How are you working your trap?
Also: dressing for 'the female gaze,' rodent boyfriends, the body in crisis, and more in the weekend roundup.
Last week, we had a rare date night at the restaurant where all the other parents I know do their date nights. I was gesticulating wildly while talking about the research I’d been doing—all of it related to gender and the self. Then Judith Butler walked by.
Judith. Butler.
And while I was in the middle of talking about some real Judith Butler shit, no less. It felt a little cosmic. Of all my time living in and around Berkeley (my whole life), a sighting in this particular moment?
There was an internal explosion. Maybe they heard it because Butler looked my way and we locked eyes for a meaningful (to me) moment. Whatever expression I had on my face, I’m sure they are very familiar with it. I can only imagine what it must be like to be an academic rock star. Famous but not. To some, you’re bigger than the biggest celebrities.
I spent the rest of dinner glowing, barely able to talk about anything else. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pulled Gender Trouble off my shelf to skim through once again, review the underlined text, re-read my margin notes. When I came home that night, I found a quote I’d added to my research notes just earlier that day: “Performativity has to do with repetition, very often the repetition of oppressive and painful gender norms… This is not freedom, but a question of how to work the trap that one is inevitably in.”
It’s a perennially interesting question: How are you working your trap?
To the links…
suggests we stop trying to make the “hot rodent boyfriend” a thing.Ayo Edebiri, Jeremy Allen White, and the When Harry Met Sally question.
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