The Appeal Of Empty Plastic Faces

 Ever since I can remember, I've had an odd fascination with mannequins.

It could be the stark blankness they portray, it could be the fact that one any given day they could be someone new - a businesswoman in a nice suit, an activist in bohemian attire, the possibilities are seemingly endless - but whatever the reason actually is, I relate to these weird, cold, lifeless pseudo manifestations of identity. As someone who's eternally felt pulled in different directions identity wise, I have to say there's a sense of charm in being one person one day and a new person another, like a mannequin gets to be. To this day, despite having a fairly solid online presence, and knowing what persona I'm living as to make my work be understood, I don't know who I am. And it isn't that the online me and the real me are different, because we're not. I'm very much the same online as I am offline. It's just that online all I am is my work, and offline I'm not even that. I don't exist. Constantly trying on personalities and identities is something teenagers do, but I gave up on that in my early 20s because, even then, I didn't know who I was, and at this point I reckon I likely never will.

To know ones self thoroughly is to really be living. There's that old expression, "I know this as well as the back of my hand", meaning you are so attune with yourself that you could never be surprised or confused by yourself. You are confident in who and what you are. But what happens when you aren't? What happens when you're merely playing a role? I feel like I've been acting since I was a very little girl. Nothing about me is real, everything is a calculated decision. Right down to the eyebrow raise and the tempered breathing. Right down to wardrobe changes and lack of character development. I'm nothing more than whatever society and other people make me out to be. For a long time people saw me as a very unhappy angry person, so that's what I became. I struggled with anger issues for a lot of my life, and I constantly trashed my own bedroom and broke my own things, because I was angry that that's how people saw me, despite never thinking that way about me myself. But when you don't know who you are, you simply take whatever personality others throw at you, so that at least you can be someone.

And so I became a template. A mannequin. Something society can dress up and decide who I am at will, any given day, because I can't be trusted to decide for myself. There's too many variables when given that much freedom. Too many ways to screw it up. Too many versions of me that risk being unlikable.

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If we're being totally transparent here, I think it's safe to say that a good reason why I have trouble figuring out a personality is thanks to my autism. Autism, especially in girls, means that we mimic those around us. We do what is called "masking". We see how girls act, and we think "well, I want to be considered 'normal' too, so I'll just act like that." Unfortunately, not only does this prevent me from ever defining a characteristic or personality trait, but it also can a lot of times persuade queer girls into following heteronormative behavior. Especially when I was growing up, and being openly gay - especially for my peers - wasn't as socially acceptable, most girls around me liked boys. In fact, my rampant lesbianism is quite possibly the only thing that saved me from a lifetime of believing that I was just like them. No amount of masking or or mimic behavior could excuse the fact that when I saw Rachel Weisz or Geena Davis on TV or in a movie, I knew I wanted to kiss them.

But, because I kept that mostly to myself and crushed on girls in secret, I had to simply pretend I never liked anyone romantically, and this only further withdrew me from the world around me. Between my various learning disorders, my lesbianism and my just generalized introversion, my status as an outcast was pretty well solidified by the time I was 10.

And thus, I had to learn to take whatever personality people threw at me. So I listened. I listened to what the adults and the kids around me thought I was like, and then I became that. My parents - somewhat rightfully so, for once in their lives - thought I had psychological and emotional problems, and so I became even more openly psychologically and emotionally vulnerable. I cried a lot. I developed an anger issue. I hid in my room and cursed the world. I wanted nothing to do with anyone, and I barely even liked myself. Everyone thought I was weird, and while they weren't wrong, I simply played into it, because without this belief, I wasn't sure exactly who I was. That isn't to say I didn't know what I liked or disliked, because I did. I knew I liked girls. I knew I liked writing and art. I knew I liked insects. But you can't build a personality off a few minor interests. There has to be more, right? That's what I believed anyway.

But as I've gotten older, I've come to discover that, perhaps, being a blank slate is the best option. Being so defined is limiting. And maybe, the personalities that I wear should come from me and not others.

That's when I learned that maybe, I don't want a personality whatsoever. If I had a personality, people can find fault with it. If I'm nobody, then no one can ever say I'm wrong. It's a big ol' checkmate, is what it is. But is the possibility of never being questioned worth never being whole? That's the thing you have to ask, and I'm beginning to reckon with the fact that I may not believe that anymore, and that's what truly scares me.

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What happens to a person when you live to the age I am, 31, and still don't know who you are?

It's one thing if you don't know who you truly are because you suffer from, as I do, something like severe clinical depression and you've lost a good portion of yourself in the fog of sadness, but this is different. What happens when you just never decided who you really were, who you wanted to be, and then how do you decide at my age in order to move on and grow up? I think I'm terrified of assigning myself a personality because I'm terrified of being solidified by it in one way or another. I don't want to be able to be easily pigeonholed or identified solely by a few characteristics or traits. I want to be an enigma, but only to other people, not to myself. So I would have to give myself a personality but then not show it to others, but if I don't show it to others, who am I to them? I'm still nothing but a mannequin, something they can dress up in their head with whatever thoughts, beliefs, morals they wish to assign to me. I have to have a personality easily definable because otherwise I run the risk of being misidentified as someone that I'm not by people I don't know, and that's worse than anything.

It's one thing for me to pick an identity day to day, but it's another thing entirely for me to do that because that's what others think of me. But at this point, it's becoming increasingly clear that I, both, need to figure out who I am and don't know how to figure out who I am, and that's going to be a problem. I steal personality traits from fictional characters I admire because I trust those of a fictional character better than I trust my own intuition, so it's safe to say I have a tough road ahead.

All I do know for certain is that I'm growing somewhat tired of being a mannequin. It's fun now and then to change it up, be someone different for a day, but when you don't know who you are whatsoever, it's dangerous to allow that many personalities and identities to flow through myself, because one of them could be bad, and that one could wind up sticking. I don't care if others don't like me because of who I have decided to be, what I'm truly worried about is not liking myself because of who I decided to be, and that's one of the few benefits that comes with being a mannequin, is always being able to be someone else at the drop of a dime. But it's hard to like ones self when one doesn't know who ones self truly is.

I guess the only way to make change is take it one day at a time and eventually find an amalgamation of personality traits I truly appreciate and feel comfortable with, and then creating a persona based around those, and maybe then I'll stop being a mannequin.

And instead I'll be a person.

...even if being a person isn't all it's cracked up to be.