Before attending the University, I lived another life as a ballerina. The decision to pursuer a career in ballet was made early in my life. By the time I was in the seventh grade I was leaving school early three days a week to attend rehearsals. At fourteen, I spent my first summer away training in San Francisco. After returning home I begged my mom to let me move to the city on my own. In my mind, it would have been the best move for my career. She vetoed that idea. When I graduated high school at seventeen I was finally set free from Washington.
I moved to Chicago on scholarship. On my eighteenth birthday I cried all day. In the world of ballet, eighteen is the beginning of the end. I was getting old. A female dancer has until she is twenty-one to get a full time job, after that, your simply out of luck. After three years of a seemingly endless parade of attempting to prove myself though performances and auditions, I “retired” at 20 years old. From age 12 until 20 I devoted the entirety of my life to one singular pursuit. “We tend to see ourselves as the managers of life projects that we map out, organize, make choices about, perhaps compare with other possible projects, and ultimately live out to completion.” [i] I had failed. I didn’t know who I was anymore. To everyone in my family and to all of my friends I was “Christina the ballerina”. I did everything right. I had experienced teachers in my corner who helped me to plan every step of the way. While I could have trained for another year in hopes that my luck would change, ballet was no longer fulfilling for me. Ballet was too completive and I was too emotional. Somehow along the way, my foolproof life plan had left me lost and unfulfilled. It was time to make a change.
I had made a deliberate choice to develop my personality into that of a ballerina. It was how I had distinguished myself from the crowd. [ii] Personality and its association with self-presentation began to be developed a centaury ago. Self help books published around the turn of the centaury in America began to promote the idea that the self is something to be developed and can be made to make an individual appear attractive and interesting. Character is either good or bad but “you want your personality to be ‘dazzling.’”
[iii] This change in thinking associated with personality and character has very real contemporary repercussions, particularly in the world of politics.
In the 2000 presidential election, Democratic nominee Al Gore
suffered greatly for his apparent lack of personality which ultimately made his character suspect in the eyes of many. He was dubbed “stiff and boring,” “…he has been stumbling everywhere he goes and as a public speaker Gore is only slightly more animated than a corpse.”[iv] On the other hand, his opponent George W. Bush was a “real person”, someone you would want to sit and have a beer with.
Discussion had by the political right focused almost entirely on personality rather that character or qualifications. George W. Bush’s social performance oozed sincerity. He was a God fearing Texan, who governed by his moral compass, lived on a working ranch, and wore cowboy hats. He didn’t need to act the part because he lived it. [v] On the other hand Al Gore was elitist and awkward who had not yet learned to be sincere in the way that Bush and Ralphy from A Christmas Story had already learned. You only have to wear your pink bunny suit when your aunt Clara comes over.
While not everything given to us is going to contribute to the creation of our individual selves, purchases that we make individually present to the public the self that we create.[vi] The market helps us to achieve our “individuality” by constantly shifting with consumer’s current need to fulfill happiness.[vii] Standard are often times set by members of the upper echelons of class. 
By consuming certain items, it is thought that one has the ability to transcend their current class in the perceptions of others. [viii]
In the process of Americans looking for direction in how to dress and act, some elites become celebrities by having “desirable” style and personalities.
The purchased personality instills the buyer with the necessary confidence needed to live their lives in the public realm.[ix] For many, identifying with your “inner class” is the goal of the public life.[x] Hair and makeup are also important tools that work to establish the real “natural” you,[xi] or the person who you were meant to be.
[xii] When if comes to self presentation we live in a democratic society. "If the culture that surrounds you sees clothes and hair as signs of liberation, then in some strange sense they are." [xiii]
Expressing one’s self through their dress has become the definitive way that consumer society judges it members, particularly celebrities. Tabloid magazines have created an all seeing eye in which the public formulated judgments of celebrities based on appearances when they are out on the town, walking their dogs, or grocery shopping. Everyone must express themselves through clothes, hair, and makeup because every one, even strangers, are always watching you.[xiv] Every individual is always on stage as a social actor, even the hermit living in a cave.[xv]
When it comes to making statement about rebellion, appearance is vital to an individual’s liberation.[xvi] Going against the grain happens within a society-approved formula. After loosing the 2000 presidential election Al Gore grew a beard to declare his defiance of politics.
After completing a divorce, many women cut their hair, just as many ballerinas cut their hair after retiring from professional ballet companies. All of these acts are public declarations of a change in an individuals self declared personality. Formulaic actions of rebellion are not limited to major life changing events. In attempts to exhibit a general rebellion against mainstream culture, goths, punks, emos, and hipsters all end up looking the same in their acts of rebellion.
They dress the same as one another in order to be labeled as part of a specific counterculture group. If they didn’t fit within a specific group they would be seen as too far outside of culture and would be labeled as crazy; just as Brittney Spears pushed her rebellion too far when she shaved her head and threw milkshakes at the paparazzi. Society defines the parameters in which we can express our selves. Society defines the parameters in which we can express our selves.
Is there some essential element to the self that is vital to each individual?
[i] Carl Elliott, Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003), 299.
[ii] Elliott, 61.
[iii] Elliott, 60.
[iv] Al Gore Support Center, “Al Gore Myths Debunked,” http://www.algoresupportcenter.com/goretruth.html (accessed July 15, 2009).
[v] Elliott, 64.
[vi] Elliott, 101
[vii] Elliott, 298.
[viii] Elliott, 108.
[ix] Elliott, 102.
[x] Elliott, 111.
[xi] Elliott, 109.
[xii] Elliott, 103.
[xiii] Elliott, 112.
[xiv] Elliott, 109.
[xv] Elliott, 119.
[xvi] Elliott, 111.
[xvii] Elliott, 304.
Images Cited:
http://www.netamorfasis.com/m/blogs/a/britney-spears-shaves-her-head-03.jpg
From the personal collection of the author
http://hi-techlive.com/Personality-Development.html
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/obama/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf69EEL3WBk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkqrI3IibYI
http://jonjost.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/the-gospel-according-to-friedman-and-others/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZTZ_lxvBes
http://www.topnews.in/files/paris-hilton_0.jpg
http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Business/images-2/fake-purses.jpg
http://activitypit.ning.com/
http://images.teamsugar.com/files/users/0/88/22_2007/jessica-simps.jpg
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/images/2008/02/04/gore.jpg
http://www.emoboyfriend.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/emo-kids-300x225.jpg
http://www.gobritney.com/album3595/britney-spears-3595-69590.html
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