If I had a dime for every Parent Trap joke someone has made to me, I would be so rich that I wouldn’t even be writing this article because I’d be relaxing on my own private island.
I love my relationship with my identical twin sister and I cannot imagine a life without her. However, being an identical twin means being subject to an infinite list of questions and comments from people who think our similar appearance is an invitation to express their opinion about it. After 21 years of these experiences, I have many thoughts.
Let’s start with some fun facts that are special to only my sister and I:
- My FaceID works to open her phone and vice versa
- Our fingerprints are the same so I can commit a crime and blame her (just kidding)
- If we both have children, they will be half-siblings — not cousins
- I have always had someone by my side; I’m never alone
My biggest complaint with being an identical twin has nothing to do with me or my sister. It has to do with other people. People are generally weird towards twins, but I noticed people becoming progressively weirder as my sister and I grew up. As kids, I would be asked questions such as, “Have you and your sister ever switched classes?” and, “Have you ever taken a test for each other?” Once I started puberty, the questions changed. I remember a peer’s father asking me if my sister and I ever “switched places” with our boyfriends. That was junior year of high school. The countless comments and questions became sexual and inappropriate, and they often came from adults who should have known better.
“She’s taken but she has a twin sister who’s single.”
“Twin sighting of the day.”
“I can tell you two apart because you have a bigger nose.”
“I ate my twin in the womb.”
“Who’s the hotter twin?”
How should I respond? Like, are you serious? I personally hate conflict, so I usually just awkwardly laugh and let the topic pass. What else am I supposed to do? I wish weird people knew how weird they were sometimes.
“I wanna see what you just said written on paper”
-Ariana Grande
During senior year of high school, my class spent an entire week planning “Senior Pranks.” One of the pranks was a day where classmates switched schedules for the day, pretending to be each other in an effort to elicit as much chaos and frustration from the teachers (it worked). However, while everyone else’s names got written up for detention, my sister and I were not due to the fact that no teacher believed we actually participated in the prank. My history teacher looked at me for a long 10 seconds before she concluded that I was my sister. Part of me was relieved that I didn’t receive a detention, but the other part of me felt so obviously overlooked thus unimportant.
Transcript of BBC Learning English, What’s it like to be a twin?
As a media studies minor, I’m attuned to how identity markers are portrayed in the media we consume. While writing this article, I kept thinking about what representations of twins my generation has consumed. Growing up, I remember watching (and liking) the Disney Channel show, Liv and Maddie. Looking back, some of these show’s ideas about twins are undeniably damaging. One episode of Liv and Maddie features “twin telepathy” which, despite making for a scary Halloween episode, reinforces the superstitious, abnormal and freak of nature stereotype that is associated with twins.
The Parent Trap is another movie I’ve watched many times throughout my childhood and remains the most popular response to the fact that I have a twin sister. Although I also like watching this film, there is an underlying theme of visual assumption that disenfranchises either of the girls’ personalities. When you see that the emotional identity and uniqueness of each girl which they have built up through their life isn’t valued enough for either parent to notice they are caring for a whole other child, the movie becomes a little less interesting.
It’s hard to be in the middle. I love both Liv and Maddie and The Parent Trap, but should I boycott such media for their unintentional yet damaging ideas? Is dual appearance objectified that much to the point where movies and TV shows can form an entire plot based on it (and a successful one too)?
I digress. Living as an identical twin is special. Despite media representations, there is no one to define my identity except for myself. I’ve learned that whatever weird questions or reactions I receive are a reflection of the speaker – not me.