Make Me Over. MMeO.
There is a myth of transformation. A beautiful person is concealed under a confusing appearance – an appearance that doesn’t use social codes to communicate (nonconformity). And if we would only translate that person’s beauty into the standard language of social norms (conformity), their inner beauty would be revealed to all. The awkward person’s problems of social ineptitude would be magically solved.
So goes the fairytale. And in the movies, it always works. The girl adapts seamlessly to her new environment of make up, big hair, and high heels. She gets the guy, the job, and all her dreams, present and future.
Today’s codes are pretty loose and broad, but they remain in place nonetheless. Everyone can tell the difference between a carefully placed disheveled and truly unkempt – between the fashionably coded and the out of style.
I am fascinated by the way in which our appearance communicates us – and whether or not it can change us. Can these movie-style makeovers actually work as smoothly as portrayed?
Make Me Over is a living performance through which I am exploring appearance as communication, specifically how it talks from the outside to the inside. More simply, can transformations in my appearance through hairstyle, makeup, clothing, body, and behavior communicate to me so as to affect my identity?
In this long-running performance, I am putting myself through these appearance changes by seeking professional recommendations to become “sophisticated.”
I am also a new reader of feminist and sociological scholarship that addresses different realms of appearance. I will do my best to bring these writings into play – relating my personal experience to the current research and framing them at times from a feminist perspective. I do not wish to alienate readers who find such academic arguments exasperating, and so I will strive to make my connections using layman’s language, keeping them “simple” and to the point. It is valuable to me to connect to this scholarship because it grounds me and reminds me that my concerns are not petty.
In 2010, I will write up a summary of the results of my research (my year as a guinea pig) and my plans for creating a site-specific performance event from it. I do not yet know what kind of performance it will be, but I am sure it will happen only once in the spirit of happy endings.
Thanks for coming with me on this research adventure. I hope you’ll leave me your comments and questions along the way.
emp. 02.20.09
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