By JUAN IGNACIO ECHAZARRETA
Staff Writer
 

While it is not our intention to fault Todd or her cast, we would like to express our concern, having read the play, about these commonly harbored stereotypes. We acknowledge that we have neither seen this particular production, nor do we know how the characters will be represented. We also understand that Gage's intention is to combat homophobia, but there is enough in the content of the play to suggest that the author's stance on homophobia is actually defeated.

There are concrete examples within the play that demonstrate a stereotypical representation of gays and lesbians, specifically lesbians.

For example, the main character Renee has been constructed as society's image of the "butch woman."

She has a shaved head, five earrings in one of her ears, and wears "non-feminine" clothes. More importantly, Renee's character was the victim of sexual abuse as a young child by one of her mother's many lovers. Traditionally, society has conceived that lesbians are who they are because they have been the objects of sexual abuse, primarily rape. Such a misconception furthers the myth that lesbians are wounded women who turn away from men out of anger and fear due to earlier victimization. It does not allow for a larger spectrum of reasons for lesbianism, either biological or "naturally social," or for that matter, the possibility of bisexuality.

Another character who is traditionally feminine, Angie, is constructed as a character in a state of liminality. She has not yet begun the difficult process of self-discovery, therefore she is the "perfect prey" for Renee, an already identified lesbian. At the end of "Ugly Ducklings" Angie becomes a lesbian as a result of Renee's involvement in the development of her sexuality. This perhaps "natural development" of Angie's sexuality appears to the reader as a form of coercion and thus reinforces the commonly held notion that lesbians somehow "convert" women who otherwise might have had heterosexual tendencies.

Yet another essential character in the formation of the plot is the militant middle-aged camp leader, whose sexuality is ambiguous. She is unmarried and has close friendships with women, but she is violently homophobic. One of the possible reasons for her outright homophobia, as suggested by the play, was a lesbian love affair gone awry. In other words, she was part of a relationship that was taken to the extreme in the sense that she crossed the border between a "normal" relationship and an "abnormal" one. In the camp leader's eyes, relationships between women, if too intense (which is lesbianism), is abnormal.

This camp leader's position on lesbianism is illustrated by her attempts to intervene in the developing friendships, or perhaps possible "relationships" between a younger camper and an older camp counselor.

Once again, Gage perpetuates the stereotype of the bitter scorned lesbian who denies her own sexuality out of fear, and feels duty bound to prevent other girls from experiencing what she had experienced as a young adult.

It is not our intent to condemn the artistic merit of the play; that is for the audience to judge. However, we would like to inform the campus community that "Ugly Ducklings" is fraught with negative stereotypes of gays and lesbians. We ask that you watch the performance with an open mind and a critical eye.

(The author is a member of GLBA.)