Kristi’s experience of the after-hours revelry was very different from our own experience. Also, as twin researchers of twins, we had the opportunity to interact and talk with the media as well as the singleton twins researchers. Additionally, twins talk frequently engaged a multiplicity of perspectives that festival participation and performance of twinship en masse seems to evoke. As the cultural psychology approach views selfways as positioned and multiple, in what follows, I draw on the Twins Days experience to present and discuss a number of overlapping themes regarding the notions of situated or positioned identities and perspectives. When it comes to insider and outsider perspectives, acting the parts of twins can take an interesting series of twists and turns.
My analysis of acting the parts at Twins Days features three distinguishable combinations and permutations of insider and outsider perspectives, as they relate to the festival and to the participant twins. As a twin and as an anthropologist, I have little problem bridging the three different perspectives. The first is an insider perspective that describes how twins view themselves in the festival setting. It focuses on the enactment or performance of twinship from the twin’s perspectives and from experiences of the twins themselves. Here, the stress is on “doing” and the more visual, embodied aspects of performance. Doing centers on the existential, experiential enactments of twinship as unique, but paired, identical bodies. A second perspective entails an outsider’s view or how festivals and festival twins are depicted by the media, non-twins, and skeptical twins. Although festival twins are portrayed as objects of fascination, twins performing twinship en masse clearly both attract and repulse the outside observer. The third section joins insider and outsider perspectives and looks at how the twins, as they interact with other sets of twins, come to see themselves as insiders and outsiders at the festival. This third perspective also addresses how festival twins view the outsiders’ views of them. The discussion then moves from the idea of being identical as an embodied counternorm to an emphasis on feelings of mutuality and connectedness as an even more powerful counternorm that twins characterize as lying at the heart of the twin experience. When thousands of twins repeatedly perform the twin game for thousands of observers, an exaggerated version of the experience of being twins becomes enacted. Festivals focus attention on the practical experiences of twinship by serving to heighten awareness of self stylings and self work done by identical twins as located on fault lines or borderlands of identity.
Insider’s View: The Actors
At twins festivals, twins play the twin game. They perform or enact the cultural persona of twinship or society’s stereotypical caricature of them. “Getting into the festival spirit” entails being identical. Although the phrase “seeing double” seems trite, it captures the essence of twins festivals. Looking as alike as possible is the performance goal of most of the twin pairs at Twins Days. Adult twins—identical and fraternal, young and old, male and female—who were never dressed alike or have not dressed alike for years, make a great effort to present themselves in ways that enact stereotypes about them as identical. It is not just about bodies; it is also about trappings on the body. Dressing identically becomes a kind of body art. It should hold up from first casual glance to a more detailed scrutiny and assessment of how alike a twin pair looks. Many twins pay painstaking attention to detail, matching earrings, pocketbooks, makeup, nail polish, glasses, and hairstyles. The idea here is to celebrate, or relive twinship, and to have fun.
There are plenty of adorable children dressed identically who receive the “oohs” and “aahs” of onlookers. Some children are dressed in identical T-shirts emblazoned with phrases such as “It’s a twin thing,” “Like two peas in a pod,” and “If no two snowflakes are alike, then I’m glad we’re not snowflakes.” There are also adults who walk around in T-shirts that proclaim their twin status with the word twin written across their chests. Their identical T-shirts bear messages such as “Double Trouble,” “Born Together,” “Look out, there’s two of me,” “Clones,” “I’m the evil twin,” “It must have been my evil twin,” and the classic “I’m with stupid.” Adult T-shirts also reflect relational themes such as “Friends Forever,” “It’s a twin thing / you wouldn’t understand,” and “I’m smiling because you’re my sister / and I’m laughing because there is nothing you can do about it.” A carnivalesque sense of high humor and a sense of challenging, bending, or breaking singleton norms and rules predominate. Twins can even replicate their replicate selves, with each twin wearing a photo button of their twin pair in the same place on their bodies. All this can get confusing, which is exactly the point. Jeana and Dina told us how the photographers coached them on how to look alike for their button pictures. They went through (and paid for) many takes before they got a photograph that suited them both.
The effect of twins festivals is well depicted as “uncanny.” Ironically, one’s sense of being unique and special as a pair of twins is both enhanced and muted as one is surrounded by twins by the dozens. Some festival twins develop expressive self styling or personae that make them stand out among the thousands of sets of twins that surround them. At Twinsburg Dorothy, Kristi, and I began referring to sets of high-profile twins (those who stood out) with identifying labels like the Fabio twins, the Parrot twins, the Harley twins, the Kings, the Playgirl and Playboy twins, the Cowgirl twins (in Western outfits) and the Cow girl twins (in cow suits), the Doctor twins, and the twins on The Simpsons. Talking with ITA twins who had also attended the Twinsburg festival, we found other sets of twins had come up with the same labels. Some twins dress like a famous celebrity. At Twinsburg, twin sisters dressed like Dolly Parton. In their case, my own sense of reality was suspended. Initially, I thought they were over-the-top, rural southern throwbacks to the 1950s, but Dorothy and Kristi convinced me they were in costume.
Although the websites and promotional materials for Twinsburg note that it is not necessary to dress alike, attendees are advised that most twins get into the festival spirit by dressing alike. Jenna and Steph, identical twins in their early forties (who do not look much alike and regard themselves as “complete opposites”), told us that they had arrived for their first time at Twinsburg with no similar clothes. They felt like pariahs on the first day because they felt that no one would talk to them. On day two, they bought identical festival T-shirts and said they fit in then, entering conversations and making friends with other twins. Deciding to dress in similar clothes but in different colors, Dorothy and I also felt like outsiders among the mass of pairs at Twinsburg. We had the impression that our decision to wear essentially the same clothes but in different colors (as our mother often had dressed us in later childhood) was a cop-out. Having different hairstyles and hair color (dyed) also marked us as not in the spirit of the festival. At Twinsburg we were constantly advised that identical baseball caps would be a simple and quick fix to the hair problem.
The appeal of dressing alike and participating in contests, however, can become strangely addictive, as Dina and Jeana explain.
Dina: I planned this whole vacation. Jeana had no idea. I told her we were in the parade. It was fun. I like this whole twin fest thing because we’ve learned so much. Next year I want to come back in costumes like other people were doing and throw out candy. During the parade it was funny because I like waving to people; it’s like I’m saying, “Thank you for supporting us twins.”
Jeana: We’re going to have to plan next year. We’ve learned and lived through this one. Next year will be even better. What we’ve found interesting is how much we desire to look alike now, whereas before it was like, well, OK, we look similar. We went to a restaurant where the waiter said, “I would never have guessed you were twins.” I mean that, like, hurt. In high school we tried so hard not to look alike. Now we want to look alike.
After their first time at Twins Days, Jeana and Dina planned to dedicate more planning and effort to dressing exactly alike for the festival. They have become socialized by the festival experience to dress alike “with attitude” for Twins Days. Three years after we first met them, Pete and Emil sent me an article from their local newspaper that announced they had finally won the look-alike award for their age category at Twinsburg. They were also proud to have finally won, at age eighty, recognition for being the third-oldest
