I am currently a Master’s student in the Cultural Studies and Critical Theory Program at McMaster University. I am funded by the university itself, the gracious Ontario government (who I will never tell that I have absolutely no plans on staying in this province despite their nice donation to my education) and a bunch of dead people who believed so much in academia that they donated money to establish scholarship funds for brilliant and talented people like myself.

It sounds so impressive. In a few short months I will be Erin Marie Balser, BScH, MA. Everyone should be so jealous of my academic prowess. Well, some people are. Usually, its urbanites and suburbanites who grew up knowing that they- or their children- were going to go to university. Guaranteed. (I’m from a small town where some people think the fact I am still in school and not yet married makes me a complete and utter failure).

However, I often wonder about this dichotomy and who is right when it comes to graduate school. What exactly am I doing here?

Last semester, I wrote a paper about Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.

I’m not even kidding. Yes, it was about how their metaphysical identity is in conflict with their physical identities and how that complicates the idea of celebrity, but that is beside the point.

The point is: I wrote a paper about Mary- Kate and Ashley Olsen.

This is the very reason graduate school is ridiculous.

My sisters and I played ‘guess which Olsen twin’ whenever we watched Full House. The differences between the twins were trivial: handedness, a small freckle on the lip, and a myriad of other minute details that we memorized. Judging by the intense and lasting fame of Mary-Kate and Ashley over the past twenty years, we were not alone in this fascination. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are perhaps the most famous twins in Hollywood; they turned being twins into an enterprise. Capitalizing on society’s infatuation with twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley are prolonging a largely talentless, but brilliantly managed career. They preceded Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan and others, taking their fan base from film and television into the marketplace. Their company, Dualstar Entertainment Group has an estimated net worth of one billion dollars. In the public eye, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are not two celebrity personalities, but one, known as “The Olsen Twins”, complicating the very idea and the function of the ‘celebrity’. Can a single celebrity identity successfully exist in two different bodies? How will the transition from “The Olsen Twins”, child stars, to Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen, adult actresses and fashion icons, affect their celebrity? Celebrity theory often confines the idea of a celebrity to a single body. Mary-Kate and Ashley demonstrate otherwise. Using Mary-Kate and Ashley as the representative case-study, I will identify ‘twinness’ as celebrity in itself- a single celebrity that is of two bodies- and discuss its implications for the understanding and interpreting various celebrity theories. This Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen represent the fluid and arbitrary nature of celebrity while evoking new definitions for the concept of celebrity as a whole.

In the sixth grade, Ms. Adams was my teacher. She tried so hard to make us like school and like learning. This is always difficult in a public school system where most of the kids are counting the days until they can fish in the winter and draw unemployment in the summer. She tried nonetheless, coming up with ways to look at literature and science that made us gasp or think, even if it was for just a minute. I tried so hard in her class. I wanted her to like me.For one assignment, Ms. Adams wanted us to analyse a poem. I used to love doing that. Taking a piece of work and deconstructing it. It made me feel smart to point out the inadequacies in others’ work. The poem was dumb. It was about a staircase. And apparently the staircase was supposed to represent life. So I wrote my response. I wanted to make witty and insightful comments about the hilarity of falling and splinters and how ridiculous the idea is of comparing life to ascending a staircase. How can life be linear? Especially when stairs are hard to climb? Take an elevator, damn it! If you are lucky enough to get a glass one, you get an easy ride and a great view!

But that is not what I wrote. Being eager, idealistic, and less hilarious than I am now, I actually worked hard on that assignment. I actually tried.

The hardest part about grad school is getting in.

It’s true. Once you are in, you do some readings, write some papers, talk about stuff, and then at the end you get another pretty peace of paper written in a language you don’t understand. But that sounds like any arts degree, is what you are thinking. That may be, but last semester I passed in a paper three weeks late. When it was returned, the comments on it were: (these are slightly paraphrased)

Your
thesis
is fundamentally
flawed, your arguments
are weak,
your conclusion is
superficial and I believe
you misread your primary text.

A!

(It is very important to note that these comments were not on my paper about Mary-Kate and Ashley).

What is the point in even trying when the final grade refutes all the previous comments? No one ever looks at comments! Maybe if I was getting C-, I’d try to improve. But why bother? Its like telling Michael Jordan to work on his jump-shot. No, wait, Michael Jordan was actually good at one point. It’s like telling Brad Pitt to take an acting class. He’s not very good! Yet, he is consistently and significantly rewarded for mediocre work.

The picture personality is a difficult construction, since the perception of self, the private persona and the public persona are all connected within a single identity, yet only limited features are presented in the realm of celebrity. Rojek expanded on George Herbert Mead’s idea of the I and the Me to celebrities and their identities:

Celebrity status always implies a split between a private self and a public self……….the split between the I (the ‘veridical’ self) and the Me (the self as seen by others) is the human condition, at least since ancient times, in Western society. The public presentation of self is always a staged activity, in which the human actor presents a ‘front’ or a ‘face’ to others while keeping a significant portion of the self on reserve (11).

