On Sunday, Sept. 28, over 40 students gathered on the Bald Spot to watch 21 of their peers compete for the title of “best performative male.” Judged on their “performative” appearance and knowledge of “performative male” trivia and music, the contestants were eventually pared down to four winners: C.J. Alexander ’28 (first), Dario Rissolo ’28 (second), Chance McArtor ’29 (third, winner of tie-breaker) and Dean Michael Watkins ’26 (fourth, originally tied for third).
This event was organized and judged by Nora Underwood ’27, Rahim Hamid ’26 (also MC) and Emilia Malecki ’29 filling in for Shreya Mehta ’27 who was unable to attend the event but helped with the planning process. In the weeks leading up to the event, Hamid created bright green posters advertising the contest and spread news of the event through campus announcements and word-of-mouth.
First-place winner Alexander found out about the contest through these campus announcements.
“I honestly just thought it would be funny to see how I could line up against Carleton’s best and brightest performative males,” Alexander said. “My roommate was actually nominated as the potential third place winner of the compensation via the clap, so I also had to represent the both of us. I don’t really believe in gender, but I’ve also done a lot of research into how it’s performed on a daily basis, and I’m especially fascinated by the type of virtue signaling that happens within the “performative male” stereotype. With that in mind, I wanted to see how far I could push the stereotype with my extensive niche online and musical knowledge.”
For the contest itself, Underwood chose the questions, music, prize — ceremonial-grade matcha from Northeast Tea House in Minneapolis — and devised the scoring system.
The “appearance [category] seemed kind of inherent,” Underwood said, “as it is largely performing the ‘look’ of being in touch with femininity. But the questions and the [JUMP] songs seemed to further get at the stereotype and how truly performative it all is.”
Responding to this inherently surface-level nature of the “performative male” stereotype, contestants were judged first on how well they embodied this inauthentic trend of masculinity through their clothing and accessories. Each of the judges rated their appearances on a one through ten scale, which was then averaged to minimize their individual subjectivity in this very subjective category.
Hamid defined a “performative male” as “someone whose engagement with feminism is only as deep as convincing a woman to sleep with him. Hence, all of the external accessories that the competition parodies: the vinyls, the ‘feminist literature,’ the tote bags with catchy slogans. Also the minimization of your own masculinity, where you try to make yourself non-threatening, but in a very shallow way, which was born out in the competition with people saying, ‘shout-out women!’ and ‘I only listen to women!’ in an obviously facetious way. There’s also sort of a queer but not queer way of dressing as part of that minimization with crop tops and loud colors, but nothing really risque — hence the performative part of the performative male, implying a level of insincerity.”
Alexander played into this persona with carefully chosen accessories, such as a homemade matcha latte, their electric bass, CDs, feminist literature and a crocheted tote bag..
“My base outfit consisted of hand-me-down baggy jeans, a thrifted charcoal collared shirt and tour shirt from a Machine Girl show (a breakcore/digital hardcore artist who is ironically, not a girl)” Alexander said. “On top of that, I had a Labubu color matched to my outfit and borrowed from a friend, as well as my daily wear carabiner stocked with my favorite thrifted or handmade keychains…I chose to wear a pearl necklace because of an influencer named Film Cooper, a notoriously performative male, who claimed his style was inspired by Marsha P. Johnson because he wore a pearl necklace like she did. On top of that, the pearl necklace that I was wearing is a matching set with my mother, which would give me both niche performative points for the Marsha P. Johnson reference as well as ‘sensitive’ feminist points. It seems like most people in the audience caught my reference, so it seems like my gamble paid off!”
“To be honest, the outfit I wore was pretty casual for me and definitely something I wear on a daily basis (minus the uncased bass),” Alexander said. “I know this sounds totally ridiculous and in character, but to me, a lot of this honestly is just my lifestyle. In the words of one of my wisest friends, “It’s not performative because it’s just who you are.””
Contestants were then asked trivia questions that were randomly selected from Underwood’s pre-written list. These questions dug deeper into the seemingly feminist and queer-coded brand of “performative males” and included: What is the difference between the first, second, third and fourth waves of feminism? What is the difference between Japanese selvage denim and regular denim? How do you correctly prepare matcha, and what are the ratios? And what are the potential negative side effects of birth control?
The final category was Name That Tune, another way of judging the contestants’ asserted knowledge of songs and artists that are thought to be traditionally enjoyed by women. These included “Linger – SiriusXM Session” by Royel Otis, “Weird Fishes / Arpeggi” by Radiohead, “Juno” by Clairo, “David” by Lorde and “I Bet on Losing Dogs” by Mitski.
This trend-inspired contest is one of many across the nation, and the idea to host one at Carleton was first imagined by Underwood and Hamid.
“My friend at Wellesley performed at the performative masc lesbian contest, and she sent me photos. I thought it was hilarious,” said Underwood. “And so, one day at brunch, I was talking to some people. Rahim was there when I was showing everyone the photos and suggested putting on a performative male contest here.”
“I think there is a culture at Carleton of performative males who don’t recognize themselves as such, and I thought that the contest would be a nice way to poke fun at it,” said Hamid. “The amount of people I asked to be in the competition who said ‘that’s just how they were’ was quite surprising — but also, retrospectively, unsurprising.”
While contests such as these satirically highlight the falseness of ‘performative male culture’ through its advertisement and categories, they are also popular because they are enjoyable and funny to watch as evidenced by the dozens of spectators, most of whom stayed to watch the entire one-and-a-half hour long contest.
“I enjoyed watching the contestants guess the songs,” said Lizzy Johnstone ’27, who spent some of her Sunday afternoon watching the ‘performative male’ contest. “I also thought that their choice in books to bring was entertaining. Shout-out to the contestant who brought Twilight!”
The judges were also entertained by the contestants’ performances in both appearance and personality.
“I would say that my favorite part is how creative people got with both their speeches,” said Underwood, “the very detailed elements of their outfits, and how committed to ‘the bit’ they were throughout the entire event, even if they were just sitting waiting for their turn. It was really funny all-around.”
Hamid similarly enjoyed “the great amount of effort or lack of effort that people put into their outfits and answers. The audience involvement was great, they were super responsive, and the contestants really got into their roles. Some of the answers had me genuinely struggling not to laugh,” such as when one contestant “was asked to name three Clairo songs and, in response, said ‘I’m a fraud lowkey’ and went back in line.”
Underwood seemed open to the idea of hosting another “performative male” contest, regretting that “we didn’t make very clear whether it was performative male or masc-presenting, but people interpreted this in their own way, and it all worked out in the end. I think the only downside is that the true performative males were largely not in attendance.”
Hamid expressed similar regrets over the lack of attendance on the part of some of the “true performative males” at Carleton but believed that this event should remain Carleton’s first and last”performative male” contest.
“I think there’s a cultural zeitgeist that will disappear by next year,” said Hamid. “I think that this is a trend that will fade, but I think that it would be wise to keep our eyes out for the evolution of this stereotype. I think an event similar to this should happen, wherein students just get together in a stupid, arbitrary competition with no stakes as a communal bonding activity — but this specific contest, no.”
