As we've been discussing for several weeks, identity is often expressed, or indeed in part created through fashion (or perhaps the performance of fashion). Judith Butler suggests that a major part of identity--gender--is created through performance, although this doesn't necessarily mean that we wake up in the morning and choose what we will be, consciously choosing to play a role. Rather, the "performative" indicates an activity rather than a thing (remember back to the Schechner reading). Thus, for Butler, gender is not a *thing* or solid idea, but rather a doing, an action that creates the illusion of a solid, singular thing-that-is-gender. Similarly, when talking about ethnic and racially marked dress, we more or less concluded that race does not reside in items of clothing, but rather in how they are used, in the relation of clothing, body, context, and society. This fluidity, the contingency of meaning based on how things are being used in what context, I would contend, is about performance.
Today we try to wrap up some loose ends about "identity" and "fashion." Find a picture that speaks to one of the issues about bodies that we read about today: beauty, size, or age, and discuss it in terms of the repetitive action of performance. Is beauty, size or age something you *are* or a relation? An action? A performance? What would it mean to look at age, size, or beauty as performance? Could it help explain the wildly different and ambiguous ways these dynamics play out, or does it obscure some aspects too?
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