The Performance of Gender at Centre College in the 1960s
By Elizabeth Joiner
Gender as a concept has historically been assumed to be rooted in some innate biological and behavioral instincts that guide our actions, and discussions surrounding gender expression and gender identity have often built off of that assumption. It wasn’t until recently that scholars have begun to think differently about what gender is and where it comes from. Judith Butler’s theory on Gender Performativity introduces a new lens in which to view Gender expression: as a performance. Butler claims that gender itself is not a natural phenomenon and that, instead, gender is a construct that exists as a reflection of the cultural environment in which it is performed. Because gender itself is an “act” Butler concludes that there are no set genders at birth. Therefore, gender “roles” are developed through repetitive, often unconscious, acts of reinforcement.[1] To combat claims that genders exist innately, Butler argues that in performing conventions of reality, we make artificial conventions seem “real” and “necessary” even though they are not. Exploring gender at Centre College in the 1960s offers a better understanding of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity. The relationship between cultural expectations and gender performativity emerges by dissecting the cultural framework that provided the script for individuals to perform acts of gender expression. The cultural framework includes both the gender expectations of the 1960’s as a whole and the specific culture fostered on Centre’s campus, providing for men and women two separate scripts for gender expression that facilitated very different expectations with little room for deviance from the norm. Consequentially, these performances of gender resulted in almost entirely different experiences for men and women at Centre.
Before discussing the performance of gender on Centre’s campus, it can be helpful to first understand the cultural context that students would have influencing them before even setting foot on campus. Because of the way in which Centre College projected its image to the surrounding community and the way in which the community of Danville, in turn, influenced Centre, there already existed for prospective students’ cultural expectations as to what the gendered experience at Centre would be like. For instance, Danville’s local newspaper, The Advocate Messenger, provides an insightful look into the cultural context of the time. In the October 26, 1961 issue, there was a photo on the front page featuring the Centre College cheerleaders with the caption, “These pretty and peppy Centre College Cheerleaders will be doing their best for Centre’s Colonels when they clash with unbeaten Sewanee.”[2] Below that photo is another photo of the Centre football team with the caption “The Centre Colonels will play their homecoming game with Sewanee’s Tigers from Tennessee.”[3] The contrast between the presentation of Centre’s “pretty” cheerleaders with the photos of Centre’s football team making no reference to their appearance reveals the differences in how women and men were put on display to the public. This is the same newspaper that, in 1968, advertises Mother’s Day gifts that include, “Ladies’ Dress Shoes and panty hose” alongside “ironing boards and electric skillets”. Clearly, there existed community expectations for the role of women, and particularly the role of women at Centre. Both the way in which women at Centre are presented to the community, along with clear community expectations regarding the roles of women reflected in the newspaper advertisements aid in setting the scene for how gender comes to be performed by individual students at Centre. The cultural framework with which students at Centre were entering into as they came to Centre, therefore, already brought with it significant ideas regarding gender expectations of expression. This aids in understanding Judith Butler’s interpretation of gender performance as an “act” in which the script has already been written.
The rules and regulations enacted by Centre College as an institution also aided in reinforcing and facilitating the performance of these gender roles. The Student handbooks throughout the 1960s are extremely insightful in revealing differences in expectations between men and women and the ways in which the college itself facilitates gender expression, providing the two “scripts” for both men and women to “act their gender”. For instance, in Centre’s 1961-1962 handbook, there is a specification regarding women stating that women students can have exceptions to the standard health care protocol in the case of illnesses or accidents. This reveals a difference in the ways that women’s and men’s health at Centre was treated.
Included in the same issue of the handbook was a regulation regarding women cheerleaders at Centre. As a rule, once a woman was to get married, she would no longer be permitted to participate in the cheerleading team. It can be inferred that cheerleading was not an activity deemed fit for a married woman at Centre to participate in, providing another way in which the college designed different regulations and expectations for women and men.
The handbook itself was divided into men’s and women’s sections that further revealed differences in expectations for gender expression. In the Women’s section of the handbook, specific regulations regarding how many “dates” a woman is allowed to have is included. Likewise, if leaving the dorm with a boy, freshman women were required to register the activity as a date. There are no regulatory rules equivalent to this in the men’s section of the handbook. In fact, there are no references at all to “dates” in the men’s section of the handbook. Likewise, in the women’s section of the 1961-1962 handbook there includes rules about smoking deemed necessary for “good appearance.” Centre’s smoking regulations for women are a particularly insightful look into gender performativity given that the college itself was intentional in upholding a certain image of its woman students, one that presented its women as “proper” and “ladylike” for not partaking in smoking in public. In these efforts to present a certain type of student (both men and women), Centre effectively reinforced gender conventions reflective of the culture on campus that the students “performed”.
The dress code included in the 1965-66 handbook provides even more insight into the specific “script” for performing one’s gender that was built into the institution’s rules and regulations. When placing the men’s and women’s dress codes side by side, it is interesting to see the differences in dress expectations between men and women. While women were only allowed to wear sports attire in women’s residence halls and “en route to the tennis courts”, men were given the option to wear sports attire “in the Library, on the lower floor of Sutcliff hall, and on the campus.”[4] The act of splitting the handbook into men’s and women’s sections, itself, reveals that the Centre administration intentionally wanted to develop entirely separate expectations for men and women on campus. It seemed to be understood that Centre was promoting a campus culture with separate roles for men and women; one that required a highly regulated female population of students and a much less regulated male population.
