Inappropriation Page 18

  “But then the price goes up for the rest of us,” says the lead stoner.

  “What bitches,” says her lackey.

  Ziggy peers through the door jamb. The card players look furious. One of them twists her blond dreadlock around a fat angry finger. “Not paying is undemocratic,” she informs the brilliant instrumentalist.

  “No,” says the smarter girl. “The formal committee is undemocratic.”

  Then the door opens and the girls fall silent. A ninth grader shuffles past and into a stall, but the would-be mutiny is over. Ziggy feels a stinging disappointment as she watches her peers file out of the bathroom in a jumpy little line.

  THAT WEEK, THE HIGH SCHOOL is treated to a student assembly performance. This usually involves an R and B song spine-chillingly belted by one of the Tongan scholarship students or a green group of year sevens break-dancing in sweats, stunting their socialization for the next six years. But today Ziggy opens the printed program to discover that Kate Fairfax will be doing a “contemporary chair dance” for the whole high school.

  The girls pour into the auditorium, frenzied with ill will for their attractive and allegedly talented peer. Minutes later, the stage is plunged into bluish darkness as a deep bass thumps through the speakers, jiggling the Colonial brass pendant lights. Ziggy sees no pole, but in the center of the stage, she can make out the contours of a desk chair and Kate’s body planked across it. As the lights slowly brighten, Kate makes a series of small flickery movements, like a corpse coming to life. The strings start, and she arches her back, drawing up from her sternum like a resuscitating zombie. She pauses, looking out at the audience with an aching expression that shifts swiftly to sex-eyes. Her legs make a sudden cartwheel and she straddles the chair.

  There is something familiar about the song—a classical piece with insistent, plaintive strings—that distracts Ziggy from Kate’s high kicks and mournful shimmies. Twinkles comes to mind, but Ziggy dismisses her, thinking it must be the sequined bodysuit that offers up Kate’s pronounced pubic bone each time she backbends over her chair. Then someone else recognizes it. Two seats away, Emily Esposito—both the hairiest and most emotionally sensitive girl in their grade—whispers to Cyndi Yang that she knows the music. Ziggy leans closer.

  “It’s the theme song from Schindler’s List.”

  Cyndi gasps, and at almost the same moment, Ziggy hears the loud honk of Tessa’s laugh three rows behind. Ziggy traces a trembling finger over the bump on her nose.

  When Kate’s final doleful pirouette is met with wild applause, Ziggy jerks up and out of her seat. She bounds over girl-laps, eliciting a wave of rustling skirts and titillated squealing as she wades out toward the exit. Ziggy bursts through the fire door, and the murmuring behind her thunders into primeval chaos. She tears across the courtyard, half expecting a procession of girls to manifest silent and adoring in her wake. Ziggy glances back and sees that she is alone. Her hands are shaking. You can’t set a striptease to the theme from Schindler’s List. You can’t make the Holocaust sexy. Not even if you’re a Jew. The only person who might be allowed to do this is a drag queen, and even then they would still need to be Jewish. Kate is neither Jewish nor in drag. But no one at Ziggy’s school cares about anti-Semitism, her queer subreddit hates Zionists, and intersectionality doesn’t seem to apply to white Jewish transhumans. The injustice of this is a vise on her skull that squeezes Ziggy small and feral. She kicks Kate’s locker but the tinky sound only makes her feel feeble. And then, like some spooky genetic dispatch, Ziggy is reminded of the Australian Jewish News.

  Neatly stacked beside the grisly covers of Gastroenterology Today, Ziggy has often flipped through her grandmother’s other beloved publication. The Australian Jewish News is trifling with articles that defame anti-Semitic bus drivers or lionize local featherweight lifters of Jewish extraction. Always, some Jew has made a movie about his Holocaust-surviving grandparent; always, some Jewess has written a book about a grueling Soviet hunt for a family heirloom. The editors at the magazine represent a small, homogenous community that likes to celebrate one another and demonize anyone who says Jews are stingy or run banking. Ziggy storms into Ms. Hawthorne’s waiting room and demands to see the principal. A student has been racist while acting like a stripper at a private girls’ school petrified of bad press, and Ziggy knows exactly which anti-Semitic trope will get the administration’s attention. When her secretary says the headmistress is busy, Ziggy threatens to take her grievance to the global Jewish media.

