Breaking Social Norms with Costume
For my “Break a Social Norm” project, DJ Ezell and I dressed up as The Joker and Harley Quinn. He was the Arkham Asylum Joker and I was Suicide Squad Harley Quinn. The idea we were going for was to see people’s reaction and/or comments towards someone dressed up and looking out of the ordinary. We tried to act as if nothing was different. We didn’t go out of our way to talk to anyone nor did we act any different than we would’ve if we were wearing regular clothing and makeup. We just walked around and talked with each other and noted people’s reactions. We walked around for an hour and made our way around most of the WT campus about three times.
The first reaction we received from someone was in the FAC when we first started. He told us we looked awesome and smiled. We had two other reactions similar to this one. Someone even came up to us laughing and telling us that Halloween was still a few weeks away. The majority of the reactions we received were people who glanced and then looked away as if they saw something they didn’t want to see and were embarrassed by it. They weren’t negative, they were just nothing more than short glances. There was only one reaction we got that felt really negative from a group of younger girls who didn’t really look like college students to me. They looked at us like we were real weirdos. They all were making faces and it made me feel a little uncomfortable honestly. However, the people at Starbucks made this little awkward exchange better by waving at us and laughing (in what seemed a good way) at what we were doing.
After we were done one of my friends that DJ and I ran into while we were walking around texted me and told me that people were talking about us in the Starbucks line. They apparently thought we were involved with the “WT Clown.” A professor walking around campus that talked to us asked if we were involved as well. It makes sense since DJ’s face was painted white with a red smile. I might not have had the full makeup and outfit on, but Harley Quinn is called the Clown Princess of Gotham after all.
Besides not having a ton of people to see us, the project went really well and it was a lot of fun. The reactions were nice other than the one awkward encounter. I honestly expected the outcome to be a little bit different. I thought there would be more people giving us weird looks. I think people like playfulness and that’s what we were doing. But at the same time, since a lot of the reactions we did get were people glancing for a second and looking away, this proved that if you look different than what people expect you to look like, they will often times not want to look too long. We realized that we were in costume, but it’s the same concept of looking different than the people you are surrounded by and getting weird looks.
