Queer Eye: Stories Behind the Stories, Ep. 5
If you want to know what’s *my* story behind the story, click here.
This episode’s narrative is so familiar to me. As a professor, I often encounter students whose desires run counter to the grand narratives they’ve been told about themselves, their people, and the world. Abby, the young climate change hero, is fighting to understand her place in the world as a young woman invested in and working for political change. The Fab5 help her more fully embody her space. Abby struggles with coming to terms with her identity as a young woman who is politically astute and aware, what that means regarding her clothing, her space, her look, her life.
Tan provides clothing that doesn’t read child but rather reads youth. Antoni pushes for her to have a sense of accomplishment in the kitchen and to relax and enjoy her time there. Karamo shows her examples of powerful women in her community, like Helen Gym (Philadelphia City Councilmember) who understand their time with their communities as important self-care time. (This is also what I was pointing to in Episode 4 with Tyreek.) Bobby redecorates the mission home that she lives in with others. Not only can she enjoy it, but so can others that follow her. Jonathan offers her a haircut and a product line that allows her to, as he put it, “have options” around beauty. I think it also allows her to use her buying power to support companies that align with her values.
Abby is fighting a larger sexist narrative that would prohibit women from being in public spaces with their ideas. What is clear from the episode is that this isn’t a fight the Fab5 have foisted onto her. When she talks with Tan on the first day, she talks about wanting to be taken seriously saying that it is difficult to be in these rooms (read: halls of power) as “a young woman who is so obviously a young woman.” Fast forward to trying on clothes with Tan. She looks at herself in the mirror and says that if she “saw someone dressed like that, [she’d] be intimidated.” She does switch it up by saying “or, I’d be like she looks really confident.” In watching that scene, I got the sense that there were parts edited out where she worked herself to the second conclusion. Tan’s pedagogy, his teaching, in the try-on moments is so deft usually. It is a loss if that happened and we couldn’t see him teaching her on camera.
Here’s the conundrum: she is living in system and fighting it at the same time. She obviously knows her stuff. When the Fivers are all excited because they biked, she tells them that their biking, while great, does not get at the larger structural issue of corporations and their pollution of the planet: “I would say that biking is good because it’s really fun, but one hundred corporations are responsible for 70% of global emissions so if you do drive it’s not a big deal because you’re not really causing the big problem.” Well. Individual vs. Structural change indeed. (I’ll note here that Abby says this like it is something she has said many times over. It is also one of the only moments of confidence we see from her pre-makeover.)
I never thought I’d say this, but this episode reminds me of Louis Althusser, and Judith Butler. In 1970, Althusser published an excerpt from one of his essays, entitled “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” In it, he critiques the relationship between the state and the subject. In order for the state to do its work, the subject has to be convinced that their role is natural and not created or coerced. This helps the state maintain its control through the use of ideology. Ideology — the general ideas we have about how the world operates — is always present. It is usually put forward by what Althusser calls “ideological apparatuses” like family, schools, church, and, though he did not forsee it, social media. Believing these ideologies to be true, because one has received corroborating messages, means that one can be appropriately “hailed” by the state, appropriately “interpellated” by the state (if you want to use Althusser’s language), or in layperson’s terms, recognize oneself as the state does.
Althusser’s idea is part of the basis for feminist philosopher and critic, Judith Butler’s idea about gender roles and performance. When a human is interpellated as a boy, there are specific ideologies that get mapped onto him. When a human is interpellated as a girl, there are other specific ideologies that get mapped onto her. Let us combine Althusser and Butler to think about Abby. In Abby’s case, the state would hail her as too young and feminine to have a voice. It would marshal the ideology that roars — Women should be seen and not heard! Young women are too silly with not a thought in their heads! — to suggest that Abby and all her transgressive Sunrise Movement buddies should go somewhere and STFU.
Ideology within political movements can also be prohibitive and constraining in that respect because sometimes it can draw on existing patriarchal ideology: that is, some so-called “real activists” won’t take Abby seriously if she looks too dressed up. They too can become or act as “ideological apparatuses.” If you need an example, Tan points to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) who looks amazingly powerful and feminine, but who (Tan does not mention this) has been maligned for caring about her look. If you need another example, Stokely Carmichael famously said the only position for women in SNCC is prone. There’s a long history of folks not listening to Black women, including the people alongside them in freedom struggles. You’ll see why this isn’t exactly a digression in a moment.
Certainly, this narrative limits Abby in her quest to save the planet. More chillingly, she struggles to get out of believing it herself. Her time with Tan and Jonathan especially indicate that the ideology is the water and she is the fish. Or maybe she’s starting to be an amphibian. She knows she’s drenched. Here, Judith Butler’s theories about performance echo. Butler argues that gender (not sex) is performed in front of an expectant audience that responds based on historical and social cues. Abby is trying to perform a different narrative about her gender and butting up against the narratives she wishes to shed.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how Abby’s whiteness surfaces in this episode. I am wary of feminist narratives that erase the intersection of other identities that exist alongside one’s womanhood. Even if the other identities are privileged, it is important to examine them. For instance, Abby is fighting against a particular perception of white womanhood. White womanhood is acceptable as docile, rescue-able, politically naïve, and histrionic. This creates the space for someone like Amy Cooper to take advantage of these narratives. I digress, but if you’re thinking of Audre Lorde’s work while you’re reading, you’d be on my wavelength.
Getting Abby to accept that another feminine is possible, she has to look to non-white examples. For that reason, it is so important that Karamo brought her to a Toni-Morrison-quoting-Asian-American Helen Gym. Gym points out that freedom movements are long struggles and they need to be refreshed all the time, which includes the refreshing you get when you work on you. The confluence of brilliant woman of color energy in that moment just got me jazzed about the episode! Gym’s words to Abby that “movements are long” requires the long view of history that women of color often have by necessity. In this current moment, as white folks are discovering their outrage, I feel the need to remind them, don’t burn too brightly too quickly: figuring out white supremacy exists is one step; fighting it requires so many more.
Further, I think about Abby’s anxiety. She says that she has been told that she appears nervous and that she is prone to anxiety. My concern here is not that her anxiety is something she needs to get rid of. It isn’t. Nor can it be. If that’s her disposition, that’s her disposition. I do think it important to note that her anxiousness does not create a problem for her white femininity. It reinforces it.
Here, a condition that can be disabling for some combines with the narratives about white womanhood and allow her to appear as a white woman in need of rescue. The line here between utility and danger is razor sharp and razor thin. One the one hand, Abby’s gender presentation here dovetails with common narratives about white womanhood, where disability (e.g., anxiety) and white femininity (e.g., frailty) cohere to allow her space for her politics to come through. I’m only calling this disability because anxiety can be rather debilitating. I’m not diagnosing Abby or mapping an identity onto her. I am pointing out what narratives surface here.
On the other hand, this presentation is often the one used to silence women of color. White women’s anxiety gets marshaled by the white women themselves or others on their behalf. If this is a way that Abby understands herself in the world, she is responsible for it. Again, I’m not making assumptions about how Abby experiences her anxiety. As I said though, the line between utility is razor sharp and razor thin. As it is for many of the narratives Abby is trying to hold and surmount.
And, that razor is in her hands.
[Episode 1] [Episode 2] [Episode 3] [Episode 4] [Episode 6] [Episode 7] [Episode 8] [Episode 9] [Episode 10]
