Being a woman is, of course, a full time job. Especially if the title hasn't been inherently granted. DIY crossdressing resources online range from community-based tips from one crossdresser to another and for-profit, self-help fare such as Cross-dressing-guide.com, which bills itself as the paid alternative to free crossdressing websites that "still make me look like a dude." Cross-dressing-guide links to several products: books on Voice Feminization Technique, How to Look and Feel Great in a Bra (is it really that complicated?) and How to Whiten Your Skin DVDs (which must say something about femininity and whiteness). It promises to teach you how to "hide your ugly bulge", "smell like a real woman", "create your own face" and "how to package yourself." Who could resist? The lecture on how to whiten the skin seemed intriguing enough for me to Google "how to pass for white", to which there were literally no matches at all. Or, rather, no matches found.
This is particularly interesting when looked at in line with the Gonzalez piece. I'll have to give these sites a closer look, but I wonder how many of the necessary signs for 'passing' as female are based off of specific social cues and gender norms. As in, how much of 'passing' involves donning the signifiers of gender, inhabiting the assigned role and potentially calcifying that role rather than undermining it.
ReplyDeleteI know, when operating on online text-based roleplaying games, that the key to appearing female both as character and player is a simple matter of adopting a handful of gender signs. 'Giggle' on occasion, use exclamation points more often, display enthusiasm and classically feminine 'sassiness'. It sounds horrible, and honestly it sort of is, but it's terrifically effective. People who pride themselves at being able to peer past the mask and see the 'real' gender of the player are perennially fooled.
That the appearance of femaleness/femininity is linked to these simple social signs (most of which are based on a degree of performative submission) at least in the case of text based communication points to the validity of the performative hypothesis - gender is something you act and communicate, not something you are. But since how you act/communicate comprises a great portion of internet interaction, the risk is that gender norms become, as the article points out, more pronounced, since they are the only indicators.
The insertion of physicality, discussed in the other two articles, seems like a potentially saving feature, and I look forward to my better read colleagues discussing embodiment and the forms of resistance within.