In our current western society, gender bending is an increasingly popular articulation of politics. Gender benders, it is said, manipulate images of men and women in order to question dichotomous gender representations. Particularly gender benders in popular culture succeed by this nimbleness - often expressed in a carnavalesque performance - to gain, retain and even reinforce power over themselves and over others. In this way, playing with genders can give or enforce power. In contemporary modernities, subjects seem to be blessed by a distinguishing feature of flexibility (cf. the labour market, mobility, personal relationships, etc.). Often, flexibility is interpreted positively, but it could also have a problematic side. More specifically, I will use a reception study of popular culture texts amoungst young consumers: do they read the bending of genders as ‘resistance through pleasure’?

‘(...) is that the experience of only masculine or feminine identity is the sensation of an unstable, constantly readjusted succession of poses.’

Robert Mapplethorpe

When we switch on the music channels on television, or leaf through a glossy youth magazine and even when we walk through trendy areas of western cities, we see young gender benders; ‘performers’ that are playing a game by bending their gender. By doing so gender ambiguity arises and people might start asking questions about what femininity and masculine really mains. The academic discourse on gender bending is rather positive, in the sense that these performances are seen as acts of resistance against dominant hegemonic gender roles. Gender benders are read as a parody, as a questioning of masculinity and femininity. Give this ability to publicly question the dominant discourse on masculinity and femininity, some scholars argue that this resistance creates a space for cultural change with regard to the duality of gender roles. They hope to break the dichotomy of these gender roles and consequently make them more flexible. The central question of this paper is whether young media consumers read these gender performers as an act of resistance? And if so, whether this reading is as monolithic as academics insist?

Gender bending has to be situated in a framework of gender entanglement. It can be described as the bodily hybridisation of masculine and feminine stereotypes, through which gender ambiguity can arise.

Some academic discourses on gender bending are based on the writings of Judith Butler. It seems that a consensus has been reached to consider gender as a cultural and social construction. The central idea of Judith Butler on this issue, is that gender is not an expression of nature but that it is performative. Gender is seen as an act, that originates both under the weight of history and under the power of the consensus. One doesn’t have gender, but one does gender. Gender performance is seen as a performativity act, which is repeated to affirm identity. Gender dichotomy and gender roles are constructions of society:

‘(...) if gender is instituted through acts which are internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishmentent which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and perform in the mode of belief.’ (Butler, 1990: 217).

So if gender is not expressive but performative, there is a space created for breaking boundaries by subversive repetition of gender (Butler, 1990: 271-279). By doing so hegemonic reality is questioned and room for re-creatable and changeable genders is developed. One presumes that when the bending of genders is convincing enough, it will be imitated by the audiences and can gain a place in the consensus.

The ambiguous play of constructed self-images implies a shift of the gender. For gender benders, gender identity is nothing more than one image out of series of images. With this particular image they problematize masculinity and femininity. Anneke Smelik (1993: 24) refers to David Bowie as an artist who explicitly bends his gender. By anticipating on a strong visible culture he performs his self as an image. This image is so central that it actually became a style. As a result the notion of gender and gender identity as such is questioned.

Although often confused with it, gender bending in popular culture is different from traditional transvestism. Transvestism is a theatrical play. The audience is well aware of the sex of the performer and he or she is seen as an actor (Smelik, 1993: 123). What’s more, it confirms the rigid polarity of the genders: ‘[...] transvestism display a tendency to treat femininity and masculinity as fixed categories possessing an essential reality of their own.’ (Woodhouse, 1989: 79).

Smelik also (1993) distinguishes between male and female gender benders, because of the different positions they have taken according to their sexes. Wishing to cross boundaries, male gender benders are ‘travelling’ to examine the ‘other’. This is a journey without any obligations. Contrary to that, female gender benders want to create possibilities to break the boundaries of their position as women in society (i.e. the position of the ‘other’), intending to show the audience new representations of masculinity and femininity.

