Hedwig And The Angry Inch Stereotypes

In a future class, the question “what is a woman?” should be addressed with a study of the musical film Hedwig and the Angry Inch because Hedwig reveals how a façade can lead to authenticity. Many women today are under the impression that they must fit a certain gender binary mold in order to live up to the definition of their gender. Women plaster on makeup and create personas centered around societal beliefs and not personal beliefs. Hedwig and the Angry Inch highlights how the gender binary mold lead individuals to choose a gender and within that set gender mold, express themselves to a limited extent. In other words, makeup and playing into the gender binary isn’t terrible. However, it leads to a constricted form of self-expression that can prevent or stall a person’s growth and prevent a person from achieving self-actualization.

In this respect, authenticity indicates a confidence and a tolerance of one’s self, but authenticity is often achieved by going through a period of fabrication. Scott Miller accounts how “glam rock” promoted the “elevation of form over content” (Miller). In the film, Hedwig embraces glam rock and a feminine façade, but the false face falls away when she

At a certain point Talusan describes how she underwent the surgery in order to “express [herself] in more overtly feminine ways and identify as gender queer” (Talusan). In this respect, Talusan embraced the gender binary to express herself within the common social structure. In other words, because society forces individuals to choose their gender, Talusan choose to be female because she felt she would best be able to express herself in that way. Talusan had control over her hair, makeup, and clothes. Hence, her self-expression was best expressed to the gender binary governed society when she identified as