“Look, see? Feminism!”

The National Junior Classical League’s 2021 costume choices are an ironic nod to their annual carelessness.

[Photo by Vlad Kutepov on Unsplash.]

The NJCL has announced the costume choices for their 2021 convention. At first glance, the options look good — well-balanced, strong female characters and different names for the categories. However, these supposed changes crack upon further examination.

Next year’s costumes feature new titles: “male” and “female” have been replaced by “individual,” and the controversial “couple’s” costume has been renamed as “pair.” The individuals are Patroclus and Camilla, and the pair is Cloelia and Horatius Cocles.

Patroclus and Achilles are famous in the world of classics for the nature of their relationship. It is widely debated whether the pair is in love or just very, very close friends. The romantic tone of their relationship was even recognized by many scholars of the time, perhaps most notably by Plato. Yet it is likely that the same people who staunchly argue that their relationship is (ironically) platonic would also protest the inclusion of the two as the “pair” costume. And why? Students are allowed to dress up as any character regardless of their own gender. So if it is not a problem of fewer students being able to participate based on gender (not to mention the complete lack of options for nonbinary students, as my colleague Hannah Dubb has pointed out), there are only two reasons why the JCL chooses a male-female option every year.

The first is that the JCL and its participants find themselves uncomfortable providing representation for the LGBTQ+ community. The organization would be met with uproar if they attempted a same-sex pair option. Time and time again, the NJCL has shown that they are willing to sacrifice accurate, respectful representation of oppressed groups for the sake of keeping their fanbase mollified. This is especially important from a financial perspective — the JCL needs its participants to register so that it can continue to provide this dangerous representation of oppressed groups. The financial support of the NJCL is a cycle that allows them to continue upholding only the most privileged of groups. It must be expensive to keep this up, which may be why each ticket is hundreds of dollars. Only students with money to spare can attend, and once they get there, they are met with open hostility toward anyone who does not look like their perception of Rome. The NJCL puts its energy and resources into ostracizing outsiders, a concept that is fundamentally Roman.

There is another reason why the NJCL will not use a same-sex duo as the pair option, even if Achilles and Patroclus were portrayed as strictly friends. The organization knows its audience. The JCL knows that referring to the couple option as the “pair option” this year is meaningless, which is why they have not changed anything about the nature of the category. It is still a male-female pairing. Referring to the singular male and female options as the “individual options” is similarly meaningless. This year, the convention will provide a male option, a female option, and a male-female pair, which is exactly what they do every year. There is nothing revolutionary about renaming the rules.

Camilla and Cloelia are similarly tone deaf choices. Camilla is raised as a virgin and a warrior — a follower of Artemis — and refuses to ever have sex or marry. She is killed by Aruns for fighting on the side of Turnus against Aeneas. Cloelia is a virgin teenager who leads a group of virgin female hostages to safety. She gets this idea from Mucius, a male character who has executed a similar plan. She then saves the young male hostages. The girls’ escape occurs while they are bathing; this scene needlessly depicts the girls as naked, likely to sexualize them.

Both women perform in a traditionally masculine way. Cloelia bases her act of heroism off of male acts. Camilla is a hunter and warrior. As a culture, we view male ideals of heroism as the standard, to the point at which we don’t even know what it means or looks like to be a strong woman. We can only understand strength in the context of manhood. This is why we are so impressed by Camilla’s hunting and Cloelia’s rescuing. We view these qualities as masculine and, thus, deserving of admiration. The fact that they’re women is almost confusing, but the NJCL is taking it as girl power and will not dig any deeper.

Would Cloelia be considered a hero if she were not using masculine standards of heroism? Would she be considered a hero if she were not already a “good girl”? Cloelia conforms to the Roman ideals of purity and patriotism. She is a chaste young woman doing her very best to help her country. She is heroic not on her own terms, but because she learned from a man.

Would Camilla be considered brave if she were not using masculine standards of bravery? Would she be considered a good role model if she were not also a virgin, pure and nonthreatening? Camilla’s base character is very similar to Cloelia’s; both characters are nothing more than an ideal Roman girl allowed a little bit of male power.

So let’s review the NJCL’s choices:

1. A character known as half of a pair (likely in a gay relationship) in the individual category
2. A “girlboss”
3. Another “girlboss”
4. A male warrior who fought against Lars Porsena

At least the NJCL didn’t use its original pair choice, which was Cloelia and Lars Porsena, her abductor.

Cloelia and Camilla are cheap shots at activism, and the NJCL knows it. The female characters’ greatness is measured by their virginity and their traditionally masculine traits. They are not strong female characters.

Honestly, it’s difficult to find genuinely strong female characters in Greco-Roman myth. The stories were overwhelmingly written by and for men. They reflect the attitudes of the time; Rome was a horrible place to be for women. It is beyond me why the ACL has an annual convention to romanticize it for children. Roman history has been upheld to allow America to revel in its misogynistic, white supremacist culture. The NJCL’s convention, if they still find it appropriate to have one, must educate its participants on the bigoted history of Rome.

It cannot continue to judge which pair of children is dressed most accurately as the annual rapist/victim “couple”. It cannot continue to mock its female students with passages from children’s books. And it definitely cannot finally decide to turn it around, only to then offer pointedly “feminist” characters. Their choices this year are surface-level, meant to appease the same female voices that called them out last year for their Pygmalion/Galatea couple’s costume and Alice in Wonderland passages given to female competitors. The NJCL refuses to take female voices seriously, whether that be students participating in the convention or professionals in the field.

It is past time for the NJCL to reevaluate its place in the field of educational classics. It needs to examine whether it is fulfilling its purpose or simply causing harm to children in oppressed groups and teaching entitlement to the rest.