'all girls' big brother

someone must have posted on the gender-bending nature of big brother's voice itself--it can be female, male, a bit of both, and it is always referred to and addressed as 'big brother'. this small, perhaps too subtle element of gender twisting was enhanced at the start of this current series of big brother, which began with an 'all girls' house.

but was it?

the rhetoric circulated around the girl-only nature of the house for the first two days they were in there (a 'male' joined the bunch on Friday). the 'girls' were far from uniformly 'feminine' 'girly' or even 'girls' at all. the age range stretched from the 17 year old blonde twins who screeched for most of the first day or so and were over-the-top girly, well past the point of purposive performance of girliness. (one of the other housemates commented that she felt herself becoming more girly in the face of their girliness. is it catching?) On the other end, a 60-year old grandmother represented a different kind of person, it seems to me not very 'girl' at all--er, woman, perhaps? and then the raver whose bios on-line centre on the fact that she 'has not worn makeup in 15 years'. omigawd! how can she live like that!

so I argue that in fact it was never an 'all girls' brother-hood. rather it was a range of competing genders, some very much queering the norm, from the dress-alike twins bouncing around the sofas to the woman sunbathing to the pink-haired, no makeup individual defying all gender categorisations.

I'm pulling for the lovely Welsh girl, of course.