Dramaturgic Denim: Jeans and Narrative Identity

I found the first half of Miller and Woodward’s Blue Jeans: The Art of the Ordinary particularly interesting based on our last class meeting. A majority of my notes center on performance. Last class, when discussing potential exhibit themes/theses, we narrowed our options to several strong contenders. One such contender was how each object served as a vehicle for performance. That is to say, the object owners used the objects as an indicator of their public or private selves.

Miller and Woodward, too, discuss the role of performance during their ethnography of their “silent community” (p. 10). These performances vary from informant to informant, as the authors describe the role of jeans for a diverse collection of people. Whether it be divorcees attempting to reclaim youth (p. 25), a woman publicly displaying/feigning their relationship status via “boyfriend jeans” (p. 51), or a mother’s displaying her too-busy-to-bother narrative (p. 17), the authors provide a number of examples of jeans informing one’s narrative identity.

Katie Holmes in (maybe?) an example of "boyfriend" jeans.

The second half of the book steps leaps from how people use jeans to explore what jeans do for people. Specifically, Miller and Woodward wrestle with the “ordinary” quality of jeans and how such a characterization helps to eliminate self-consciousness in people—particularly The Other (re: immigrants to the examined area). The authors argue that jeans are “a medium that is genuinely transcendent and poses no possibility of inequality” (p. 119). To this end, the Miller and Woodward point out that, in public, jeans give The Other a chance to feel normal by being ‘ordinary’—something members of the domestic majority take for granted. This isn’t to say throwing on a pair of stone-washed, low-rise, boot-cut jeans immediately serves as an equalizing force. Miller and Woodward acknowledge that jeans are certainly limited as an equalizing medium in the process of identity development.

To me, the second half of this book is certainly interesting, but the first half lends itself to the discussion of public/private performance using objects to narrate the story of your self. In the case of Captain William Brown’s waistcoat, the satin material and button craftsmanship both serve to communicate something about the wearer’s public identity as affluent society member. The object, in this case, supports the societal narrative of its owner, William Brown.