"Playing Up Being a Woman": Femme Performance and the Potential for Ironic Representation

Synecdochic representation reproduces commonplace identity categories in the very attempt to question them. Could there be another way to represent that does not fall into this trap? This study explores the possibility of an ironic mode of political representation and posits femme gender performance as an example. The femme goes forth into the heterosexual mainstream as "straight" and returns as "queer," a surprising reversal that casts heteronormative assumptions into doubt. Yet irony has its own limits. Ironic and synecdochic representation gain ground by working together in a productive tension, alternately opening up new possibilities and appealing to existing commonplaces.