Faking it

I'm looking into how Malcolm "Woody" Woodcock presents his personality and identity during his conversion from bike courier to Polo player, in the program 'Faking It'.

  In the beginning we meet Malcolm as he feels comfortable, using Goffman's ideas of self-presentation, his performance is very sincere. The personalized clothing that he chooses to wear is part of his personal style, building up his persona. Also, his bike plays a large part to his staging as it's used by him every day and therefore influences how most people will view him. At this point in his life he doesn't have other people to represent him as part of a team, or to be able to back up his staging. Malcolm also, at this time, seems to have a very small gap between his self-image and ideal self, causing him to have a high self-esteem. He also uses his tattoos as a mask, to show his persona through staging meaning people view him by stereotyping how he looks. His personal style comes through in the ponytail that he keeps growing; it seems to be an important part of his persona to him and how he identifies himself.

  When he first arrives at the polo centre he immediately starts using cognitive dissonance, when asked if he had ever ridden a horse before he told them he hadn't, even though he had previously said that he had when he was younger. This was done so that if he was poor at riding a horse, he could pass it of as being his first time. One of the first changes that are made to him is that his ponytail and facial hair are shaved off, this would make him feel vulnerable as some of his staging and masks have been removed. He then is given new clothes to try on, here he' s constantly dismissing everything that he tries on. This could be because his self-esteem is becoming smaller as he no longer has some of his masks, causing him to be less confident and therefore change his personal style. Within his training he uses more self-maintenance strategies to protect himself. Malcolm decided not to practice on the wooden horse when told to do it whenever he had some free time, so when he was actually on the horse he had reasoning if he was bad at it rather than finding out how well he could do.

   Another aspect of the sport of polo he had to learn was the codes needed when at a match. Malcolm struggled with the codes, as he wasn't used to the type of team that he was surrounded with. A dinner that he attended highlighted the high culture of polo with the cost being £100 a head. At this dinner Malcolm gave a very cynical performance as he didn't have any of his ideal persona to help with his performance. Previous to this meal he played his first chukker in a match that was important to the team. Yet again, Malcolm used cognitive dissonance to protect him, he drank with the stable hands before the match meaning he had a hangover whilst playing the match. The stable hands showed the sort of team that Malcolm felt more comfortable in.