Donald Keough, News Editor–
The Bandersnatch was packed shoulder to shoulder on Oct. 10, as students watched the Denison’s first performative male competition. These competitions have become a trend at universities across the U.S.
William Tutt ‘29, the winner of this year’s competition, describes the “performative male” as someone who performs a certain personality for women by adopting a fake identity to get their attention.
“The true spirit of a performative male is a man who has no idea what he’s talking about, but is just doing it to impress women,” Tutt said. “They hate matcha, but they sip on a matcha every day, just hoping that one day a girl looks at them and is like, ‘Oh my God, I love matcha.’”
This person might also be seen as someone who knows one song on the guitar purely to show off, or the guy who “reads feminist literature,” but doesn’t truly value feminist ideals.
For example, the final question of the event asked the performer how they felt about the pink tax, which is a term describing disproportionate pricing of gender-based goods, such as hygiene products. Participants would then give a wide-range of disingenuous responses.
The competition was open to any willing student. In total, 25 students performed their best impression of this performative personality by going on-stage and answering questions asked by the emcee Tionna Wear ‘28.
There were three rounds, which included an introduction, preliminary and final round. Eliminations started in the preliminary round, and the final round featured the five best performers. Winners of each round were decided by the level at which the audience cheered, and the event ran for about two hours.
Their outfits ranged from tote bags filled with niche CDs and feminine health products, corded headphones and dangling crystal jewelry. Many wore eye liner and painted their nails.
Tutt went all-in during the competition. He brought a tote bag, with feminine literature and health products, and made sure to verbally exaggerate his feelings toward issues that women face through his acting.
“I went full on with the like, ‘I cry every time I hear that a woman has a period cramp,’” Tutt said. “I just tried to fully embody that personality.”
Tutt attributed much of his success in the competition to his friend group’s support. They helped put together his outfit and build his personality.
“At the end, I said a genuine speech, because I would not have been able to win if it weren’t for all my friends telling me who Clairo was,” Tutt said. Clairo is a American-singer songwriter with a largely younger-woman audience. “I don’t listen to any of her music, so they gave me a ton of recommendations.”
He noted that he thought his high-energy also helped him achieve first place, saying he gave “110 percent at all time.” He was confident during the competition about his chances of winning but he never broke character, and when asked during the performance whether he would win or not, he said “They’re women in the competition, so I hope they win.”
Part of his strategy was audience engagement. Tutt made sure to address most of the crowd.
“I was one of the very few people to incorporate the whole audience,” Tutt said. “I was like, ‘I realize there’s some beautiful, incredible, talented women on the sides of the audience right now, but we’re only speaking to the front. Let me address you and say thank you for coming to see us.’”
He also used part of his outfit to interact with the audience.
“I wore a jacket around my waist, and I was like, ‘Oh, because a performative man wouldn’t actually need a jacket. He would just carry it if a woman gets cold,’” Tutt said. “Later on I [took] it off and… threw it at one of my friends in the audience.”
He attributes his improv and comedic talent to his experience in acting. Tutt is a music theatre minor and is also interested in taking cinema classes. He eventually hopes to pursue film acting post college, but wants to begin with stage acting for job security sake.
He said that he was grateful that the Bandersnatch gave him the opportunity to act.
“I love to do random theater stuff and go out and have a fun time doing something as a joke,” Tutt said. “I mean, I personally, I hate things like Matcha tea, but it was super fun, and I would do it again. It was fun to dress up in character and look through my closet and be like, ‘what is the most performative thing I own?’”
His eccentric wardrobe and over-the-top personality while acting eventually won him the competition after three rounds of back and forth commentary with the MC. His winnings? A Snagel, a Shake, a poster of himself which will go on one of the Bandersnatch’s walls, a crown with the inscription “most performative male,” a feathered necklace and a pin that read “big day.”
Besides the gag gifts, Tutt was happy to receive the free food. Food at the Bandersnatch is one of the organization’s staples. They’re most known for their Snagels, which are bagels with an assortment of toppings, as well as milkshakes.
Since starting at Denison this fall, Tutt has said that he has enjoyed going to the Bandersnatch for events like this. He goes almost every weekend and has been to other events such as karaoke night.
“It’s kind of hard for sophomores, juniors and seniors to go [to the Bandersnatch], because it’s kind of on the Freshman Quad, but it’s really nice,” Tutt said, adding that a lot of people come during the weekend, typically in waves as events end elsewhere.
Since the beginning of the year, the Bandersnatch has seen more engagement with the community than in last year.
“I’d say we have a good amount of freshmen coming in, especially for movie nights,” Wear said, referring to the Sunday night movie nights they have been hosting. “I think they’re looking for connection and they want to make more friends [since] they’re new on campus.”
She also noted that there are still “a good amount of upperclassmen coming into the Bandersnatch.”
In addition to being the emcee for the event, Wear is also the events manager for the Bandersnatch. She said that she was pleased at how the event turned out.
“I’m certain that was the most people I’ve ever seen at the Bandersnatch,” Wear said.
The microphone batteries died during the event, so she had to strain her voice throughout the night, but nevertheless Wear said that she had a great time.
“Everyone had a lot of energy and a lot of stuff to offer,” Wear said. “At the start of the night, I was going through the rules, and every time I’d be like, ‘if you do this, I’m gonna kick you out, the entire audience would cheer. I think that was the most fun part. I think both the audience and the contestants really went into the competition.”
The other managers along with Wear came up with the event at the beginning of the year, and Wear did a majority of the planning, such as coming up with questions or helping publicize the event. She found inspiration for many of her questions while scrolling through TikTok or by looking up common beauty pageant questions.
“I think the question that I was most proud of was at the end of the night, [when] I asked one of the guys, ‘are you a good listener?’ and he was like ‘yeah’ and I was like, ‘okay, what’s my name?’ and he didn’t know it,” Wear said.
Wear also has improv experience, as she is a Theatre major and is in the Burpee’s Seedy Theatrical Company, Denison’s improv group. She is also a black studies major.
Looking ahead, Wear hopes that the Bandersnatch can feature more events similar in nature.
“I would love to have more music, more theater, more improv and more artsy events in the Bandersnatch.”
Student run events of this genre are similar to the establishment’s traditional vision. Founded in 1965, the Bandersnatch has featured student bands, musical performances and acting-centered events throughout its history. So far, Wear has said that she’s found it to be easy to get events into the Bandersnatch.
“I feel like I have a lot of connections to people in other clubs, and so it’s really easy for me to be like, ‘Would your club want to do anything in our space?’” Wear said.
“But… people also just really want to use the space, and they’re excited to use it this year.”
So far, Wear has seen good turnouts at events this year, like the Sunday movie nights.
“We’ve been getting good crowds, and I’ve heard from the other managers that Thursdays have been much busier this year than they were in the years prior,” Wear said. “I would say we’re doing pretty good business wise.”
She also said meetings with the other managers are positive.
“Every single meeting that we have together, it starts with ‘We’re doing so good. Everything’s working out,’” Wear said.
There has also been a good turn out in terms of student workers this year, according to Wear.
“We’ve had a good amount of people apply to work at the Bandersnatch this semester, and I’ve already had a lot of people ask me if they could apply next semester,” Wear said. It’s a great place to get some of your work done. All of my friends come in and they say hi, and there are obviously stressful nights, but I’d say for the most part, I just love working at the Bandersnatch.”
In the future, Wear hopes to host similar events to this past event.
“If I could emcee again at another Bandersnatch event, I would absolutely love to,” Wear said. “I would just make sure that we had plenty of batteries.”