Women Behaving Badly: Female Speakers Backstage

In this paper I explore women's (and girls') self-presentation in contexts where they seem most relaxed, most off-record, drawing on Goffman's concept of 'backstage'. In particular, I shall focus on those aspects of women's backstage performance of self which do not fit prevailing norms of femininity, in other words, women's performances of 'not-nice' selves, as well as reports of – and fantasies about – behaving 'badly'. The analysis will draw on a corpus of spontaneous conversation involving girl and women friends. It will be argued that the backstage talk possible only with close friends provides women with an arena where norms can be subverted and challenged and alternative selves explored. But it also needs to be acknowledged that in an important sense such talk helps to maintain the heteropatriarchal order, by providing an outlet for the frustrations of frontstage performance.