For celebrities, the Me is compounded by the overly public presentation of self. This often results in confusion and distress, for it is difficult to balance a private I (oh I am hilarious EVEN in academic papers) with a very public Me. Rojek discusses several celebrities who had difficulty with this differentiation and with the influence the I and the Me had on each other. He states

For the celebrity, the split between the I and the Me is often disturbing. So much so that celebrities frequently complain of identity confusion and the colonization of the veridical self by the public face (11).

If attempts to balance the private I and the public We are frustrating for celebrities of a single body, imagine the difficulty for someone who not only needs to separate his/her public and private self but also these selves from their other. That is, how does twin individualization affect the representation and interpretation of the I and the Me?

Now I know that when I go to apply for things and actually attempt to be financially self sufficient, this may hurt me in the end. But I will not blame myself, but rather the flawed and archaic system that spawned me, that puts emphasis on process rather than product and takes pride in believing it deviates from the norm (all these are illusions instilled on the university in hopes that they can mask their own demise. But I digress).

So I wrote my assignment for Ms. Adams. I was a messy writer then- still am, but thanks to the gods of technology the only time I ever actually use a pen anymore is to sign rent checks- so I rewrote it in my best cursive. Cursive was new then. It was exciting and beautiful. We were supposed to get them back in a week, and then we were all going to discuss our interpretations. Maybe even have a debate! A debate! That’s huge in elementary school. In elementary school, you are not supposed to think for yourself. You are supposed to memorize time tables and learn the laws of grammar that will forever haunt you! So we all got our papers back and were divided into groups. Well, everyone but me. She made me the ‘moderator’ and told me I would get mine after class. So, pissed off and disappointed in Ms. Adams for keeping me from something I actually wanted to do, I kept time of how long everyone spoke and recorded participation. I was being punished for something, I was sure of it.

The only phrase you need to know is “I’m trying to work through this, but…”

Essentially, if you present yourself to be thinking about things, people think you are thinking about things. It’s the easiest façade in the world. The more incoherent you sound, the smarter people think you are. It’s actually the inverse of being drunk. Whereas what you write is more important than how you write, how you speak is more important that what you say.

There is a guy in my program who is completely obsessed with the big graph in Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth. I get his point! It’s a giant graph! It has no numbers! It symbolizes so many things! Science is a construction! Cybernetic analogies dominate contemporary discourse! A picture is worth a thousand words! Big graphs are hilarious! His point is important, but he reiterates it so often, if you stop and think about what he is saying, he comes across as a homeless obsessive compulsive schizophrenic whose had a few to many (I will make the proper donations to the various groups I offended with that statement later). But in the world of academia, he sounds do confused he must be on the verge of something brilliant. Or else he wouldn’t be saying anything at all.

R.C. Ainslie, a child psychologist, studied twins and the social reactions to twins. He claims cultural attitudes and predispositions of society towards twins draw attention to the closeness and support that exists in twin relationships. This attention only further strengthens these unique relations. In his study, Ainslie noted that

twinship is commonly perceived as being a uniquely close relationship, at times bordering on the supernatural, characterized by a special level of communicativeness and commitment to one another. Twins are by no means unaffected by beliefs such as these. In fact, they frequently identify with them strongly. Thus, it is not surprising to find that twins often characterize twinship in the same idealizing manner that non-twins do (Ainslie 118).

It is not surprising that twins would have exceptional relationships with their co-twin. The uniqueness of the twin experience only further emphasizes the twin relationship.

The unique relationship between twins is not only evident to observers, it can also be desirable. The twin relationship has been the source of considerable fantasy, as others have sought to find in it idealized qualities missing in their own lives and relationships (Ainslie 170). Within a romanticized idea of twinness, there appears to be a level of understanding, comfort and support that does not exist in the life of a ‘singleton’. Ainslie defines a singleton as a person without a twin (119). Singletons are fascinated- even envious- because twins represent a disintegration of the boundaries of the self:

there is something universally appealing and fascinating about the loss of individual boundaries…….This phenomenon can be understood as reflecting a wish to return to a symbiotic relationship- that is, a relationship characterized by a lack of self- object differentiation in which one’s needs are magically understood and met (Ainslie 119).

This loss of the boundaries of self also appeals to ideas of escapism and externalization. Inherent in twinness is the potential for a transient, temporary or interchangeable identity (Ainslie 126). Your identity is permanently defined by and is interconnected with the identity of another individual when you are a twin. Twins allow us to get caught of in the romantic ideals of a fluid identity, permanent companionship, and authentic support and compassion from another individual.

