uses a dust brush, which she has been asked to collect. As he uses it, sawdust is flicked
onto Toni’s clothes. A second boy exclaims “Don’t be horrible man, that’s rude!”. Toni
responds “No, it doesn’t matter, I just want the brush”.
(Fieldnotes)
This scene illustrates the reach and limits of attempts to constitute the female self outside,
or arguably alternatively within, the heterosexual matrix (Butler 1990). Toni’s bodily
adornments - her clothes, hairstyle, accessories - are distinct from those of the majority
of girls in the school. Outsized army-surplus combat trousers, studded wrist bands and
cropped hair contrast with the ankle-length stretch tube skirts or thigh and bum hugging
boot-leg trousers, coloured silk or semi-precious gem stone friendship bracelets, and
neatly styled mid-length and long hair secured with butterfly clips and coloured
scrunchies worn by the majority of girls in the school. These clothes are not neutral,
waiting to be ascribed meaning when worn (Barthes 1983). Rather, clothes, like other
cultural artifacts, are imbued with discursive meanings that are contextually specific,
mediated, and liable to shift. Toni undoubtedly knows that her bodily adornments are
potentially constitutive of a lesbian identity and the inclusion of a number of overt
signifiers of homosexuality/gay-friendliness/feminism (the rainbow, the red ribbon, the
single ear piercing, the international woman symbol) underscore this intent. As such,
while in 2003 studded wrist-bands and combat trousers (high street not army-surplus,
with spike heels not DM boots) are must-have items of mainstream fashion, in a south
London classroom in 1998 combats and studded wrist bands breach the bounds of hetero-
femininity. Yet while Toni’s practices of bodily adornment do not conform to the
discourse of hetero-femininity prevailing in this context, they cite another enduring
discourse - the unfemininity or impossible masculinity of the lesbian. This is itself a
historically and contextually specific citation - here the androgynous dyke, these
practices simultaneously break with and cite the sports-dyke, the radical feminist, the
Victorian invert. Understood in this way, Toni’s practices of bodily adornment can be
understood to inscribe a female-hetero-feminine/female-homo-masculine binary.
A similar constitutive process, which may require Toni’s prior and ongoing practices of
bodily adornment for their performative force, can be seen in Toni’s practices within the
Resistant Materials classroom. While Toni is not the only girl who is a competent
member of the Resistant Materials class, when she assists another girl who is struggling
with a vice her practices cite and inscribe masculine paternalism and bodily competence
and provisionally (but almost impossibly) constitute her in these terms. At the same time,
feminine fragility is cited and inscribed and the other girl is provisionally constituted in