  In five minutes, Kate and Ziggy are seated opposite each other in their principal’s dour office. Ziggy feels an unfamiliar pleasure leaning back in her armchair. The hot, stodgy conviction that she has been deeply wronged.

  Ms. Hawthorne wants first to hear her side, so Ziggy explains that she was offended by Kate’s Holocaust-themed music for what was essentially a striptease. Then the headmistress asks Kate where the music came from.

  “A classical chill-out mix,” Kate says with shrugging innocence. “I didn’t check the song names.”

  “Well, that seems like an honest mistake,” says Ms. Hawthorne.

  Ziggy looks incredulous. “You didn’t recognize it from the movie?”

  “I’ve never seen the movie.”

  This strikes Ziggy as part of the problem, but she can tell Kate’s general ignorance is winning her sympathy. Ziggy tries to think of other ways in which the chair dance is offensive. Almost instantly, several class and racial issues come springing to mind.

  “I’m sorry,” says Ziggy, “but a wealthy private school girl should not be chair dancing at all.”

  “And why is that?” Ms. Hawthorne looks pale.

  “Because chair dancing is what strippers and Janet Jackson do. And Kate doesn’t fall into either of those demographics.”

  “You are insane,” Kate seethes.

  Ziggy ignores her and addresses their principal. “If the school administration doesn’t want to be accused of cultural insensitivity, they should be more aware of these things.”

  Ms. Hawthorne stiffens in her chair and Kate turns to her, pleading. “I’m not allowed to use a piece of classical music?”

  “Not if you are profiting off Jewish bodies,” answers Ziggy.

  “I wasn’t making a profit.”

  “That’s because you’re not very good.”

  Kate whimpers in rage. The principal is sweating. Ziggy continues.

  “And there isn’t just insensitivity happening in our year group; there’s also exclusivity.”

  Ms. Hawthorne squints, terrified, at Ziggy. “How do you mean?”

  “Kate’s lovebirds, for example, are not inclusive.”

  “Her lovebirds?”

  “Kate keeps them in a cage near the main sofa,” Ziggy explains. “She calls them our mascots and their names are Ansel and Elgort.”

  Ms. Hawthorne looks at the floor. She scans the carpet with a whimsical smile, as if imagining a whole new world of tiny people parading across the weave. They rise like a tide, sweeping her back so that she slumps diagonally against the seat rest in total, emotional submission. Kate also looks dazed and defeated. Ziggy watches both women with sudden tenderness, touched by their intimidation. Slowly, Ms. Hawthorne regains an upright posture in her chair.

  “Okay, Ziggy,” says the principal. “I think it’s fair to say we may be a bit behind the curve here at Kandara. What would you say, Kate?”

  Kate remains staring at her hands. She mumbles something.

  “Speak up, dear.”

  “I didn’t read the song names.”

  Ziggy still feels that Kate is missing the point. “I don’t think our formal committee should be chaired by someone who hasn’t even seen Schindler’s List.”

  “What has that got to do with anything?” Kate is getting weepy.

  “I shouldn’t have to explain it to you.”

  The principal starts again to crumple, then thrusts herself heroically to the front edge of her seat. “Kate—I think it would b
e best if you went home tonight and watched the movie.”

  Kate nods at the floor. Ziggy strokes the GoPro lovingly.

  “Well, this was productive,” chirps the headmistress, rising quickly to her feet. “Kate is going to learn all about the Holocaust, and, Kate”—their principal gives a curt, disciplinary nod—“this afternoon please take the birdcage home with you.”

  Kate sinks blobby into her chair, blank-faced as a mollusk.

  “And, Ziggy, perhaps you can be patient with us as we learn together what it means to be tolerant and inclusive as Kandara girls.” The headmistress smiles, beseechingly. “Let’s please try to keep the teaching moments confined to this campus.”

  Ziggy nods vaguely and collects her sun hat. She refits the GoPro glasses, rises, and steps back out into the day. From the second-floor balcony of the administrative offices, the harbor view looks even grander and more sweeping. Or perhaps this is the camera. The breeze slaps Ziggy’s shirt flat across her chest and she stands there for a moment, enjoying the cool hard contours.

