and attracts extensive national and international media attention. Activities at Twins Days take place both on and off the festival grounds, but the main festival is held at the local high school. If not exactly Saturnalia, or a party when “anything goes,” off the festival grounds at hotels around Twinsburg, wild parties last till the early hours of the morning, and as our research assistant, Kristi, reported, can become so rowdy that the police get called to intervene and restore order. As one twin remarked to a reporter, “It’s not really fun until you’re of drinking age.” While the Twinsburg festival has the feel of a rather impersonal meeting of strangers or a mass event and media spectacle, the much smaller ITA feels more like an intimate, friendly social club consisting of an annual gathering of about 160 sets of twins.9The “wild” element of the ITAs consists of silly games and elaborate costumes. The ITA takes pride in being the oldest festival in the United States and changes its venue every year so that participants can travel to different locations. One participant told us that she preferred the ITA festival because it was “old faces and new places” instead of the “old places and new faces” of Twinsburg.
Although both are well-established twins festivals, each has a distinctive ambience that affects the performance of twinship and the configuration of insider and outsider perspectives. Due to its status as a massive, media-savvy event, the Twinsburg festival may be used to explore a variety of positioned perspectives of insider versus outsider views on twins and “being identical” across a number of dimensions that contrast the strange and familiar. The ITAs, which draw on the same core participants year after year and feature activities that include all attendees, are characterized by a sense of inclusiveness and intimate conviviality lacking at Twinsburg. While Twinsburg is family friendly, the ITA is more like a family itself.
Each festival has a similar mission. The Twins Days’ mission is “to provide a vehicle for celebrating the uniqueness of twins and others of multiple births” (Miller 2003, 5). The ITA describes itself as “one of the world’s most unique fraternal organizations organized by and for twins to promote the spiritual, intellectual, and social welfare of twins throughout the world.” A large part of the differences between the two festivals stems from the backgrounds, agendas, and expectations of those who organize and promote each festival. Twins Days is run by a small, full-time staff of singletons with the assistance of volunteers. Although both are nonprofit organizations, the ITA is a much smaller organization, and its festivals are planned by a member set of twin cochairs who are different each year. Twins Days does bring a substantial amount of tourist dollars into the town of Twinsburg and the surrounding areas, whereas the venues of the ITAs change every year. By and large, Twins Days is a massive event in which participating twins choose from a variety of events and find their own niches for participation, their own accommodations, and transportation to events. Nightlife at Twins Days is focused around nonfestival venues where twins stay, including campgrounds, trailer parks, and hotels. At the much smaller ITA convention, participants stay in a single hotel and eat lunch and dinner together. Twins take rented buses to tour local sites and attend organized dances and games in the evening. Almost all attendees at the ITAs participate in the scheduled activities, which occur from morning to night.
In terms of organized programs, the events are similar, sharing an emphasis on performance of identicalness. This is true even among fraternal twins. Each event has an organized program that includes registration and fees, interdenominational religious services, contests, games, talent shows, and golf tournaments. There is also a 5K race at the Twinsburg festivals and bowling night at the ITAs. Concerts, dances, and group photos are also important events at each venue. The Twins Days’ “Double Take Parade” marches through the main streets of Twinsburg. Both organizations elect kings and queens, while Twinsburg also votes for princes and princesses. Both the ITA and Twinsburg festivals have a series of most-alike and least-alike contests in which twins are broken down by age and gender. Few twins participate in the least-alike contests. Although Twinsburg welcomes both identical and fraternal twins at these festivals, it is clear that MZs upstage DZs, and triplets and quads are the biggest stars.
Why do twins come from all over the United States and beyond at considerable personal expense to attend these festivals? Certainly festivals provide an opportunity for twins to act out their twinship. Twin gatherings contain elements of the absurd and a carnivalesque atmosphere (Bakhtin cited in Morris 1994; DaMatta 1984). Both festivals play to the identicalness of twins and celebrate the joyous mood of twinship. Most twins come to Twinsburg or the ITAs with a sense of play and humor. Participants say the festivals are fun, and they look forward to attending all year long. Proud parents of young twins get to show them off while seeking and sharing parenting advice and frustrations with other parents of twins. Older twins get to relive and remember their childhoods together. As Mary and Martha say, “We get to play at being twins like in the old days.” Many twins have been going to the festivals since they were small children and now return to renew the long-standing friendships they have formed with other sets of twins. New friendships are also established. The festivals provide opportunities for twins to meet those who share common interests. As Amy and Beth say, “It is an opportunity to stare at other sets of twins instead of always having people stare at you.”
Festivals also provide an opportunity for twins now living apart to spend time together. Many festival twins we talked to said they typically see each other infrequently. Festivals provide a chance for twins to socialize, often without partners or children; but, ultimately, the festival experience itself is the big draw. The party atmosphere, especially in Twinsburg, also offers some twins a chance to get away from family obligations and cut loose. Arnette and Annette come to Twinsburg with all their grandchildren in tow. Pete and Emil, Judy and Janet, and Kim and Karan first came to Twins Days to celebrate the recovery of one of the twin pair from a serious illness. Similarly, some twins appreciate the festival as a way to reconnect when children are grown or a spouse has died. Some twins who have lost their brother or sister also find comfort in attending the festivals. Certainly to attend either festival is to capture attention, win prizes, and perhaps to have a photograph appear in a newspaper or magazine. Attendees may even attract the attention of a talent agent or be asked to appear in a documentary film. Attending a festival and being the objects of constant photographing, attention, and the gazes of others can make every twin pair feel like celebrities. Being special for looking or acting the same is what these festivals are all about. When Dorothy and I were on stage participating in contests at the ITAs, there were so many flashbulbs going off that I felt like an A-list Hollywood star posing for the paparazzi. The pleasure of a few moments of being in the spotlight, of working it for the cameras, of being the center of attention, and of sharing the stage should not be underestimated. It is a rush.
Positioned Perspectives on Multiple Selfways: Acting the Parts in Twinsburg
In this section, I focus on the public performance of twinship en masse at Twins Days, as well as twins talk. I doing so, I reflect an insider’s view. But twins talk also includes a twin’s view of the outsider or singleton’s view of them as twins. Originally, I had viewed Twins Days solely as an exceptional opportunity to gain access to a large sample of twins during a short period of time. Yet Dorothy and I, sitting in the Research Pavilion where we were surrounded by sets of twins, became as enthusiastic about the festival experience as our talking partners. One of our background questions for our talking partners asked if this was the twins’ first Twins Days. Unexpectedly, this question set a tone for talking about the festival experience at the beginning of each conversation. Twins talk in the pavilion was grounded in what was happening around them. What emerged in the Twinsburg conversations was a well-articulated countervoice of twins. In a sense, edgy expressions of twinship are an artifact of the Twinsburg experience. As formerly stated, twins festivals are about seeing and being seen. Even twins report being shocked at the sight of so many identical pairs in one place. As massive as it is, Twins Days positions twin participants against non-twin participants. Non-twins include the media, festival organizers, researchers, and those who provide services, including hotel accommodations and restaurants.
At the Twinsburg festival, Dorothy and I bridged the roles of researchers by day on the festival grounds and participants at night in offsite, unorganized activities. Kristi
