THE GIRLS BATHROOM
Performance of womanhood and the alienation of modern femininity on the internet
THE GIRLS BATHROOM.
Performance of womanhood and the alienation of modern femininity on the internet.
The internet has the false sense of security allure of a woman's public bathroom – a placebo safe space made to share amongst a community that presents similar ‘commonalities’ to you. And yet you find that thresholds within this ‘safe space’ can be crossed “by mistake” and the sacred nature is nothing more than a flimsy door, three walls and an on edge feeling of being a few seconds away from exposure. I usually find solitude and relief in those sacred grounds. I occupy it, I take up space and claim it as mine, even if it is just for a fleeting moment amongst a carousel of others. I remain alert even when in the secluded room, as the cubicle separates me from others yet I am still hyper aware of their presence - all waiting out there.
The women's bathroom holds secrets and the toilet acts like a pew in a confessional on which one might stoop and think about bygone sins, upheld faiths or the very moment one is currently in. We conduct our women’s business here and deal with the daily taboos that no outsider, we’ve been told, would want to know - periods, discharge, farts, shits, period shits, break-downs, equal rights, feminism and gendered violence. All hidden behind closed doors, a mutual pact of secrecy between all that enter within. Why does the cubicle feel like a confessional for sins we didn't commit?
The internet presents us with the same ultimatum of arming ourselves with a silent power within pockets of liberation. But if exposed, all that we had concealed within, would be reduced to nothing more than a corner of shame. Something that it already was but only for those looking from the outside in. The power of our sisterhood is sanctioned into certain spaces and neatly tucked away to be concealed from view by the powers that be. For our own good, of course, our safety and protection but from what? Those who put us there in the first place? Our power is confined to spaces, groups and collectives that if we were to breach would mean little to none. The breaches of our autonomy have become a kiss and tell, a whisper, a dirty little secret that once again resides in the girls bathroom of the internet, the words we share never reaching those who were responsible for the actions behind them.
Amongst a social media dystopia women are drilled to behave under the pressure of multiple threats. Threats of judgement, value, social standing, attention, beauty… and threats against actual safety, as the virtual world threatens the ability to safely live in the real one. In a post-internet era perception and society act as a guiding eye rather than the self, as we see ourselves mirrored by our virtual identities. Our host of phantom internet selves splinter us into multiple ids and renditions of womanhood, or as the internet would like it, girlhood.
Girlification wants us to be an artsy girl, clean girl, e-girl, lover girl, it girl, tomato girl, indie sleaze girl…a girl online. We are commodified version of our-selves and our sense of physicality and identity has been relocated to give way for the unlimited* personalities and possibilities virtual identities offer. The idea of one or infinites personalities that we can choose between, can give rise to the ephemeral self; the sense of multiple selves. This isn’t Peter. Peter is this. We are a collection of internet traces left by marks here and there rather than being a host of our own identities. We are presented with options of immortal identities that define us not by what we create but what we consume and regurgitate.
What are we based on the vision we hold of ourselves?
Most often, we watch from outward in. Under the consistent surveillance of ourselves, by ourselves and others we are a practiced act. Do men have this reflexive awareness? This perception of being perceived and living through the paradigm of performativity.
“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisioning herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught or persuaded to survey herself continually” – @hdebeaufort
Performativity is an act that through socialisation comes naturally and has been embedded in the double-bind of womanhood – existing as a passive object that is bounded by the scope of ‘given’ agency. Given; referring to the static realms of “acceptable” behaviour enforcing the sliding spectrum of femininity which is kept in flux by social attitudes in regard to gender and interlocking systems of capitalism and the patriarchy. A woman plays the dual role of both a spectator and an actor in her own life. She is both the performer and audience member, trained daily to exercise her perceptive and analytical eye until the show has been rehearsed to a silent mundane perfection. A perfection that doesn't challenge or arouse any great emotion but to the satisfaction of all else serves its purpose and fulfils its duties of being a ‘nice’ show, often in more ways than one. When it comes to identity and modern femininity “women are in the double-bind of either identifying with a passive object and losing the possibility of agency, or identifying with the male protagonist” [Laura Mulvey]. The alienation and fantasy of modern femininity magnified by social media as a "possessive fantasy of the male gaze" [Kelly Oliver]. The camera and image based platforms fetishizing, monetizing and aggrandizing the performance of womanhood in the attention economy.
As a girl online, we entertain the idea of being free of perception because everyone is a spectator and performer in the online world, yet the virtual panopticon allows for further control and conformity through the consistent observation, judgement, appraisal or dismissal of strangers. Extreme as it may sound, it is not the state of surveillance that is necessarily harmful, it is the expectations that the surveillance conveys and the weight it bears as an extension of those already upheld by society since a pre-media age. A dogged effort from the start, creating pockets of “liberation” or seclusion from the communities we do not wish to be perceived by online, makes little alcoves feel as protective as a bathroom door with a sign. Paltry. Fickle.
We are free to be any type of girl online but watch the collar tighten when we try to exercise our afforded freedoms in the real world. Our tethers to the online “sisterhood” keep us on a short leash and muzzle us from making any change beyond the bathrooms’ confines. A false safe space like a dog in a cage; our barks may echo but they will never set us free.