Us vs. Them it is impossible to dwell in Western culture, a culture based upon dichotomies, and to escape the 'us vs. them' mentality. Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. Do you live in a red state or a blue state? Are you hetero or homosexual? Are you beautiful or ugly? If one seems to fit into one of the less desirable categories of identity, or many categories of identity, one must think one's self out of such binary notions of what constitutes the self.
Long before she knew she was a lesbian, Victoria Brownworth suggests in her essay, "Life in the passing lane" that she had a sense that she was 'other.' Her parents were intellectuals, bohemians who chose to live in a state of 'genteel poverty,' living by the means of the lower classes but embracing the pursuits of the upper classes, through reading. This was there way of negotiating an identity outside of the 'rich vs. poor divide.' Because of her parent's construction of their identities as bohemians, says Brownworth she "passed" for rich just as she later "passed" for straight. (Brownworth, p.70)
Her parents saw themselves as living outside of the world of rich vs. poor, because of their forward-thinking ideas, their strong intellects, and their common disdain for American capitalist, materialist culture. The Brownworths' belief in their books, of how reading keeps them outside of the demands of commercial life, seems quaint in a world where even the Gap ads proclaim that Jack Kearoac wore khakis. Even for outsiders who define themselves or 'us' as different from 'them' will have their cherished physical symbols eventually encroached upon. A lesbian may look straight, a poor person can pretend to be charmingly disheveled, and a rich person can assume the trappings of soiled khakis and a work shirt. Appearances can be assumed and therefore lie, upsetting the' us vs. them' divide.
Furthermore, as Brownworth suggests in her essay, subtitled "Coming out of the Class Closet," one cannot always define one's self as 'us' in a fixed fashion. 'Us' may be lesbians, but even more so, for her, it is to be part of the class of her parents. It is certainly conceivable to think of a preppie lesbian who has never known poverty and who wishes to marry her life partner in a conventional ceremony, register at Macy's and live in the suburbs -- and pay homage to all the tropes of American, capitalist culture despised by Brownworth and her parents. Just as the straight world misreads Brownworth, the existence of many different identities of class as well as gender and race further contemplates the division of society in to us vs. them, based upon appearances.
Lucy Grealy, unlike Brownworth, does not find herself part of many 'us' categories -- rather, because of her unique facial deformity, born of a long struggle with childhood cancer of the jaw, she feels ostracized and alone in a world that idealizes physical beauty. Grealy feels only like an 'I' or a 'me,' a country of one, and she cannot mutate her identity of her face as easily as Brownworth or her parents can pass. Grealy is also subject to the same cultural influences as Brownworth and her parents that privilege a singular ideal of female beauty. She is also, based on her appearance, misread. But rather than in terms of class or sexuality, Grealy is misread as ugly, even though she is beautiful inside.
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