For Judith Butler (1990) gender is merely a ‘play of appearance’: gender is a style, a disguise. The parodic effect prevents the fact that nothing is masked or disguised, because the masquerade cannot be based on an original gender identity. Butler uses Foucault’s assumption that a masquerade is a representation of what history has shown us. It is a indication that there are no fixed identities. He argues that a masquerade is a particular and hegemonic signifying system were subjects repeat gender signs as the essence of a particular identity. Parody especially shakes the binary gender system. According to Myra Mcdonalds (1995: 225) masquerade: ‘literally [...] means putting on a mask or a disguise, but the term has been adopted in feminist film theory to suggest that when female stars exaggerate their feminine attributes, they denaturalise femininity and invite the audience to think critically and sceptically about the assumptions we normally make about it.’ By employing particular poses, movements and acts - a bricolage - an ‘imaginary’ body is created or a ‘made’ identity is formed. This merely bodily identity is a cluster of femininity and masculinity. But at the same time it can also be a changing drag dance, playing a double game of gender. Alternately, extremely maleness and femaleness is shown (Schwichtenberg: 129-142).

‘There is an obvious and prominent fact about human beings: they have bodies and they are bodies.’ Bryan S. Turner

The current interest in the body as a communicator of values and the persuasiveness of images in the popular consumer culture come with the profound transformation of the western industrial society. These images are a cultural effect of the increased independence of the human body from the economic and political structures. The increase of pleasure, desire, diversity and the playfulness of values are characteristic for contemporary consumerism. Often compared by the concept of hedonism.

So they are part of the cultural space that is formed by the process of postindustrialisation. These changes in the legal and the moral apparatus of the late industrial society are associated with changes in the structure of the economy, particularly with the decline of industrial production. The increasing importance of service industries is linked to the transformation of the traditional working class and their changing lifestyle. Economic change and restructuring implies a fundamental reorganisation of labour, in the course of which working hours were reduced and wages have been increased. Consequently consumption also expanded. The working body has become a demanding body (Turner, 1996:2-6). In this perspective there is a clear commercial interest in the body as a token of a good and wealthy life and as an indicator for the possession of cultural capital.

The body is now seen as part of a self-project whereby individuals can express there own emotional needs. The body is now a changeable form: it can differ under influence of personal wishes or needs. Gender benders articulate their own emotional needs to express their changeable femininity and masculinity.

The improvement of the distribution and the evolution of mass publicity create a consumer market for the personal, for the body. These changes are associated with a new type of personality, referred to as the concept of ‘the performing self’ (Turner, 1996:4-6). The performing self gets recognition by successful acts of the self and is visible in the form of the body. Bending genders can be situated in this specific context where identity is becoming the body. The body is as a status of consumer demands. The self is seen as a bodily imago of the consumer society and it plays a very important role in the understanding and evaluation of the self in the public sphere. Turner (1996: 6-23) argues that a good bodily imago is essential for a good self-image. In contemporary modernity the self is the present self, which in the form of the visible body attributes values and meanings to the character.

Here the body is seen as a text or as an aggregate of meaningfull signs. Similarly Mary Douglas (1970) sees the body as a source of metaphors of structures. For example, she interprets a disorganised body as a disorganised society. But at the same time the body can also be read as an expression of power.

So, in the academic discourse on gender bending, basic assumption is that the body can be read as a communicator or an expressive text. Accordingly the performance of gender is situated in, on, around en through the body. The body is the site of the performativity of femininity and masculinity. These genders are no essence of nature, but are formed by history and by the dominant consensus:

‘As an intentionally organised materiality, the body is always an embodying of possibilities both conditioned and circumscribed by historical convention. In other words, the body is a historical situation (...).’ (Butler, 1990: 272).

What is important is that one recognizes that the body is never neutral, because it is always gendered. The body is a site of the performance of gender:

‘Considering that "the" body is invariably transformed into his body or her body, the body is only known through its gendered appearance. (...) My suggestion is that the body becomes its gender through a series of acts, which are renewed, revised, and consolidated through time.’ (Butler, 1990: 274).

According to Roseann M. Mandziuk (1993:168) the issue of public, text and context of popular culture are related to a political consciousness-raising:

‘Such inquiry began with models that theorised simple linear interactions and hypodermic injections of information into otherwise passive subject. Alternatively, contemporary lines of inquiry seemingly have brought us far to out current theoretical location that is built on a multitude of "-isms" such as postmodernism, poststructuralism, and deconstructionism. These new vocabularies have opened fresh debates about cultural discourse and popular media, raising questions about a multidimensional relationship among audiences and cultural texts that is far more complex than simple linearity.’

