KJ Elizabeth

by KJ Elizabeth

Pretty Ugly Zine #5, 2006

Tattoos, piercings, accessories and hair styles - do these things reflect our identity or do we use them to create our identity? A chicken or the egg scenario you might say.

My guess is that you’d argue quite strongly that how you dress and present yourself is a direct reflection of your identity, and that this identity is intrinsic to you. I would agree that our characters or natures are innate to us to a certain extent - but why is it necessary to present ourselves in a certain way to reflect and communicate that identity? And is the way you present yourself a reflection of who you are, or who you would like to be?

One of the reasons I came to ponder this question is due to the comments I’ve received from some of my friends regarding my appearance. I am a rock/punk chick at heart, but I am not tattooed, pierced, made up, or have a hot hair cut and colour. People I know have told me - “you should get pierced”, “you should get some tattoos, you’d look hot!”. So far I have resisted the desire of others to turn me into some kind of Suicide Girl.

Why do they suggest I make these kinds of changes to my appearance? I think it’s because there’s a bit of a mismatch or discrepancy between the type of person I am and how I look. With my long hair and glasses I might look more like a daggy sci-fi geek than a music geek. I’ve thought about having my hair dyed and getting a tattoo, but I can’t escape the feeling of falseness these things invoke in me. What others might see as a ‘natural extension and expression of identity’, in my case I see these things as a calculated manipulation of how I can make others see me. If I exchange my glasses for contact lenses I’ll look hotter. If I get my hair coloured and styled I’ll look more rock. If I get a tattoo I’ll look more hardcore, and thus BE more hardcore. The truth is I’m hot, rock and hardcore without those things, but as people tend to use shallow criteria based on how people decorate themselves to figure out what kind of person someone is, I am not considered to be any of the above.

In truth, I would like to dress and present myself in a certain way, but with the money I have, I’d prefer to spend it on records, rather than on fashions and decorations that would communicate to others what records I might have.

It seems to me that we use appearance to judge and attract others, and consequently, instead of taking the time to talk to people to get to know and understand them, we take a glance. From this glance we derive information from which we make a judgement about them. We don’t admit to, or perhaps are not conscious of this, but we know it. And the fact we know it is illustrated by the care we take in our presentation, so when people take a glance at us, they will derive the “right” information and make the judgement about us that we want them to. All this apparent manipulation makes me wonder when we really connect on a human to human level, rather than with the illusions of identity.

In alternative/punk/hardcore circles we tend to mock mainstream people for being fashion victims and blindly following the trends. I don’t know why we laugh at them, because from my point of view there is a fashion that people emulate in our scenes as well. For a community which immortalises individuality, I am continually surprised and disappointed with the uniformity and conformity with which these ‘individuals’ present themselves. Yes, we look different from mainstream types, but among ourselves, we share “a look”. So in that sense I don’t think that makes us that different from “them” at all.

Spikes and studs anyone?

© 2006 KJ Elizabeth