I was presenting and, although my tendency toward sequin berets remains unknown, I am in control of how I portray myself as femme. From high femme in spiky heels and mini skirts, to dirty femme in torn jeans and knit sweaters, each portrayal comes from a thoughtful process about my gender.
Burlesque is much in the same. We perform characters thoughtfully crafted and presented. Many of us perform femininity in a way that is well developed, a way that chooses the most powerful aspects of the female experience and highlights them. Although we may mimic images we see in the media, we are taking back assumptions about femininity and reframing and reshaping them to reclaim our power.
I once took a workshop with Scotty the Blue Bunny who said on stage we are in ultimate control. We invite, if not demand, the gaze of the audience and our consciousness of holding this gaze is what gives us power. Media and advertising pimp out the image of a woman and create a gaze to which we have not consented. Yet, as performers and femmes, we take back this image, redefine it on our terms, and choose the gaze we wish to invite. We are in power and we are fighting power- one rhinestone at a time.
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