After the debate, Ms. Adams made us return our desks to their normal position. I did so hastily, thankful ‘moderating’ was over. “Class, I did this because I wanted you to learn from each other,” she said. “Everything, and everyone, can be your teacher. I want to read this to you. In hopes you learn from it.” As she began to slowly read the paper, I realized it was my essay. I turned bright red and started to squirm. Of course, everyone in the class noticed this, and turned to look at me. “Erin, you have a lot of promise,” she said to me. She turned to the class and said “Erin is a writer. You can teach yourself to write, you can learn to write, but a writer is a rare creature. I just hope you all find your talents and use them to teach others.” She then returned my paper back to me. It had a gold star and a bright red Fantastic!! scrawled across the top.

I don’t remember what I wrote that was so brilliant. Maybe I was as convoluted as my friend that Ms. Adams assumed whatever I was saying had to be fantastic. Or I perfectly reiterated what she wanted to hear. What she needed to hear. Maybe what I wrote validated all her efforts to inspire us.

I will be less employable after this degree than I was before.

In grad school, deadlines don’t matter. Attire doesn’t matter. Now, if you took an entry level job at a fortune 500 company, showed up late, wore pajamas, smoked in your office, took a three hour lunch and promised you’d have the memo in ‘when it was ready’ you’d be fired in two seconds. But in grad school, that’s the norm. Essentially, if I looked like Mary-Kate and Ashley (as in homeless) and talked like Woody Allen (as in rambling incoherently) I’d probably have tenure right now. But I don’t think I can buy into that.

The people I know at home are working hard to provide for their families. A lot fo their lives are simple. But when I go home. They seem so much happier than me. Than my friend. Then Mary-Kate and Ashley. And if Woody Allen didn’t write every movie so that he hooked up with someone 50 years younger than him, they’d be happier than he is. Well, even without that, they probably are.

Why is it not possible for the interest, and the name, to be on two bodies? There are no physical limitations for such. Mary-Kate and Ashley began as a single public body (refer to figure 1A), from which a single name was derived (“The Olsen Twins”). This name was then reapplied to two bodies, but always in the context that these bodies were necessarily related to each, that these bodies existed in the same temporal space (refer to figure 1B). Their picture personality is dependant on the two bodies that exist in a single identity and the relationship between these two bodies, between these bodies and the characters in their films. Their constant replication of ‘twins playing twins’ impacts their picture personalities in the following ways: first, they never film separately from each other, save when they are playing the same character. Second, this lack of deviation from their own lives blurs the line between Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, actresses and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, normal teenage girls. Since one twin has never appeared without the other, their twinness and consistent representation of twinness in films has resulted not in two celebrities who consistently work with each other- a very common phenomenon in Hollywood- but rather, picture personalities that do not exist without its other. Since the existence of one twin is a non-existence, the picture personality requires both bodies in order to actually manifest as a picture personality.

When I was in the sixth grade, I though school was important. I though I needed to be great at it in order for it to mean anything. I didn’t understand the kids who thought it was the biggest waste of time ever. I felt so bad for Ms. Adams, up there trying so hard. I tried so hard so she wouldn’t have too.

Even if the poems she made us read were dumb.

It has finally caught up to me though. It only took ten years, but I finally understand what those airplane throwing, gum-smacking kids in the back. This class is not providing me with a linear advancement towards my future goals. It is difficult and confusing and a waste of my time. (Now I am pretty sure they were thinking: Fuck this shit, man. This fucking sucks, seeing as the sixth grade was when fuck became cool, but our sentiments are the same).

You won’t find yourself in graduate school.

Graduate school has showed me several things. But what it has showed me the most is that I am as lost as I ever was and I won’t find myself within an institution. I need to find myself in me. Grad school just delays that process.

When I wrote my Mary-Kate and Ashley paper, I did it because I thought it would be hilarious. By the end of it, I felt insanely sorry for them. (Once I remember they have approximately 1.5 billion dollars more than I did, this subsided greatly). They are just as lost I am, as we all are. But they additionally have to navigate through being a twin and being a celebrity whereas I just need to navigate through myself (At least now I know why Mary-Kate starves herself). Ms. Adams was trying to find herself through her work, trying to show herself what she does matters. I really hope I- and other students who were as eager-eyed as I was back then- gave that to her. I wanted grad school to prevent that for me, that when I got out, I know what I was supposed to do. I didn’t want to stumble through a career to find out I hate it. But that is what I am doing now. Stumbling.

I wanted a twin when I was little. I thought it would be so cool. To have someone who understands me completely. So I wouldn’t have to ramble like this in hopes people get it.

At least writing that paper helped me understand why.

I’m not saying don’t go. I’ve met interesting people who want to talk about the most bizarre things. I’ve had classes where K-Fed, fantasy sports leagues, Al Gore, Nova Scotia, fafrazzi.com (this website is brilliant), Kant, the current Canadian government and its various policies, George Bush, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Hegel and Tom Selleck’s mustache were put to serious and complicated debates. I’ve learned a lot, about the world and about myself, but I’ve also felt more lost than I ever had before.

I guess what I am saying is, grad school is not what I expected. It is far more ridiculous.

And so are Mary-Kate and Ashley.