I Am Half A Woman On My Mother’s Side

A lot of time has passed since the 60’s inspired TV series Mad Men. Enough time for women and men to change their bias about each other, to start owning their duality genuinely and not out of political correctness. “I am half a woman on my mother’s side” wrote Arizona’s poet Alberto Alvaro Rios.

Duality lies at the foundation of everything. Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize not for the theory of relativity but for demonstrating that matter is dual in nature, a wave and a particle at the same time. His experiment, the photoelectric effect, demonstrates wave characteristics showing off in certain conditions and particle characteristics in others.  That’s what duality means for identity. “Masculine” characteristics show off in certain circumstances and “feminine” show off in others.
Owning our gender duality means we understand that there are two contradictory pictures to every person. That separately neither explains fully what a person is but together they do. It means we understand the circumstances which trigger these characteristics, the rules passed to us by our parents, teachers, peers, what good do they do, whether they still apply in the present or whether they should evolve into new rules that help us invent the future.

These rules are not easy to decipher but we can begin by taking a good look at the fashion industry where they are clearly visible. How we dress and present ourselves is how we signal who we are and how we set the tone to how we want to be perceived. That is to say a fashion brand is not just about a dress or a suit. It is about a character and a lifestyle that justify it to the buyer personally. It recalls the character the person holds in high regard and through which she/he/they love herself/himself/themselves. As someone said, we cannot take a shortcut and love ourselves directly or narcissistically; we need a personality that recalls the character we are “vain” about and bonds us emotionally. Adding our imaginings, we feel like living outside chronological time free of the role we were playing the moment before to use the words of Marcel Proust in Remembrances of the Past.

Because of what our look conveys, many fashion icons have been competent portraitists who drew the character in the full face. Not least, Gabrielle Chanel who was first to eliminate the corset for women and dress them in masculine fabric breaking a vital rule of gender separation. Coco as she was known, owned her dual identity and set women on the path to own theirs.  She was half a man on her father’s side.

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