The uni-dimensional concept of the public is replaced by a multi-dimensional subjectivity. The attribution of meanings to a representation enables an interaction between the image and the referential frame of the viewer. So not every viewer will interpret the image in the same way (Buikema, Meijer & Smelik, 1995: 85-88). Buikema e.a. also suggesting that no one has the power to decide which interpretation is the right one.

Refering to the aspect of simulation, the readings of Jean-François Lyotard (1984) are quite relevant. He assumes that the contemporary media give the ability to new identities. Jean Baudrillard (1983) also assumes that there is a changing play of pseudo identities conceptualised in the concept of simulation. The play of intertextuality, overacting, blowing up the codes and meanings are style characteristics of contemporary modernity. Using parody, mimesis, irony and pastiche, a space were new representations can be read has been created. Buikema e.a. (1995:104-105) suggest that this does open up perspectives for new gender representations who can be employed by those (i.e. ‘others’) who could hardly or not establish their own autonomous identities. Like Mandziuk (1993:177) says:

‘With the world as text and life a series of simulations, feminist theorists envision a landscape that is beyond binary categories of sex or gender, masculine or feminine. Identities are dispersed into what Susan Suleiman calls a multiplied set of narrative and interpretative possibilities, "so that what results is a dizzying accumulation.’

Academics like to see popular culture as a place where the ‘dizzying accumulations’ of meaning concerning femininity and masculinity are performed. Especially the emissions of the music channel MTV are considered a collection of borrowed and recycled images refusing to make any sense of the cultural surrounding. MTV is seen as an ensemble of insignificance, an amalgam of images (Abercrombie: 1996: 16).

MTV uses style, sensation, performance and spectacle rather than narration. Like John Fiske (1987:250) suggested:

‘The visual images often have no meaningful connection to the words of the lyric, but are cut to the beat of the music [...]. Style is a recycling of images that wrenches them out of the original context that enabled them to make sense and reduces them to free-floating signifiers whose only signification is that they are free, outside the control of normal sense and sense-making and thus able to enter the world of pleasure.’

In these quick changeable series of images the performer has a central place and frequently changes her- or himself. In this context MTV and other popular cultural products have an important place in the meaning of gender differences, offering meaning to fragmented identities of men and women. Using the term ‘popartist of both sexes’, Anneke Smelik (1993:19-20) argues that gender bending is inherent connected with pop culture. Gender bending is often considered as a style or phenomena within contemporary modernity where certainty is questioned and ambiguities and paradoxes are created. The fixed gender meanings are losing their unequivocality. All this has to be placed in the particular context of the commodification of signs. Commodity-signs are playing an endless game of destabilising long-term meaning and cultural order (Feathersone: 1995: 75).

To confuse gender representation in popular culture, performers are using different style characteristics. One of the major elements in this entanglement is the simulation (cfr. supra). Simulation starts with the violation of all references with the aim of creating ‘new’ cultural signs. Frequently used an example is Madonna (Schwichtenberg, 1993: 141):

‘Thus, from her disengendering polysexual display in ‘justify’ to her drag dance in ‘Express Yourself’ to her representation as space-age dominatrix in the Blond Ambition tour, Madonna will continue to stimulate and deconstruct the "truth" of sex and gender. Though strategies of simulation, she transforms the "truth" of gender into drag, a dialectical fragmentation between two terms, and then fissures this destabilised sex identity further by means of splitting and displacement to advance a prodigious sexual plurality. In more general terms, her disingenuous figuration says much about the political promise of postmodern strategies.’

All stable and fixed references are lost. Especially feminist theorists applauded the collapsing of the bipolarity of the gender roles. By using mass media and their constructed images the entanglement is in progress.

‘Gender play is the mix and match of styles that flirt with the signifiers of sexual difference, cut loose from their moorings. Such inconstancy underscores the fragility of gender itself as pure artifice. Thus gender play takes shape in a postmodern pastiche of multiple styles: masculinity and femininity fractured and refractured in erotic tension.’ (Schwichtenberg, 1993:134).

