For a bureaucrat, there is no greater ignominy than getting upstaged by a political appointee. I did not feel the bite of this truism until last Wednesday, when I found myself, in peep-toe heels, trundling fifteen painstakingly prepared briefing binders in a dog-hair-covered hiking backpack to our agency’s Office of the Deputy Secretary.

Regarding the backpack, I thought I was doing well to upgrade from plastic grocery sacks that can barely withstand the ten-minute walk from our office to the agency mothership. As for the dog hair, it was disgusting, and it was the fault of my roommate’s husky. But I could handle these incidental disgraces. The true embarrassment was, at root, even more juvenile.

In the world of federal bureaucracy, political appointees grease the gears from on high, while bureaucrats crank the machine’s creaking pedals. It’s a system that I once derided; now, from the inside, I can see that without ideologues, the federal machine would slog nowhere. Our office is lucky; we’ve fared well in the appointee game (better than the Department of Justice, anyway).

No matter how fair-minded or responsive a Bush political may be, she always sports an unmistakable “look”: pearl-clad, expensively dewy, and, thanks to Ann Taylor suits, boxy. The daring ones add cleavage and gold crucifixes; the aging ones try green shoes in an attempt to go “funky.” Regardless, they all end up looking like Jackie O. waylaid by the Queen Mum, whose style guide requires spending tons of money, but never looking like you’ve ventured beyond Woolworth’s. Generally, it’s not a look I’m eager to copy.

But waiting outside the Deputy Secretary’s door amidst a group of these chummy archetypes, I felt myself weighed in the balance and found wanting. Despite my peep-toe heels, which are huge among young politicals, it was clear that there was something shamefully “off” about both my furry backpack and my vintage, cheapskate-cum-hipster ensemble—which, in truth, consisted of a suit largely scavenged from Goodwill and a haircut executed by my sister some nights ago. My stomach plunged, high school-style.

I petted my shorn head protectively and picked a few stray dog hairs off my dress. I tried to join conversations, but I couldn’t keep up with the latest Schedule C gossip. This was a sorority affair, and I was a fed—the girl who brought the binders. For a fleeting moment, I imagined myself commanding the group’s attention with a witty remark, a coy Southernized accent, and a pearl choker peeking out from my perfectly ironed hair.

Still smarting, I took refuge next afternoon at the Hirshhorn Museum’s “Realisms” exhibition, the second of a two-part show entitled “The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image.” On the exhibition’s opening day, I had rushed over for a quick tour; now, I knew exactly which installation I needed to return to: Kerry Tribe’s “Double.”

“Double” is a voyeur’s dream: a meditation on creating, manipulating, and observing the self. The single screen installation shows a progression of dark-haired, doe-eyed young women, a line up of actresses who responded to Tribe’s classified ad for personal impersonators. The ad links “Double” even more directly to Roberta Breitmore, the grandmother of performance-based identity art, whose first act of artistic volition was to place a classified ad seeking a roommate. But while Roberta was the divorcée alter ego of a young wife and mother, Tribe’s doppelgangers are entirely self-referential.

I sat on the floor before the installment’s pedestal television, the single pair of exhibit headphones pressed to my ears. In short head-shot-style interviews, separated by screens announcing the actress’ real first names, Tribe shows each woman reflecting on the challenges “she” has faced in moving from the East Coast to the West, leaving behind her family, and philosophically stumbling toward an artistic career. Intermingled B-roll shows one woman trundling Tribe’s groceries to her car, another rifling through Tribe’s mail, and one pretending to live in Tribe’s apartment.

The piece is fascinating for the way it showcases what each actress gleaned from one brief interview with Tribe, and what each actress’ own temperament and body brings to the impersonation. Jasmine, a Britney Spears look-a-like in a rumpled dark wig, is ditzy and Southern, tongue-tied when discussing “my documentary thing.” Iris captures brusque East Coast femininity, and Eva’s raw sexuality skews the representation toward an entirely different self, as reflections on her own body overshadow her caricature of the artist.

The museum-goers who gathered with me were mostly women, my age and younger. Were they, too, thinking about their lifetimes of linked performances, of moments when we put on clothes and gestures as a costume, affecting only a shadow of the woman we desperately want to be? I thought again of the previous day’s shame, and I remembered that my first suit, saved for so diligently and purchased so proudly, now hangs limp in my closet. Its Ann Taylor tag and squared-off, conservative frame link me an almost-forgotten, well-costumed younger self, and a time when I, too, might have vied to be a Bush appointee.

It was getting late. I got up from the floor, gazing back into the faces of the women behind me. Some touched their hair or fingered their necklaces, small gestures of vanity and remembrance. Walking back to the office in the afternoon sun, I thought about that first, boxy black suit. I imagined myself putting it on and walking out to the second-floor landing of our house, where the full-length mirror hangs. I wondered if it would still fit.