  AFTER HER SUCCESS IN MS. HAWTHORNE’S OFFICE, Ziggy has new fervor for her cause. She labels her surveillance folder “Impeachment,” and begins fantasizing about a formal run by herself and Patricia Katsatouris, where everyone has to wear a silly hat and take their first cousin. She starts stalking the Cates through Bondi Junction, hiding behind potted plants and between the bamboo thicket of a beloved water feature. But the girls seem inhibited in front of Lex. They never say “yaysian” anymore, not even about Fliss’s anthropomorphic phone case with its sparkly eye-lashes and bejeweled red lips. Ziggy considers sending some raw footage to the queer subreddit; their ears are more attuned than hers and she might be missing some egregious syntax. But first, Ziggy decides to attend the school swimming carnival. With all the half-naked female bodies—many of which are not white or solarium-bronze—Ziggy anticipates a rich occasion for racial bullying.

  The Sydney International Aquatic Centre still has a mythical aura from thirteen years earlier when Australia hosted the Olympics. Ziggy’s parents still spoke wistfully about that historical time in the lives of Sydney-siders. The streets had been electric with interlopers. The borders were opened (just not to asylum-seekers) and Herculean supermen had poured in from mostly Europe and America. The world had traveled all the way to the isolated sporting nation, and Australia had shown the hospitality of a teenage pariah newly legal and possessing a limitless supply of fireworks. Their country had impressed. For one magical fortnight, Australia had been famous.

  To Ziggy, Kandara’s largest sporting contest appears to be an opportunity to prance around the Aquatic Centre in hot pants. The students are divided into three subunits called “houses,” each with its own corresponding color and clear-cut essentialism. Winchester is red, combative, bullish, and lesbian; Goodwin is blue, slothful, and perennially menstruating; Eldridge is green and peppy and seems to have a lot of bake sales. The war cries are similarly specialized. Eldridge sets its chants to Justin Bieber; Goodwin prefers a darker Miley Cyrus ballad; and the Winchester girls sync their lyrics to Drake, substituting “neighbor” for the n-word. Most of the day is spent on the bleachers, posting photos to social media.

  Concealed by the tint of her wraparound glasses, Ziggy studies the strange shapes wet Lycra makes of the female pubis. Curly tufts cauliflower under damp fabric, and she notices small, dark stains on their sheeny mounds, where girls have laughed too hard or their reproductive cycles are seeping. Thanks to the camera, Ziggy doesn’t have to wear a bathing suit and waddle around in flip-flops and a swim cap. She is sure the Cates would have seen her bony chest and pronounced cranium and called her a concentration camp survivor.

  Instead of participating, Ziggy spends her day trailing the Cates around the Aquatic Centre, and recording their cruel observations. But by lunch, there is a disappointing lack of racial taunting. Or maybe they are just being cautious around Lex. Their new friend might not have fully internalized white patriarchy yet, and Ziggy is sure that overt racism would still move Lex to defect. For a few seconds she fantasizes about the two of them cochairing the formal committee and banning straight hair altogether. And then Ziggy watches Lex point out two scholarship students whose hot pants show camel toes. Tessa once told Ziggy that this effect occurs in cheaper pants where they scrimp on fabric at a crucial panel over the crotch. Another ploy of patriarchal capitalism—to associate the well-defined vulva with the poor and powerless. But Lex doesn’t appear to be giving the feminist-Marxist reading. She whispers something to Cate, and the two of them laugh loudly at the underprivileged vaginas.

  But Ziggy holds out for race and is rewarded. When Lex wanders down to the diving blocks for her heat, Ziggy sees the Cates sneak off under the bleachers. She hurries after them and hides behind a large blue trash can. From here, she films Kate haul herself up one of the bleacher’s steel struts while Cate plays a rap song on her iPhone. Ziggy witnesses a pole dance of extraordinary cultural insensitivity. The flexy blonde twerks from eight feet in the air, spinning herself upside down, then twerking faster. Her friends are laughing. She crumps and twerks and bounces in a split, inches off the ground. It is obvious why the girls snuck away. If Lex saw their sordid cultural appropriation, she would be horrified. If there is one behavior Lex will not abide, it is white girls trying to be women of color. Kate’s dance isn’t the racist chorus Ziggy had hoped to capture, but she has definitely filmed something valuable.

