Sammy Bishop is a PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Originally from Plymouth, she now resides permanently in Scotland. Her research interests include Tantra, Alternative Spiritualities, new interpretations of South Asian traditions, Goddess Spirituality, and Gender Studies.
‘It’s tougher to be a boss and to be in charge, and to be loud, and to be rude when you’re a woman. It’s like, the stereotypical woman cannot be complex: you have to choose between being the Madonna or the whore’ (1).
‘But then again, I’ve never been afraid to tilt, have I?’
— Héloïse Letissier
The dangerous woman that I discuss seeks to deconstruct social norms of gender and femininity. In her performances and self-representation, she encourages reflection on the structures that we use to classify and understand individuals in society, and in doing so endangers common expectations and understandings of women.
Every celebrity has a story of their rise to fame, and for Héloïse Letissier, the standard version is as follows: in 2011, as a heartbroken Parisian 22 year-old, she travelled to London in search of solace and distraction. Ending up at scruffy drag bar Madame Jojo’s, the somewhat awkward and introverted Letissier met a sympathetic trio of drag queens. That evening they befriended her, comforted her, and upon discovering her musical talent, encouraged her to perform.
This led to the emergence of Christine: Letissier’s alter-ego. Perhaps alter-ego is a misleading label. In fact, Letissier sees a more authentic representation of herself in Christine. She states, ‘Christine is the truest, boldest version of myself, and I’m actually glad she got to meet people properly. I’m more myself when I’m Christine” (2). Letissier (and Christine) embodies an understated androgyny, has been described as ‘gender-neutral’, and identifies as pansexual. She proudly resists easy classification and in interviews consistently plays with ideas of gender as a performance taking a multiplicity of forms. Appearing under the stage name ‘Christine and the Queens’, her album ‘Chaleur Humaine’ has been critically acclaimed, and she is currently experiencing a steady rise to international fame.
Popular culture has had its share of stars who question identity categories: Letissier herself cites FKA Twigs, David Bowie, Bjork, Michael Jackson, and Laurie Anderson as examples of how a figure can be constructed and performed, in a display of presenting a different identity (3). Similarly, Letissier is highly aware of how her performances trouble socially accepted boundaries of masculine and feminine. Despite acknowledging her own female-ness, she explicitly rejects femininity, expressing this through her on-stage performances which include complex choreography exploring the spaces between ‘masculinity and femininity, aggression and grace’ (4).
This rejection of femininity and challenging of gender also extends to intimate personal experiences. In interviews, Letissier has spoken of ‘wanting a dick’ when she was younger because, in her own words, ‘I was tired of being a woman…not physically, but because of what it meant to other people’ (5). This is also explored in her song ‘iT’ (“I wrote it in a fancy way because the T looks like a dick”(6)), in which she explores how the experience of being male provides more opportunities and liberties. Despite this previous desire to be male, she acknowledges changes in her own perspective. Since writing that song, she claims to have recognised this previous desire to be a man as a desire to have the same rights as a man – now, she states, ‘it’s shifted a bit. Now I’d rather stick with being a girl, to fight for it to be…like being a man’ (7).
Many listeners and people who watch her performances don’t understand her ambiguous attitude towards gender. Conditioned, as we are, to see individuals within the binary construction of male/female, obvious resistance to this can lead to misapprehension and simplistic labels (‘she must be a lesbian’) being applied in an effort to understand this behaviour. Letissier avidly reads online criticism of herself, and particularly enjoys that some people can’t make sense of her music. In response, she says ‘it feels good to read that, like I’m heading in the right direction’ (8), illustrating her heightened awareness of these social expectations that she explicitly seeks to challenge.
Although this ambiguity and playfulness with gender boundaries might confuse some, those familiar with Postmodern feminist theory will recognise precisely what Letissier aims to do. Postmodern (sometimes referred to as Post-structural) feminist theory is primarily concerned with power and how it shapes and constructs the social world. In this school of thought, gender is an effect of power and is a purely social construction. Exposing gender (and other categories) in this way can reveal the power relations which have led to the formation of these categories, which can then lead to their deconstruction. As such, Postmodern feminism is concerned with breaking down binary conceptions of gender and destabilising set identity categories in a quest for equality between individuals.
