Two-dozen students stand shoulder-to-shoulder against the Pride wall outside the Nest on Sept. 22. They wear flannels, overalls, denim jackets and satchel bags. They hold matcha lattes, vinyl sleeves and books by Judith Butler. Speakers on the balcony above blast Clairo’s "Bags" on repeat. No, this is not the Indigo Starbucks on Granville and Broadway — this is the Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice Undergraduate Society’s (GRSJUA) performative contest.
You know the scene — contests like this popped up as an offshoot of 2024’s celebrity lookalike contests over the summer in New York, Seattle and Jakarta, among others. They’re a send-up of semi-stylish, fake feminist men who show off Sally Rooney paperbacks like colourful plumage to attract mates. After a similar contest at Fortune Sound Club this August, GRSJUA Social Events Coordinators Nayis Majumder and Justina He saw an opportunity to bring discussions about gender to the mainstream in a fun and accessible way.
“We wanted to bring that community aspect to UBC and to be able to share that there’s merit in concepts of performativity,” said Majumder, who originally pitched the idea after seeing footage of a performative contest in a Sydney, Australia laundromat.
As new hires this year, He and Majumder didn’t know if the idea would be well received. “A lot of the GRSJUA’s previous events were more serious, more safe-space oriented …” said He. “I said to Nayis, if you want to pitch it to [the other execs], you can, but we’ll see how they react.”
Their worries turned out to be unfounded — Co-Presidents Tanay Suresh and Ruby Gulati were already searching for ways to broaden their community outreach efforts. They jumped at the idea and the team got to planning.
Two weeks later, a crowd gathered by the Pride wall. Modest at first, it would swell to around 300 people throughout the event, spilling into the plaza and onto the stairs outside the Nest. Around 30 contestants of mixed genders milled about, chatting over blaring bedroom pop. One held a sign reading “6’7” by the way”; another showed off a wallet chain strung with Labubus like trophies of war. Another told anyone who’d listen how he didn’t even know there was a performative contest happening today.
From an alcove at the top of the stairs, Majumder MC’d while He corralled contestants on the ground. The first event was “Flying Feminism" — contestants perched their feminist literature of choice on their head, walked a few paces and did a hop. The droves of mascs who ended their performative journey at this step was an intended effect, said Majumder.
“We had a small discussion between us like, ‘If [the contest] is really popular somehow, what’s the way we can cut down our contestants to select the most performative people there?’”
Flying Feminism was initially on the backburner, with the team unsure if they would need to use it, but the massive turnout convinced them they’d need to winnow things down.
“The first inkling that we got that this was going to be bigger than any of us imagined was when we posted our poster on our Instagram. That got like 20,000 views and 700 shares,” said He. “I was super anxious, like, ‘Oh my god, what if campus security comes to shut us down?’”
Despite these anxieties, the team managed the crowd well, asking people to avoid obstructing the stairs and create an opening for contestants. Majumder had some prior experience managing events — though perhaps none this large. The team also had some guidance from a masked mentor who had played the game before.
“I was pretty inspired by Pea Man,” said Majumder. “I went to his event in my first year, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what community is about’ … I ended up DMing Pea Man, who helped me through quite a bit of the organizing process.”
Though the audience for the performative contest didn’t quite match the hordes who turned out last year to watch a guy in a green ski-mask eat 2.5 kilograms of peas outside the Nest, it was still a handful, which led to some chaos when it came to enforcing the rules of the contest.
“Only when I was reviewing the footage that we got did I notice that one of our top five contestants actually got eliminated in the first round,” said He. “There was definitely stuff that, if we had more time, more manpower, more resources, we could have fine-tuned. But … for the amount of time and effort that we had on hand to plan this thing, I’m really happy with the turnout and how it went.”
By the time the last Plath hit the floor, the pool of contestants had dwindled to around 12. He lined them up and went down the ranks asking each one to introduce themselves. The level of commitment to the bit on display from each performer was incredible. The very first contestant in the line stepped forward and launched into a speech about the gender pay gap and the importance of respecting women. He didn’t make it two sentences in before stopping in his tracks and squinting into the audience: “Hey wait a minute, is that – Is that Period Cramps!!?”
At this, a guy in a red shirt with red fabric tied around his head launched himself at the performative man. The two brawled dramatically, the battle raging back and forth until our contestant valiantly vanquished his bloody foe and returned humbly to his place in line. Things continued in this vein throughout the contest — one performative masc threw tampons into the crowd, another marked their page in their Didion with a menstrual pad. One guy just stepped forward and started giving a land acknowledgement.
As the games unfolded — name-that-woman, gender theory trivia with questions from the audience, pin-the-matcha-on-the-Labubu — flannel-wearer after septum piercer were eliminated and sent home. The final two performers (both named Luca, by the way) paraded in front of the crowd and the audience voted by applause to crown the smaller of the two the most performative person at UBC.
Though the tone of the event was obviously playful and silly, the team was glad that the contest could raise awareness of the real concepts of performativity and gender that impact all of our lives. Co-President Gulati praised He and Majumder’s guiding of the contestants towards more critical thought throughout the event. “They did a really good job of starting with simpler questions — ‘What kind of milk do you like with your matcha?’ — [but] then we got to some pretty [complex questions].”
The team was pleasantly surprised by the quality of audience questions during the trivia event, as well as the level of critical thinking displayed in some of the contestants’ answers.
“Just knowing that even that person who may have stopped by for [only] a few minutes may think about this a little more critically, made our entire space super happy,” said Gulati.
After the event, the GRSJUA handed out pamphlets explaining some of the concepts behind performativity and offering critiques of the trend of men co-opting women’s interests. It also featured a list of recommended readings for those wanting to “up their performative game.”
On the back of such a successful event, the GRSJUA is currently hiring social events assistants to help them organize similar ones in the future. They’re also gearing up for their annual mutual aid initiative in late November and organizing vendors to feature in the final event of this year’s ARTIVISM.
First online
Share this article
Submit a complaint Report a correction
