Friday, April 30, 2004

Spring Makeovers

Spring is here! Time for the new fashions and for Spring makeovers. And what could be more American this Spring than to re-invent oneself in a new and better image? Why not harness the forces of fashion and Yankee ingenuity to escape the limitations imposed by the accidents of one’s birth? This weekend, I attended two very different fashion shows. Both were celebrations of the courage it takes to re-make oneself despite the constraints of genetics and rearing. Neither was what I had expected.

Friday night’s event was a fund-raiser for AIDS Ministries, and was IUSB’s first ever drag show. The campus auditorium was packed with over 500 people: the atmosphere was electric. When the MC walked onstage, the audience roared approval. Here was the young man who had toiled with the campus gay/straight alliance for over a year to organise this event. And he was wearing a golden evening gown. I can’t tell you that he looked elegant in his too-tight dress and high heels, but he looked radiantly happy.

The professional drag artists our host introduced, however, were perfectly at ease in their glamorous outfits. The performers reveled in the skills of femininity - the flirtatious walk, the wiggle and giggle, the careful coiffure and exquisite manicure. Performer Suzanne Douglas transformed from a peppy cheerleader with poms to an elegant society hostess. Asia Valentino pouted and posed to Janet Jackson, and Jacqueline Payne belted out Aretha Franklin.

Here were men in women’s clothes, looking like natural born women, though not, I will say, always acting like ladies. Miss Della Licious was more in the burlesque tradition, making fun of clunky feminine artifice: the bosom packed with kleenex, the bouffant ‘do overdone.

A little bit of teasing can be welcome. But I was irked by the MC’s comment that: “If men can look this beautiful, women: you have no excuses.” He had forgotten that he could discard the role he was playing with the dress he wore. If you have to play at dress up every day, as many women must do, it can get pretty old, pretty quickly.

But the evening overall was a great success. The high point was when Miss Erika Cartier, impeccable in spike heels and a silver gown, dedicated her lipsynched rendition of Whitney Houston’s Star-Spangled Banner to those fighting overseas for America’s freedom.

The second makeover event of my weekend was presented by the Bari Buddies of Elkhart Clinic: a support group of patients who have undergone gastric bypass surgery in a dramatic step toward overcoming morbid obesity. The format these brave women chose to celebrate their successful struggle was again, a fashion show, with an MC, an enthusiastic audience, and many costume changes.

Cameras flashed as each model descended the catwalk. A screen behind them showed each patient’s name and a photo from before her weight loss surgery. Each outfit was described as the women walked forward. At the end of the catwalk, the MC announced each woman’s total weight loss - 60, 100, 150 pounds - and the crowd cheered “Amen!”, “Bee-autiful - yeah!” and pumped their fists in the air. But, in contrast to the confident stride of the drag queens, these women were hesitant, unsure of their transformed bodies.

Displayed at the back of the hall were clothes the patients had worn before their surgery, together with medications and knee braces they no longer needed now they were thinner. I leafed through a booklet with diagrams of stomach pouches and eviscerated guts, and noted its emphasis that one should undertake this surgery only for health reasons. But I couldn’t help wondering why the pictures were all of women, and where were the male Bari Buddies of Elkhart? And why did the fashion show begin and end with a wedding dress?

Both these fashion shows highlighted how important the quest for idealized feminine beauty has become, whether it is attainable or not. The question is whether the efforts of these men and women, warmly supported as they are by their communities, will be a release for them or a route to a new kind of tyranny.

Broadcast by Louise Collins on April 30, 2004
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