One of the most important scholars in this field is Judith Butler. In her influential 1990 book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, she discusses gender as performative: social structures dictate the acceptable forms that gender can take, and these are duly performed by individuals. By understanding the social world in this way, Butler aims to show how unstable these binary categories are, and therefore challenges the status quo. In practical terms (as this theory can be hard to actually implement in social situations) Butler encourages individuals to ‘queer’ their performance of gender. This ‘queering’ process includes constructing and performing a pastiche of femininity and masculinity that, if not confounding gender categories, at least causes reflection upon them. Butler presents drag queens as good examples of creating intentionally queer self-representations: drag is an opportunity for performers to directly address, and confuse, common understandings of bodily sex (male/female), gender (feminine/masculine), and sexuality (homosexual/heterosexual) (9). As drag performances seem to parody everyday gender performances, they ‘deprive hegemonic culture and its critics of the claim to naturalized or essentialist gender identities’ (10), and in so doing destabilise common social norms and expectations of gender.
Letissier’s self-representation is in many ways a Postmodern pastiche. In her songs, image, and interviews, she frames her own queerness firmly at the forefront, and celebrates it. This has been explicitly addressed by Letissier in previous interviews in which her views of gender were questioned: ‘I constantly change my mind, and I think it’s because I don’t see gender as anything but a performance; I see it as something I can play with. It’s not a given to me to be a woman. I still have to recreate what it means every day, because I’m not sure’ (11). Through this process of pastiche and playfulness, she presents herself as an individual capable of embodying any number of different roles and personas at any time. Even more significantly, she understands the importance of figures like herself in creating space for these issues and making them visible (12). Her presentation of these ideas is particularly impressive when one considers their appeal to the wider audience: Letissier translates discussions from feminist theory, considered inaccessible by many, to the contemporary pop-culture scene.
As well as exploring gender norms in her own performances and experiences, Letissier is outspoken and succinct with regards to highlighting inequality and double standards in contemporary society. This is particularly obvious when discussing the sexualisation of female performers. Although she resists the sexually-charged image that many celebrities embrace, as a female she is unable to prevent the sexualisation of her body by others. She speaks openly and critically about how ‘even wearing a suit, some people are still discussing whether they want to fuck me or not’ (13), thus drawing full attention to how normal it is for female bodies to be discussed in this manner, even when the person involved makes explicit attempts to evade this. In a similar vein, Letissier has expressed her admiration of Madonna’s reinvention in the 1980s, which she used to celebrate sexuality and become a symbol of female sexual expression. However, Letissier bemoans the fact that ‘nothing has really changed since Madonna. It’s still the same questions: are we sluts? Are we mothers?’ (14). Once again, Letissier exposes and resists the tired but pervasive expectations that seek to simplistically characterise and categorise women.
Heloise Letissier – and Christine – are dangerous women. In challenging (and on occasion outright rejecting) gender categories through various modes of performance, Christine embodies and highlights these issues and makes them accessible to the public. She endangers contemporary social norms and expectations, creating space for alternative and individual expressions of gender. It is vitally important that women such as this continue to make waves in contemporary popular culture, and use their popularity and performances to encourage critical exploration of these issues.
Sources
- Samways, G., ‘Christine and the Queens: I was tired of being a woman because of what it meant to other people‘, first published in Loud and Quiet vol 74, March 2015.
- Pollard, A., ‘Christine and the Queens: Even in a suit people discuss whether they’d F*ck me‘, Gigwise, February 26, 2016.
- Erizanu, P. ‘Embracing the sheer power of Christine and the Queens‘, Dazed, 2016.
- Samways, G., ‘Christine and the Queens: I was tired of being a woman because of what it meant to other people‘, first published in Loud and Quiet vol 74, March 2015.
- Samways, G., ‘Christine and the Queens: I was tired of being a woman because of what it meant to other people‘, first published in Loud and Quiet vol 74, March 2015.
- Pollard, A., ‘Christine and the Queens: Even in a suit people discuss whether they’d F*ck me‘, Gigwise, February 26, 2016.
- Pollard, A., ‘Christine and the Queens: Even in a suit people discuss whether they’d F*ck me‘, Gigwise, February 26, 2016.
- Manning, J. ‘Christine and the Queens on drag, haters and Madonna‘, TimeOut, February 26, 2016.
- Beasley, C., 2005. Gender and Sexuality: Critical Theories, Critical Thinkers. London: Sage, pp.107-108
- Butler, J., 1990. Gender Trouble, Abingdon: Routledge, pp.188
- Samways, G., ‘Christine and the Queens: I was tired of being a woman because of what it meant to other people‘ first published in Loud and Quiet vol 74, March 2015.
- Erizanu, P. ‘Embracing the sheer power of Christine and the Queens‘, Dazed, 2016.
- Pollard, A., ‘Christine and the Queens: Even in a suit people discuss whether they’d F*ck me‘, Gigwise, February 26, 2016.
- Manning, J. ‘Christine and the Queens on drag, haters and Madonna‘, TimeOut, February 26, 2016.