VERSATILITY IS A DANCE OF THE CHARACTER As an open person and a supporter of everything that has a purpose I visited the Pride in London for the first time two years ago. This stimulating street parade formed of members of LGBTQ community was exposing a never-ending stream of true happiness. Happiness that very obviously comes from the feeling of freedom and the strong sense of community. However, I could not help but to be torn between joy and a slight sadness.
It was extraordinary to see and feel how truly free everyone around me felt.
It was an explosion of glitter with color mixes I did not know existed and possibly some even shouldn’t. Everyone was smiling, flirting and taking pictures with one another which to an observer from the side lanes could have created an image of 1960s utopia. For me that was what created a chain of thoughts in my mind. If anyone who is a part of the community or is just a supporter for this one amazing day is genuinely being in the most raw form of self, taking advantage of the freedom that has been temporarily served, wearing their hot pink leotards with yellow boas, high-as-a-tower pleaser heels, cover bodies in glitter, wearing their whole Drag Queen attire in the streets and most importantly having the most lighthearted smiles on their faces, if these are the true identities coming out, who
then are we trying to be for the rest of the year?
In a way it might be compared to Halloween where everyone is dressing up pretending to be someone they admire, are following on Instagram or feel an artistic or emotional bond with, however,pride is coming from an entirely different place.
‘‘Acceptance towards oneself as well as towards others should not be impacted by the social culture’’ Pride is a place of genuine expression of individuality that is so clearly bursting over the top because arguably it has been indirectly discouraged to be exposed on a regular day. As I was searching for a confirmation of my idea as I imagined my perspective possibly being unnecessarily overly exaggerated, I asked this question to a newly-met representative of Drag Community. His response was that the Drag attire is certainly not what he would want to be wearing daily, firstly, because the make-up is quite a bit too heavy for a bright daylight and the outfit is not of the comfort to be running your errands in, however, he did confirm that having only this one day where one finally ‘’is allowed’’ to officially ‘’be himself’’ feels fairly restrictive. Now, not just focusing on the event discussed above considering there are various occasions that include more and different representatives of society coming together, I am going to raise my question again who then are we trying to be for the rest of the year?
I believe that we are all playing an act up until the day we say our goodbyes to this Earth.
None of us are truly ourselves.
One might care to argue this but the journey of artifice starts once we open the doors to step outside our living space which, in a way, already means stepping outside of our comfort zone. I myself believe that if my thoughts could be read by inserting some sort of chip in my brains I could be easily diagnosed with bipolar disorder, depression, ADHD, panic disorder and OCD and it is not me stating this solely for an unnecessary sarcastic emphasis. I am saying this from the perspective of an observer and analyst that I consider myself to be. Our minds wander and quite often to some very unordinary locations but why then I am not in a mental institution yet? It is due to the fact that somehow being the organic, true self at all times in this day and age is something that is technically encouraged yet practically unaccepted. One simply wouldn’t dare exposing the depths of ones mind. That is why I am still considered ‘’ņormal’’. I believe that same as me there are people with the side of them that they see nothing wrong about yet are fighting to discourage its presence because of the term ‘’social norms’’. We have jobs to do, people to socialize with and reputations to maintain in the social groups we have worked ourselves into. In order to keep it stabile we accordingly put some if not most of the parts of ourselves in our internal mind box that we keep locked for most of the time. You are allowed not to agree but I don’t think that Anna Wintour
solely has this feisty personality that she up keeps all day every day. The moment she enters her home, I believe, she is a kind and warm mother to her children and to her partner. Her daughter Bee Shaffer states: “But she is the most generous person you will ever meet-she puts everyone before herself, always - I know who she is.” day. Who from the other side of the fence could have guessed? I denote, the reason largely is not just because she finds the rest of the people that are a part of her day unbearable but because she believes that as an editor-in-chief she has to be sharp, persistent and seen in a certain way in order to manage the empire of her publication. We are our own brand that we are selling and we are keeping up with it each day. Nonetheless, at the same time we like to think of ourselves as open-minded and accepting considering the versatile global community we are living in thinking that nothing can really be considered surprising anymore which is the reason why nobody is nor should be hiding behind any agendas of their identity. Frankly as much as there is nothing wrong with these two perspectives, being open-minded yet not really opening up ourselves, isn’t it somewhat misleading to be living in such contradiction with ourselves?
‘‘Sacrifice essentially is the biggest sign of courage’’
Richard Jenkins brings up a concern - does the identity, in itself, actually influences and causes a certain behavior? Identification with oneself and an apposite behavior is something that appears to be associated with each other, he states. A vague identification of someone arguably could be enough to decide how to treat him or her and this particular perspective might also suggest that the process of identifying someone is relatively a superficial act that is limiting an individual to be seen as something possibly much more. I must add that I am blaming it on the quite impractical ‘’small talk’’ that infamously entails ‘’Where did you get those pants?’’, ‘’What do you do for living?’’, ‘‘Which area do you live in?’’. Guilty as charged.
Acceptance towards oneself as well as towards others should not be impacted by the social culture that changes its stands
as periodically as wide-leg pants are seen on and off the style pages of Vanity Fair. On our day-today lives we do not seem to appreciate the idea of identity. We assume we know who we are, we have established the grounds of knowing who are the people in our lives, however, there comes a point where identity becomes an issue. I would like to comment on why the diversity in individualism is so mandatory in our social experiences. Firstly, just think about how predominantly botched and tedious would seem a world where everyone is with the same financial capabilities, with the same solutions to everyday mishaps, have the same ways of expressing love towards others or have the same propensity in presenting thyself to the world? One word-purposeless! That is why as I am writing this I am basing the following fact on website www.worldometers.info that there currently are approximately 7.6 billion unique individuals living on this planet and each of us is with an exceptionally unique way of experiencing
life which is fascinating if giving it a respectful amount of time letting the idea to set in and develop deeper realizing how inaccurate it is to want everyone to accept our beliefs and our ideas when there are approximately 7.6 billion other ideas that each want the same amount of respect and acknowledgment. Very interestingly, Karl Lagerfeld, who I see as a well-crafted, marble marionette that glides in her own pace with feather-weight, was answering a question in an interview with Katya Foreman for BBC about the topic. She asked if anyone actually knows the real him. To that Lagerfeld responded saying,
“It’s a difficult question, as I have played so much on constructing a certain image of myself that I think it’s pretty much impossible, and that is my wish–even for those that I love deeply, I want it to remain impossible. I do not want to be a reality in the lives of others, I want to be like an apparition, that appears and then disappears.”
Nonetheless, one thing that I can
state undoubtedly is that whatever the community we are born in, whatever the body we are currently living in or whatever forces of beliefs are pushing us forward each day, exactly that is what is truly authentic to each of us individually and it has been delivered to us in just the right shape and form we were meant to receive it. Either we want to eventually expose all of it, all of us or we rather keep it as a greatly intimate part of us that we share with no other soul, it is applaudable in any case because both of those acts to some extent mean sacrifice and sacrifice essentially is the biggest sign of courage.