Crystal Ball Message Gets Foggy

Crystal Ball Message Gets Foggy
December 2007
By Mary Corcoran

Talked about by some upperclassmen as the event of spring quarter, Crystal Ball has certainly left its mark on Kalamazoo College; it is highlighted in college review books and sourced on Lesbian Gay Bi-Sexual Transgender Queer & Questioning websites, but on K’s very own campus, is Crystal Ball known for liberation or for controversy? Most K students know about the dance; many freshmen hear about it during their first few days on campus. However, what students often don’t hear is the story straight from the source.

Kaleidoscope, Kalamazoo College’s on campus LGBTQ group, sponsors the dance. Crystal Ball proposals as put forth to Student Commission in years past differ in terms of the dance’s intended purpose. For example, the 2003 proposal reads: "The purpose of Crystal Ball is to provide a safe environment for GLBT students to dance with their partners in a safe, public environment. Additionally, the best way to minimize homophobia is to put heterosexuals in contact with GLBT students in a positive environment." Two years later, the proposal had evolved. "...It allows our LGBT students to feel comfortable in an environment (the school dance) that traditionally overlooks or otherwise renders invisible gay and lesbian identities. The larger student population enjoys it for encouraging them to cast away gender norms and dress codes by coming whatever way you please—in drag, in costume, whatever..."

When the idea of performing gender came up in Dr. Jennifer Einspahr’s seminar on belonging and identity, she posed to her students that Crystal Ball may not be as liberating was originally intended.

According to Einspahr, safe spaces such as the dance, are traditionally created in order to avoid the “inevitability of misunderstanding,” allowing minority groups to explore themselves without fear of ostracization by finding comfort in the company of others with whom they share similar experiences. Often minorities’ concerns and experiences are discredited, and safe spaces are constructed in order to provide the recognition so frequently denied, she said.

“Gay K,” a nickname known to many in the greater Kalamazoo area, specifically, the Western Michigan community, emphasizes the need for safe space for gay and lesbian students, said Einspahr.

But some people on campus say that misunderstanding is very much a part of Crystal Ball and that upperclassmen have kept the dance alive, but have failed to pass down understanding and respect for Crystal Ball’s integrity. Upperclassmen, attendees of the dance in years past, have drawn attention to the growing trend among women to dress skimpily, instead of in drag.

Emily Thomas, a senior at K, and leader of Kaleidoscope, has “noticed a steady decline in taste since freshman year,” explaining that three years ago, the dance was attended in significantly more drag, with “overwhelming participation from female students.” For Thomas, Crystal Ball is intended to dispel the myth that women can’t wear drag. One of her goals for Crystal Ball ’08 is to “encourage people to stay true to the intention of Crystal Ball and wear drag. According to Thomas, last year was one of the worst she remembers, noting women were particularly scandalous in their attire, and drag was on the decline.

For many on K’s campus, risqué attire is what Crystal Ball has come to be known for—that and the overwhelming gender split between men who dress in drag and women who wear very little at all. This trend has led some students and faculty to question whether it is more socially acceptable for one sex to cross-dress than it is for the other.

To many students on campus, particularly freshmen, the link between gender and sexuality has not been bridged, nor is it being clarified by Crystal Ball. According to Einspahr, “learned ideas about gender have shaped the way we think about sexuality.”

In a survey of 70 freshmen, 56 had heard of Crystal Ball. Of those 56 students, less than half knew who sponsored the dance or could identify meaning with Crystal Ball’s cross-dressing. In the same pool, 24 students correctly identified it as a drag dance, and 13 described it simply as “slutty,” “sleazy,” or “naked.”

Emily Walker, a freshman, first heard about Crystal Ball while she was on LandSea. Her leader, a 2007 Kalamazoo College graduate, gave Walker the impression that “mostly boys dress like girls and girls just dress slutty.” And this made sense to her. “I think it would be more fun for boys to dress up as girls than it would be for girls to dress up as boys,” said Walker. Alex Bae, also a freshman, agreed. “For girls it will be hard because they always worry about their appearance,” he said.

Several women on campus, students and professors alike, have identified Crystal Ball as a fun night and a great dance, but at the same time, reject it as an event capable of raising awareness about gender and sexuality.

Members of POWER, the feminist group on campus, have mixed feelings about the dance. Several women agreed it is fun, but others view it as insulting and oppressive.

“I tend to be the radical member of POWER,” said Sara Goldstein, prefacing her explanation of how Crystal Ball mocks female oppression and perpetuates society’s greater acceptance of effeminate males and gay men, over masculine women and lesbians.

“It is profoundly offensive that men take amusement in dressing up in the pieces of women’s oppression,” said Goldstein. “Let’s mock the way women have been oppressed over the last 100 years.”

Goldstein, a senior applying to PhD programs in women’s studies, explains that all too often society spins being gay and lesbian and dressing masculine or feminine, in such a way that women are portrayed as “angry dykes,” and men are portrayed more softly, as “metrosexuals.”

According to Kaleidoscope, Crystal Ball aims to raise awareness and open minds in any way it can. “It is unfortunate that people are unaware of the struggle of people who are transgender, transsexual, or simply enjoy cross-dressing due to the social stigma placed upon them,” said Aaron Quinones, a leader of Kaleidoscope in an email. “Our event is aimed at allowing a place for people to represent their sexuality however they choose.”

Quinones characterizes Crystal Ball as “fun, outrageous, and controversial.” And is the dance or its attendees slutty? According to Quinones, it doesn’t matter one way or the other. “The bottom line is that Crystal Ball is an event where anyone and everyone can come and display their sexuality, whatever that may be and however they so choose. We can’t and shouldn’t deny people entry because they dress too risqué, or because they didn’t dress in drag,” he said in an email.

“It’s okay to be over sexualized,” said Dayna Doman, also a leader of Kaleidoscope. The dance is intended to open minds, and skimpy attire doesn’t undermine this point, she said.

A message, the one seemingly most lost in campus dialogue, is that, in Quinones’s words, Crystal Ball is “about abandoning judgment and having a good time while expressing a side of one’s sexuality that doesn’t always get expressed.”

Whether Crystal Ball’s original meaning has been distorted or not, according to Doman, “Any expression of your sexuality Kaleidoscope supports 100%.”