The Handmaid’s Tale polysemic affects: Symbolism, cosplay and performance of the Handmaid in UK protest

The Handmaid’s Tale television adaptation (Miller, 2017–25) produced a cultural and media phenomenon inspiring feminist and human rights activists in dozens of different contexts to dress as handmaids in protest, particularly to challenge the rhetoric of Donald Trump. This article considers the handmaid’s symbolism from book to screen into protest, as well as the costuming and performances of participants dressing as handmaids in protest. Drawing on interviews with those who dressed as handmaids in the United Kingdom between 2018 and 2019, this article will investigate what the handmaid symbolizes and how handmaid-dressed protesters have approached costuming, tactics and the performance of the handmaid in protest. The handmaid inhabits a polysemic positionality as a costume of conflict, oscillating between various contradictory states to produce a popular and accessible figure to explore the multifaceted activism of feminist practice. The handmaid in protest produces and denies submissive femininities, which creates a vehicle for participants to contend with their own political identities and feelings. The handmaid is powerful because of its complexity and ambivalence, allowing participants to find it useful from multiple different angles. At the same time, the handmaid is at risk of being interpreted as a post-feminist figure, in which traditional conventions of femininity are reinscribed.