Another common way to play with gender is cross-dressing. Clothes are seen as a system of symbols. They are playing an important role in the production of the self. Marjorie Garber (1993: 151) argues that cross-dressing is a criticism on the binary gender system. She (Garber, 1993: 390) gives the following definition of cross-dressing:

‘Cross-dressing is about gender confusion. Cross-dressing is about the phallus as constitutively veiled. Cross-dressing is about the power of women. Cross-dressing is about the emergence of gay identity. Cross-dressing is about the anxiety of economic or cultural dislocation, the anticipation or recognition of "otherness" as loss. All true, all partial truth, all powerful metaphors. But the compelling force of transvestism in literature and culture comes not, or not only, from these effects, but also from its instatement’s of metaphors itself, not as that for which a literal meaning must be found, but precisely as that without which there would be no such thing as meaning in the first place.’

Although some theorists (Woodhouse, 1989) distinguish gender bending from tranvestism, the drag is conceptualised (Garber, 1993) as a 'theoretical and deconstructive social practice' that analyses the structures from within. Through the discourse of clothes the drag puts questions in the naturalness of gender roles. Marjorie Garber (1993: 159) also marked crossover style as different from cross-dressing. Crossover is a form of cross-dressing, but is more accepted in society than cross-dressing. It’s about women wearing pants and men using make-up. She defines crossover as a self-conscious parody outside of the underground drag clubs, out on the street. Even here the borderline is shifting towards a more flexible masculinity and femininity.

So far we have seen that in academic discourse gender bending is considered an act of playing with gender roles, of breaking through the gender boundaries and questioning hegemonic gender discourse. A few scholars have point out that especially transvestism reproduces the fixed masculinity and femininity. A paradigm shift has taken place. Bending gender is a subversive practice stemming from the avant-garde entering popular culture. Gender benders raise questions about the dominant gender discourse and blur the boundaries of gender. Using theories of Judith Butler, gender bending is seen as an act of resistance. Applauding the resistance of the gender benders, it seems that academics have forgotten the different meanings and polysemic readings of text. These fragmented and contradictory readings seem to disappear by the desire to break gender boundaries. Gender benders are seen as agents of resistance who producing meaning and are read as discursive practices of power. The power referred to here is that which breaks the hegemonic discourse on masculinity and femininity. At least that is what these scholars hope for. The desired result is an effect of empowering the ‘others’.

On another level gender benders are attributed the power of being flexible. Flexibility is a concept frequently found in a capitalist neo liberal discourse, but is now transferred to the sphere of gender performances. The consumeristic connotation is not at all far away. The euphoria of the gender bending is dangerously entering the discourse of consumerism.

The resistance of gender benders can be related to the concept of bricolage. It describes ‘the re-ordening and re-contextualization of objects to communicate fresh meanings’ (Clarke, 1976: 177). Objects, which already carried symbolic meanings, are re-signified in a new context. Gender bending re-orders the gender acts and re-conceptualise gender as a fluid concept. Stuart Hall defines resistance as changing metaphor for cultural change, allowing us to think about cultural transformations (Hall, 1996: 287). Resistance is conjunctural and relational. It is not universal, but should to be seen in a particular context and in a particular relation. So the resistance of gender benders has to be situated in a specific context. Resistance can be read in gender bending, but not all the time and not always as monolithic. This reading depends on the context of the reader(s).

Another assumption that we have to abandon is that resistance has to be seen as opposite of dominance. According to Nicholas Abercrombie and Brian Longhurst (1998: pp.3-39) resistance can be fragmented. Using the concept of Incorporation Resistance Paradigm (IRP) they assume that it is a problem of audience research:

‘(...) the problem of audience research as whether audience members are incorporated into the dominant ideology by their participation in media activity or whether, to the contrary, they are resistant to that incorporation.’ (Abercrombie & Longhurst, 1998: p.15). The duality of dominance or resistance is maintained by academics. As Bourdieu has described it, resistance can be seen as a normative distinction of values of the classifier (Bourdieu, 1984). The academic distinction of resistance and dominance create two poles of a dichotomy. One the one hand the pole of the preferred reading of hegemonic discourse and on the other hand the pole of polysemie and resistance (Abercrombie & Longhurst: pp.15-28). Neglecting that a preferred reading can be contradictory and that resistance is polysemical and fragmented.