Centre as an institution was not the only driving force for the regulation of gender expression on campus. Revealed in the Cento, a student-published newspaper, is the student perspective on Centre’s social norms. The Cento is helpful in that readers are able to see what students themselves believed was important enough for publication and distribution among their peers. While the Student handbook reveals the way that gender expression was regulated by the College, the Cento reveals student expectations and how they fit into the college’s conventions. For example, while the handbook lays out a specific dress code for men and women students, it was not the only driving force for the development of separate dress expectations for men and women. The above excerpt from the Cento reveals fashion expectations for women by presenting Centre students (only women) modeling spring fashion trends. In an interview with Betty Holtzclaw, who attended Centre in 1962, Mrs. Holtzclaw was asked if she recalled there ever being a dress code at Centre. Her response was:
I don't remember a specific dress code. I don't remember anybody saying this is what you have to wear or anything like that. I think it was the style, and I think we thought we looked nice.[5]
Her commentary on dress code is important in understanding how the popular conventions for dress that students’ operated within seemed to align with the regulations set forth by the school. Although there existed a dress code that regulated the dress of both men and women, when recalling expectations of dress, Mrs. Holtzclaw doesn’t recall feeling as if their choice of dress was required.
Also included in the Cento was an article on “Student life” at Centre. This article provides insight into the social expectations of men and women on Centre’s campus; it explores ideas of how men and women could promote friendly relationships to improve the Centre experience. One idea that the article presents to improve the social life at Centre was for boys to “post signs of their intramural games so that the girls would know when they were taking place and could attend.”[6] This excerpt from the article, along with the rest of the article as a whole, illustrates a social atmosphere at Centre that was defined and run by the male students. Furthermore, the suggestion that women be told when the men’s intramural games were reveals the expectation that men would be the ones playing the sports, while the women would “naturally” want to cheer. Betty Holtzclaw’s memory of her time at Centre aligns with the social expectations expressed in the Cento. When asked about what a typical weekend at Centre was like for her, she responded:
Well a typical weekend would probably be a ball game, a fraternity party and we would go from one fraternity to another or whatever, seeing what was going on, who had the best band or whatever like that.[7]
Therefore, even in the structure of social activities at Centre there existed expectations for how men and women should act and what their roles should be. The structure of the social life at Centre is reflective of clear conventions that separated the men and the women. Like Betty Holtzclaw mentioned in her interview, it was the expectation that men host parties at their fraternity houses, while the women could only find themselves in attendance if they had a date. Applying the theory of performativity to this social scene, the structure of social life at the time may have seemed “natural” given the culture fostered on campus, however, the very different expectations for men and women were conventions that students (often unconsciously) operated within to give the appearance of a “natural order”.
Overall, the unique alignment of the cultural norms of the 1960s, Centre’s institutional regulations, and the social expectations imposed by students on campus facilitated the creation of two separate “scripts” for the performance of gender for men and women at Centre. Partially because of these multiple levels of reinforcement, rather than feeling as if gender roles were being imposed on them, Centre students often felt as though “that was just how things were”. This line of thinking fits into Judith Butler’s theory of Performativity in that it shows how these repetitive acts reinforced by cultural, social, and institutional structures in place resulted in gender performance that seemed natural, real, and necessary to students. The expectation of men to play sports and women to attend their games, for instance, was reinforced on a social, cultural and institutional level that, over time, resulted in two different scripts for gender performance depending on whether a student was a man or a woman. By dissecting these conventions and how students operated within them, it becomes easier to see how those small, repeated acts eventually formed a seemingly “natural order”. How this performance manifested itself on Centre’s campus, specifically, was by fostering entirely different expectations, and consequentially different overall experiences, between men and women attending Centre in the 1960s.
Footnotes
[1] Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519-31. Accessed May 16, 2021. doi:10.2307/3207893.
[2]“26 Oct 1961, Page 7 - The Advocate-Messenger at Newspapers.com.” Newspapers.com. Accessed May 16, 2021.
[3] Ibid.
[4] “Dress Code,” Centre College Handbook 1965-66, Centre College Special Collections and Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.
[5] Betty Holtzclaw, interview by Elizabeth Joiner, March 3, 2021, Centre College Digital Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.
[6] “Student Life,” Centre College Cento, March 19, 1964, Centre College Institutional Repository Collection, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky
[7] Betty Holtzclaw, interview by Elizabeth Joiner, March 3, 2021, Centre College Digital Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.
Bibliography
Betty Holtzclaw, interview by Elizabeth Joiner, March 3, 2021, Centre College Digital Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.
Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519-31. Accessed May 16, 2021. doi:10.2307/3207893.
“Cheerleading,” Centre College Handbook 1961-62, Centre College Special Collections and Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.
“Dates,” Centre College Handbook 1961-62, Centre College Special Collections and Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.
“Dress Code,” Centre College Handbook 1965-66, Centre College Special Collections and Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.
“Medical Care,” Centre College Handbook 1961-62, Centre College Special Collections and Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.
“Smoking,” Centre College Handbook 1961-62, Centre College Special Collections and Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.
“Student Life,” Centre College Cento, March 19, 1964, Centre College Institutional Repository Collection, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky
“Students Model Spring Fashion,” Centre College Cento, March 19, 1964, Centre College Institutional Repository Collection, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky
“8 May 1968, Page 5 - The Advocate-Messenger at Newspapers.com.” Newspapers.com. Accessed May 16, 2021.
“26 Oct 1961, Page 7 - The Advocate-Messenger at Newspapers.com.” Newspapers.com. Accessed May 16, 2021.