  Immediately, Ziggy Snapchats her footage to Lex and then locks herself inside a toilet stall. Ziggy waits here, imagining Lex’s reaction; her fury cooling to hatred, the sudden panic and intense longing for her clumsy but caring former friend. But Lex doesn’t respond to Ziggy’s Snapchat. Instead, minutes later, Ziggy receives a Facebook notification. Lex Cameron has liked a photo from Kate Fairfax’s album, “Babe Watch: Swimming Carnival Edition.” Clicking through the leggy compositions, Ziggy’s rage focuses to a cold white point in the center of her forehead. It is from here that she begins to correct Kate Fairfax’s spelling. The careless pole dancer leaves comments like “amaze hot” and “babest,” so Ziggy writes snarky grammar tutorials, closing with a smiley face or giant thumbs-up. Ziggy extends her critique to an older album titled “Best Friend Eva,” where she finds a photo of Kate papering over a dilapidated brick wall with a giant photocopied selfie of Cate. “happy bday, boo,” is the caption, and under it, over three hundred likes. Ziggy leaves her appraisal: a concise paragraph about the gentrification of Aboriginal neighborhoods and how street art appropriated by wealthy private school girls is a form of cultural whitewashing that erases minority voices. Seconds later, Ziggy is unfriended. She messages Lex.

  Hello?? Kate is appropriating black culture!

  So what?

  Ziggy is baffled. Maybe Lex finds Kate’s dance flattering? Maybe there is such a thing as cultural homage? Still, it seems too convenient.

  So? So ur black!

  I’m a PoC. Bangladesh is in Asia.

  Ziggy’s stomach drops. This whole time, Lex has never been black. She scrambles.

  So then who’s allowed to twerk?

  Idk Ziggy? a Jew who wears a on her head??

  I wouldn’t dare.

  Whatever. Ur the fetishist.

  KATE is the fetishist! and she’s whiter than me! and u HATE whiteness!??!

  No Ziggy I hate fakeness and u are full of .

  Lex’s tolerance for the Cates is bewildering. She doesn’t even understand what Lex is doing with these girls. Or what, for that matter, she was doing with Tessa. The answer might be as simple as: there are no woke students at their private Anglican girls’ school. But maybe it is much more complicated, an elaborate personal narrative built from a complex system of meanings that Ziggy has missed or no one has told her about. Perhaps something she skimmed too fast on Wikipedia. The only thing Ziggy knows for certain is that Kate Fairfax has done something deplorable and deserves to be exposed, reprimanded, and removed from office. In a final atte
mpt to stay afloat on the rough sea of political correctness, Ziggy sends her video to the queer women of color subreddit. But not before she has doctored it for the purposes of clarity. When she gets home, Ziggy follows her brother’s instructions, and in the gray space around Kate’s pole dance, she adds some black back-up dancers. Just to be crystal clear that the over-entitled white girl is stealing from black culture. The finished clip makes her giggle and Ziggy worries she might have a tonal issue. She posts it anyway.

  wtf australia?

  what r u, aussie miley cyrus??

  But that’s exactly Ziggy’s point.

  i’m just highlighting how the dance is racist!

  we don’t need u 2 highlight our oppression 4 us

  allyship doesn’t mean powerpoints

  crocodile dundee 2 the rescue

  the white savior from down under

  Ziggy can accept that she is not an individual, rather a symbol of systemic oppression deserving of online dehumanization. But the geographical slur really pisses her off.

  u know that down under thing is kind of offensive?

  Now the moderator steps in.

  ziggy_lestrapon, u post any more videos & I will block u.

  Ziggy doesn’t understand their aggression.

  but the dancer is the transphobe from my school!!

  male gazing transphobes is still not ok

  yeh y is the camera right on her ass?

  Ziggy considers this, perhaps too briefly.

  because she’s pretending 2b black!

  Ziggy is blocked. She can’t believe it. The video was only meant to be funny at Kate’s expense, not anyone else’s. But Jake was right: feminists have no sense of humor. For several minutes Ziggy sits, paralyzed by anger and confusion, playing the day’s events over in her mind. She looks out her window, and the world appears staticky and unreal. The tall topiary sways in the breeze, imperiously offended. In her gut, Ziggy has the cool, wriggly sense of total wrongness in the world. Something the Germans must have a good word for, which they do not now deign to share. Instead, Hitler Youth return to compound Ziggy’s despair, insisting that she is still a misogynist. Which reminds her: there is one more place to send the video. Unsurprisingly, the Red Pill loves Ziggy’s work.