Re: Performative Female

Or, "in defense of wanting to be percieved"

Sorry for the long absence: I went to the woods, wrote a bunch of stuff, forgot Substack existed, became deeply anxious, and then found time to write again. You know, circle of life type stuff.

Also, the social image for this post is me as a child performing at summer camp and was subsequently used as a banner for several years on some websites about how to audition for Disney Channel. I have never been on Disney Channel, but I did once fall for one of those radio scams that makes you think you will be and then you have to read a Raisin Bran ad on video and they never respond.

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This is a response to my dear friend Camille’s piece about being a “Performative Female.” Go read it! She’s a gifted writer (and fellow certified performative woman).

Camille–

I found your piece to be insightful, deeply relatable, and beautifully written. While I wish you hadn’t read me to filth in the way you had, it’s probably good that you did. I have some thoughts, if you’ll allow me to share.

Being the girl who wants to be the center of attention is such a specific experience, one I am deeply familiar with. I have been that girl from a young age. So have you. So have many of the women I know, love, and was raised by. I’d argue, however, that while the notion of performance for girls like us is permanently knotted up with the self, “self” is always a performance. No matter who you are. Not to get all essay on you, but I just turned in all my final papers for the semester and am feeling the irresistible urge to quote a reading¹.

The Self as Performance

Ok, to summarize some long and slightly pedantic sociological theory² about the self as performance, basically in the 50s there was this guy named Erving Goffman, who was essentially just a theater kid who became the sixth most quoted humanities scholar of the 20th century³. Goffman wrote a book called “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” and in the book he makes a case for living life like actors do: treating everyday interactions like pieces of theater. This is, according to Goffman, an attempt to create a specific impression on those around us. We enact a series of roles, controlling and staging how we appear. We put on “masks” based on whatever situations we’re in (or perceive ourselves to be in). If you’ve ever heard of “masking” to seem a certain way to a certain group of people, or “code switching,” that’s based in Goffman’s theory. His argument is that there is in fact no “true self,” we are simply made up of the masks we put on for others (and perhaps for ourselves). This is because he rejects the idea of people having fixed character, and argues that people are adaptable and prone to change over time. It’s important to note that this is a pretty surface-level summary because a) I did not read the entire book — I mostly read critiques and summaries and watched a youtube video about the book and b) I don’t want to bore you.

Now, from a vibes perspective (because saying spiritual perspective makes me feel somehow insincere), I disagree with the notion that we don’t have a true self. I think the true self is who you are when nobody’s watching, including yourself. It’s the moments when you surprise yourself. It’s the gut feelings. That said, I do subscribe to the idea that we are far more intentional with our interactions than we believe ourselves to be. We’re all putting on a show, asking people to see us in a certain way. Some of us put more thought into it (and are sometimes more self-conscious as a result) — if you honestly believe that every business guy you’ve ever met isn’t performing to the same level you are, you’re very wrong.

In defense of being a performative girl.

Let women be performative! We’re all putting on a show, people just say it’s “for male attention” because we’re women. And to some degree, societally, it makes sense that the performance is informed by that.

Aside from the idea that the self is inherently a performance, (even for those of us who have a tendency to get more wrapped up in the reception of our performance than others, as if Jesse Green⁴ himself is going to write about it come opening night), I agree with Goffman in that the performance of self, of being “special” and “interesting” is a conversation — we all know that we want to be perceived by specific people. While I completely agree that the societally conditioned need for male validation (lest we fail to find an evolutionarily advantageous mate before our eggs all die) at least partially informs the roller-skating, barefoot-dancing, wired headphone-wearing identity we put on, I would argue that ultimately, for girls like us, the performance is a mating ritual in a different way: the cool girl way.

A massively under-appreciated part of the performative girl experience is finding OTHER GIRLS, ones who deeply understand you, understand the questions you can’t help but ask yourself about why you are the way you are, the experience of being called “annoying” and “bossy” as a kid. As much as I perform for the attention of my adoring public (or so my subconscious believes), I’m performing for you, Camille. Because the whimsy of girls who love brightly colored giant pants and making flower crowns and taking photos of everything all the time is what I crave. I crave that in my orbit. I crave being in that orbit. I keep hearing this thing on the internet about how everyone wants a village but nobody wants to be a villager and it is the performative girls, the self-aware manic pixie dream girls who are a little too inside their own head, the junk drawers personified, who make me want to be a villager.

I also think that sooner or later, the performance gets harder, and as we age, we only put on the masks that are actually fun for us to wear. So the things that once were about perception become about enjoying yourself. Because if you want to watercolor in the grass by yourself wearing an Improv Girl Jumpsuit™, you should have fun. Do it because you like it, and the performance of it all becomes significantly less relevant.

Long live the performative girl! Long live wanting to be special! It is not embarrassing to be seen trying. Is it embarrassing to seek attention? Maybe! But embarrassment is a choice, or so I hear. I haven’t figured out how to un-make that choice just yet.

1. Because above all, I love a research rabbit hole. And hate having nothing to do.

2. A few sources about one piece of theory, actually, but in lieu of formal sources here are the links to the things I read about Erving Goffman’s book “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” (and one very helpful youtube video).

https://monoskop.org/images/1/19/Goffman_Erving_The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Everyday_Life.pdf

https://medium.com/@parkerdellis/the-performance-of-self-c71a52072a4a

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-83922-1_7

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Erving-Goffman

https://web.pdx.edu/~tothm/theory/Presentation%20of%20Self.htm

3. Proving to the public at large that beyond the cast of Glee and 2025’s hottest man alive Jonathan Bailey, theater kids have something productive to offer the world–and that’s only if you consider humanities research to be productive, which I’m sure many people do not.

4. The New York Times theater critic. Yes, I googled who that was so I could put it in this sentence but I can’t think of any other famous theater reviewers right now.