Resistance seems to be performed in the mainstream popular culture. Gender benders articulate a resistance against the dominant gender discourse. This resistance is now re-formulated and can be perceived of as depending and co-operative with regard to the market (Gelder & Thorton, 1996:145-148). It is a part of the hegemonic sphere and can change over time to power dominance. It seems that two discourses are active at the same time. There is a potential resistance against a hegemonic gender discourse, but at the same time this resistance is incorporated by a hegemonic consumer culture.

How do youngsters read gender bending? To confront the theories elaborated on in this paper, we will now look at the reception of gender bending by students of the Department of Communication Studies at the Ghent University. This inquiry has to be seen as a first explorative step toward a larger research project. Using the method of focus group interviews, I want to explore the process of reading media discourses. Focus group interviews are a useful method for comprehending the consensus on a topic and for perception analysis (Morgan, 1998). A second supporting element of this kind of interviews, is the possibility offered to the participants to express themselves rather freely (Lindlof, 1995). Seven students, of whom three females and four males between the age of 20 to 33, took part in this focus group session. After seeing a collage of images of gender benders in popular culture, a focus group interview on the following topics took place: (1) defining gender bending; (2) statement or play; (3) situatedness in contemporary modernity; (4) nature / nurture; and (5) gender bending and empowerment.

Most participants defined gender bending as a play with masculinity and femininity, mostly expressed in the vestimentary elements:

H.: ‘A male singer in feminine clothes, that is gender bending, or Madonna in a male suite.’

But can also be expressed by the attitude:

Ch.: ‘Also the attitude, like for example, the advertisement of Calvin Klein, that sturdy attitude.’

Most participants interpret gender bending as a play, but they also read it as a form of resistance against de hegemonic discourse on gender, allowing them to obtain power:

T.: ‘ I think that it is a statement because she (referring to Madonna) manages consciously to wear men clothes. But she keeps her femininity. She gives the impression to be very powerful and to do what she wants.’

S.: ‘It is both, a statement and a play. On the one hand they play with it. While they are playing they challenge the audience and make a statement about it. It is not because it is in society, that these images have to be fixed images.’

L.: ‘I think that is it the same with Grace Jones. She plays the macho (...), but wants to say that this is not only for men.’ L. argues that gender benders show us opportunities: ‘Show that it is possible and that this boundary is not always so clear.’

D.: ‘That those role patrons of thirty years ago effectively can be burst.’

But a few are doubting the resistance and the assumption that gender benders are making a statement about femininity or masculinity. Gender benders are just using their bodily appearance:

T.: ‘I think that they just and partly stereotyped their own appearance. If you look at David Bowie, he has something feminine and Grace Jones has masculine ‘hard’ features. And I think that it has something to do with that. Partly to express oneself extremely. (...)’

Most participants assume that there have always been bender genders in popular culture. They have the impression that sometimes gender bending is more present, but it is something that has always existed:

S.: ‘Yes, I think so. But I watch a lot MTV. And there are a lot of artists, who don’t say anything. I mean no statements. Don’t say anything. Masculinity and femininity remain stereotyped. (...). Now and then there is some play. Madonna is the most stereotyped example. I think that it is constant, always the same. But occasionally a period where we see more gender benders appears. In the ‘70 there was David Bowie and in the ‘80 we had Madonna and Grace Jones. (...) I think that it is still present. Now we have techno music. Those performances which they do. There you have a lot of travesties, which makes it interesting. (...).’

They also suggest that gender bending appears in popular culture as movements - waves which revealing themselves in specific historical times.

T.: ‘I think that there is movement. Like glamour rock. It is something

we see in different music and in different times. Always appearing or leaving.’

The participants all agreed that there is a fascination for breaking the gender boundaries. Like Charlotte who called this 'the fascination for the unreachable’.

Or as S. says: ‘I think that inside society there is a need (...) Otherwise gender benders wouldn't have had that much success. Advertisements are there to sell, video clips as well. The advertisers wouldn’t use images of gender benders, if these images wouldn't make sales rise. A ‘natural’ fascination for the mix of the gender (...).’

One participant also mentioned the commodification of gender bending and has doubts concerning the fascination of people for gender benders. He asked a question on the consumeristic creation of this fascination:

H.: ‘Is fascination intrinsic or is the audience fascinated by what they see?'’

