It was 95 degrees outside two days before the Fourth of July in New York City. Battery Park was filled with perspiring but excited tourists trying to beat the heat with short shorts, minidresses, and bucket hats, some embroidered with the American flag. Meanwhile, a man named Andreas was standing on a stepladder completely costumed and covered from head to toe. He positioned himself directly in front of Castle Clinton, the entrance that out of town visitors come through by the hundreds to board a ferry that takes them to the Statue of Liberty. He wore a floor-length mint green robe, matching gloves, a rubber mask, and a pair of Oakley shades. Andreas has been working as a Lady Liberty impersonator in this spot for the last five years. He dabs, waves, and hands out his torch for a photo, and earns between $5 and $20 for his services. He wouldn’t say much underneath his thick, waxy face covering, and he hesitated to reveal whether or not he was born in the United States, but he did say that he currently resided on Staten Island and that despite desperate times in this country, he was happy to be here and that he loved his job.
I can’t say for certain whether or not Andreas was an immigrant, but as various investigative articles and stories on the city’s impersonators have shown, a large percentage of those dressed as Lady Liberty usually are. Many are men, too, though there are certainly a number of women. These impersonators hustle hard from tip to tip to make their own American dreams come true. That many of them choose to dress up as Lady Liberty at a moment when the president is separating refugee families and keeping them in cages, instituting a travel ban, and trying to build a physical blockade to keep outsiders from entering our borders is tragically ironic. Lady Liberty’s robe, the one mimicked by Andreas and many other entertainers in Battery Park and Times Square and the entrance to Central Park adjacent to the Plaza Hotel, symbolizes freedom. When the statue was built in 1886, it was said that the garment she wore was specifically meant to recall the robe of Libertas, the ancient Roman goddess of liberty and freedom. The seven points of her crown stand for the seven seas, the seven continents, and the idea that freedom is and should always be something to be strived for throughout the world.
Times Square was just as hot and bustling. The out-of-towners wore striped polo shirts and cargo shorts and others, tight tank tops and skirts. There was a man in a dusty Captain America costume next to a naked woman with her chest and bum covered in a paint that didn’t quite cover anything at all. There were more Lady Liberty impersonators, too, counting their bills in the soupy air and chugging bottles of water with the urgency of someone lost in the desert. They weren’t out there to make a political statement and yet their clothing seemed to stand for something more. Call it accidental protest fashion. This Fourth of July, Lady Liberty and her symbolic garb deserve our attention. She is more than a costumed figure to take a selfie-stick photo with. She is what freedom can look like. She is still here in her robe and so are we.