GLAM I Am

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"Of course, being GLAM is about looking fabulous," she says, "but it's also about putting gender theory into practice. It's taking people's preconcieved notions about gender and sexuality and appearance and mixing them up. The result is that everybody has a lot more options."

"So if I walk down the street in lipstick and a typically feminine dress and high heels," Peterson adds, "then I kiss this girl or hold this boy's hand, people ask themselves, 'Who does she sleep with?' It gives us freedom to break down stereotypes."

The überfemmy clothes—especially when they're worn by girls who call themselves dykes—alter people's perceptions about what a queer person is supposed to look like, say the Lady Misses, who claim that both gender and sexuality are social constructs. And besides, it's fun to dress up.

"In high school, I owned two dresses. They were both black and they were for performing in orchestras," Steinmetz confesses, her glittery dog collar and hair clips reflecting the sun. A serious, studious teenager, she grew up in suburban Chicago, keeping her revolutionary fervor (and extravagant GLAM style) under wraps until she went away to Carleton in Northfield, Minnesota. There she met Peterson, the yin to her yang, and things started to change. In her freshman year, Steinmetz (in no particular order) shaved her head, switched her major from physics to studio art, came out as a lesbian, and started wearing pink cocktail dresses to class.

"I realized that regular femininity wasn't the only option," she says. "My gender could be performative. I could use the feminine to my advantage, creating a version of femininity that's independent of masculinity, and exposes heterosexual femininity as a parody of itself."

The Fabulous Lady Misses, then romantically linked, began prancing around Northfield, preaching the gospel of genderfuck and making a name for themselves in the tiny college town. One day a professor half-jokingly suggested that they write a manifesto. The idea clicked. So Steinmetz and Peterson, who grew up in Plainfield, Illinois, and spent three years in an exclusive math and science boarding school, hit the library and gave birth to their magnum opus.

Based loosely on other famous manifestos, Dada and Fluxus, The GLAM Manifesto became a call to arms, a detailed explanation of the methodology behind the Lady Misses' carefully cultivated personal style. There's serious stuff and funny stuff, too. Article II, "The Life of the GLAM Revolutionary," for instance, lists such GLAM role models as David Byrne, RuPaul, Evita Perón, Cindy Sherman, Xena: Warrior Princess, Bettie Page, and "the GLAM Princess formerly known as Prince."

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