They all agreed on the fact that gender benders are now more accepted: Ch.: ‘Now it is more accepted, like travestites.’

All participants concluded that nature is the basis for masculinity and femininity and culture has an effect on nature. They don’t agree on the notion that gender is a construction:

D.: ‘It is stuck in nature that we are so flexible that we can fool ourselves that everything is culture. We are in interaction with culture. It is in our nature that we can let culture decides how we have to relate to gender (...). On the other hand nature has the possibility to produce people who are male. But when you see them acting, they are very feminine. It is not only culture but also nature.’

Still there is a place for bender benders, but gender is defined as an essence of nature, not as an essence of culture:

Ch.:’ An ensemble of innate stuff and learned stuff. It’s easier for people who have aptitude to express gender bending.’

Culture gives people the opportunity to create a little ‘open’ space to move themselves to one of the two poles of gender, whereby the participant still assume that nature and culture are very dichotomies:

L.: ‘Nature is the foundation and culture decides in which direction you are going to evaluate. Or you want to be at the mercy of nature or you choose to follow the other direction of culture.’

Only one participant seems to take into consideration that gender is a social construction:

S.: Behaviour is also culture. We say someone is feminine if a male acts 'weiblich' and a female who acts masculine is interpreted as maleness.’

Gender bending leads to empowerment. Especially female gender benders empower themselves:

L.: ‘A woman has to become a men to show her power.’

They connect power to flexibility. Flexibility is seen as a positive strategy to use power. Female gender benders use their flexibility to empower themselves:

Ch.: ‘When women do it, it is to show that they are strong.’

The distinction between female and male gender benders is not explicitly made. But for women gender bending is seen as something necessary to go beyond an object of desire:

S.: 'Society is patriarchal. A woman has to equalise herself to the male and has to take over the same characteristics. Otherwise you will be seen as an object of desire.’

The flexibility is seen as an element of empowerment. Especially the female participant anticipates on the matter of having power by using their femininity and masculinity. They point out that context is very important. Your gender can shift depending on the situation your in. Even the characterisation of oneself as feminine or masculine is changeable according to the context.

L. concludes this session by saying: ‘Defining myself as feminine or masculine is depending on a particular situation.’

In this paper I started from the academic discourse on gender bending. Based on the theories of Judith Butler the academic discourse on the entanglement of gender, points out that gender is a social construction. Against the hegemonic discourse on gender, Butler (1990) argues that gender is a discursive performativity and finds that it finds no essence in nature. People perform masculinity and femininity according to the dominant gender discourse, made by history and consensus. Gender benders also do the playfull gender-act and create ambiguity. By using different style characteristics gender benders can be described as the bodily hybridisation of masculine and feminine stereotypes. These phenomena are considered as a style within contemporary modernity where paradoxes are created. Some even argue (Smelik, 1993) that gender bending is inherent connected with pop culture. In this pop culture an amalgam of images are represented and commodity-signs play an endless game of simulations. In this context the body - the performing self - is very important, not only is it a reflection of the fragmented self, it is also a text which produces a discourse on gender. In the academic discourse gender bending is read as subversive practices, breaking through the hegemonic discourse of the dichotomous genders. Bending gender is seen as an act of resistance with the aim of re-ordering and re-conceptualising gender as a fluid concept. This transgression is read as the only possible meaning of the text. The polysemie of the text seem to vanish. A monolithic discourse came into being.

By using focus group interviews I problematized the concept of the readings of gender bending as articulations of resistance. Analysing the interviews we can assume that the participants of this interview session did not read gender bending in the same way as the monolithic academic discourse on this subject. Their readings were more fragmentedand some times even contractictory. Although some of them saw gender benders as articulations of resistance, but they still read them as discursive hegemonic constructions of femininity and masculinity. Especially female gender benders are read as resistance with the aim of empowerment. Some participants emphasized that they as well use gender flexibility to empower themselves. Here they stress the contextuality of this flexibility. Resistance through performances will still be read by participants, but here it is fragmented and the unequivocallity is lost. Sure there is a potential resistance against a hegemonic gender discourse, but at the same time this resistance is incorporated by aa hegemonic consumer culture.

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