Created by Ngozi Ukazu, Check, Please! is the story of Eric “Bitty” Bittle, former figure skater and baking enthusiast, as he navigates through his college years on a varsity male hockey team full of big, supportive, and emotional jocks.
How does Bitty and his hazing methods exemplify his approach to gender performance?
Very simply put, gender performance are the actions, behaviors and symbols by which people express their gender identity. Traditionally speaking, they are the social norms that signal masculinity and femininity in society. For example, contemporary hegemonic American masculinity is performed by highly valuing labor and wages as integral parts of one’s identity, enjoying contact sports, and owning expensive commodities, such as a car, to demonstrate financial stability or affluence. As part of the grand scheme of gender, gender performance is culturally relative, which means that the ways to express gender vary between cultures and eras. Thanks to the work in the fields of gender, queer, and feminist studies, the long-established dichotomy of masculinity and femininity has been blurring together, acknowledging and making countless configurations of gender visible in society.
How does Bitty fit into gender performance then? Bitty’s overarching character arc in Check, Please! is finding inner and external acceptance with who he is. This is understandable considering the social contradictions of his upbringing. He’s the son of a football coach who doesn’t play football. Rather, he’s a gay hockey player and figure skater from in Georgia who’s obsessed with baking. Even though he identifies as male, his behaviors and symbols he identifies himself with are associated with femininity. This is what made Bitty such an oddity on the hockey team at first because all the other members didn’t seem to show any deviance in their gender performance. All of this, of course, changed with time, and Bitty is wholeheartedly accepted as part of the team, where he continues to teeter-totter between the lines of gender.
Credit: Ngozi Ukazu
A three-part panel.
First panel: A text box reading “Wednesday” is on the upper-left corner. Ford is holding up Bitty’s captain jersey while talking to Bitty, who’s behind her.
Ford: Wow Bits. So you’re going through with initiation?
Bitty: Of course! It’s tradition. And as a senior and captain, there is nothing more important to me than making sure members feel incorporated into the team!
Second panel: A close up of Bitty’s jersey as Ford hands it back to Bitty.
Ford: Well, don’t go easy on them, Bits!! This might be the only chance in your life you get to boss around a bunch of jocks.
Third panel: A close-up of Bitty at the door frame, a brightly lit room behind him, surrounding him in light. He’s daintily touching his cheek, a gleeful look on his face.
Bitty: Bossing around a bunch of jocks? Oh, lil’ ol’ me?
Credit: Ngozi Ukazu
A three-part panel.
First panel: A dark room in the Haus. Bitty is wearing his aviators again, hands behind him. This time he’s accompanied by Dex and Nursey, also wearing sunglasses. All three men are serious and intimidating.
Bitty: That was the last batch. Dex. Nursey.
Off-panel character: … Called it.
Second panel: Bitty is excitedly calling out instructions to characters off panel. He’s set against a bright yellow backdrop, surrounded by red excitement lines.
Bitty: No, you’re not on beat. Come on! Pose! Pose! The sooner you get it, the sooner this is over!
Third panel: Hops, Bully, and Louis are on the ice wearing black leotards and dancing. Bully is the only one quietly and gracefully succeeding.
Hops: This. Isn’t. Right.
Louis: This — is not my brand!!!
These shifts come naturally to Bitty as his queerness makes him comfortable switching between the camp southern boy and the tough hockey jock. They are not contradictions for him; both sides are integral facets of who he is, switching in and out of them however he sees fit. In fact, he seems to enjoy the disarming effect it has on people. He jokingly dismisses Ford from thinking he could ever boss jocks around. The comic then cuts to Bitty sternly delivering a set of instructions to the waffles. Throughout the chapter, Bitty’s demeanor shows traditional masculine authority and feminine nurture, until it all culminates with drilling the waffles during their Singles Ladies dance. Bitty will use his personal gender expression however he best sees it, which usually means whatever gives him the best advantage.