Becoming Someone Else

When I first looked at the blog assignment for this week, I was hesitant about approaching it. I thought to myself, "what is one thing I can change about myself that can transform me into feeling like someone else?" Is it my clothes, my hair, my makeup, or the way I walk or talk? Maybe it's the way that I approach others. What is unique is that everyone has specific qualities or preferences in clothing/hair/makeup, making them stand out in their own particular way. For me, the way I dress reflects my personality and how I want others to perceive me. What I wear says a lot about my style, the society I grew up in, my age cohort, and most importantly, my identity. While I do dress mostly casual, I like to portray myself in a way that looks "put together." This means that I try to make myself appear neat but at the same time comfortable. Like many 20-year-old women, my everyday attire consists of jeans, sweaters, and slip-on shoes. What if I decided to change my clothing style while engaging in conversation with other people? Will they perceive me as someone different with a different identity? To explore this mini-challenge of trying to become somebody else, I decided to change my typical clothing for the day and wear more "formal" attire by dressing in black dress pants, a blouse, and a blazer. After I transformed my look for the day, I made an effort to introduce myself to new people with my friend in her apartment building.

Part of my identity involves dressing in a way that displays who I am. When I took on this challenge of dressing out of my "norm," it felt like I wasn't in my own skin at first. It took me a while to look at myself in the mirror and realize that I was not in my usual "Alex" clothes. Instead, I was taking on a whole new persona to try to become someone else temporarily. What did this mean though? Would dressing this way give me more confidence in approaching and engaging in conversations with strangers? If so, how will my conversations be different? Based on what we learned from Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, identity is performed and created in millions of micro-interactions. This approach declares identity as something emergent through social interaction, both in situated and specific contexts. From my experience of dressing out of my norm in this challenge, I understood how identity is dynamic and thoroughly social through the authors' central principles.

One principle that I found quite relevant to my experience was indexicality. Indexicality uses language to position ourselves and others as certain kinds of people. In other words, this is done by assigning labels or by saying that a person belongs to a particular social category. When I spoke to the first person I met in my "new look," I noticed that the way I talked was more formal than I usually would. What I mean by this is that my language indicated that I was more sophisticated, which, in a way, gave me more confidence. Instead of using "slang" jargon and rushing into what I wanted to say, I acted more relaxed. I used words that would indicate that I'm educated and am knowledgeable about using different terms in particular contexts. I think my goal of becoming this new persona was successful because the individual I was talking to interpreted me as a person belonging to some business seeking group because of my mannerisms and ability to come off as professional. I also noticed that they seemed to respect me while I talked as they refrained from interrupting and questioning what I was saying. While business is not what I'm hoping to pursue in my future, it made me realize that the language I use does play a role in constructing my identity and puts me in some social category. While my use of language did help suggest my "new" identity, I did feel, though, that my outfit style played a role in making me appear more professional and business-like.

Another principle that I found relevant to my experience was the partialness principle. The partialness principle informs us that we'll only ever have a partial view of someone's identity at any given moment. When I was dressed in more formal attire and conversed with the stranger at my friend's apartment, I realized that they only saw one part of my identity at that moment. To them, I was a student who acted and looked like I belonged to the business college, yet that was all they could tell. If I was in a different setting, would they perceive me as someone other as well? At that moment, I was fulfilling a specific role to talk and act like how I was dressed. However, that isn't the only identity that makes up me. Beneath each person contains layers of identities that define us. Based on my experience, the individual wouldn't tell that I belonged to other social groups because they only got to know me from one interaction. This shows that when we interact with someone, they only see a partial view of someone's identity within the context of the given moment.

Looking back at this experience now, I realize that transforming myself into a different persona wasn't easy at first. I was embarrassed and not ready to step out of my comfort zone to take on a new identity in front of someone I do not know. Usually, I rarely dress in "formal" attire, so this experience was unique to me, especially when the task challenged us to engage in conversations with strangers. Approaching my friends in this outfit made me feel awkward because they know that that's not how I usually dress. Because my friends already know me quite well, I thought this challenge would be most successful if I tried it on someone who didn't know me. Based on the outcome, I realized that identity is thoroughly social and can be constructed using language and engaging in various conversations.