Abstract

ABSTRACT:

The essay examines the sexual politics of the U.S. independent film Hard Candy (2006) as an exemplary film in the problematic category of "€œfeminist films made by men. "  The essay situates the film in relation to exploitation genres, the tropes of classical feminist film theory (castration, the gaze) to which the film makes reference, and other contemporaneous Lions Gate releases--well as historically, in relation to the changing discourses of Second- and Third-Wave feminisms and the discourse of child sexual abuse.  The narrative of pedophilia in the film is interpreted rhetorically as a screening metaphor meant to inculcate a feminist predisposition in a hetero male spectator and serving to open up the interesting question of whether the hegemonic modality of male heterosexual desire (dominant/active, visually oriented, and genitally-driven) may be amenable to "queering"€ alterations. 

Topic of Paper: Otaku Culture, Fandom

www.homelesschic.com

I just had to share this hoping to make some of your jaws drop during these stressful days.  There is, no joke, a "homeless chic" website dedicated to the display of photographs of "people living on the street that exhibit a unique sense of personal style."  Wow.  

Also, could anyone post an example of an abstract?  I've never written one before, so I'm not quite sure what they're all about.    

Costume Play or Cos-Play

Here is a video of some cosplayers and a link to a blog spot where I had some rough notes for the in-class presentation if you still happen to log on and are interested in seeing it...


cosplaymaidens.blogspot.com

Elizabeth

American Apparel's Next Top Model

My favorite part is when a model, in the face of Dov Charney's foulness, calls out futilely for Tyra. This is a pretty foul AA parody video, which is to say that it is dead on.

American Apparel's Next Top Model - watch more funny videos

"14 American Apparel Models Freed in Daring Midnight Raid"

Here's one of the Onion articles Annie and I were making reference to in class today.

Here's a Question From Left Field - What Will Barack Wear on Jan 20?

With all the talk about Michelle's prospective outfit and what Oprah will be wearing to the inauguration now that she's gained back a little weight, I was excited to see that Barack will be wearing a tuxedo made by none other than UNITE HERE (formerly ILGWU and ACTWU). The tux will be made by UNITE HERE union members, known for the quality of their menswear, in a Chicago plant.

Photo Blitzkrieg

So after recently re-reading the syllabus, it turns out that you don’t actually get credit for having the blog short-cutted to your bookmark toolbar, visiting it only slightly less than ubiquitous facebook and imposing links to fashionista professors, polyvore/stardoll and virtual runways on your non-school friends via annoying forwards. So I guess in true, last minute style, I’ll try to sum up some of the importance this class (and blog) has had on me and my ideas throughout this semester.

I have to start by saying that I made a movie in my production class this semester, which I highly recommend. It brought a lot of perspective to many of the costuming articles we read this semester when you are actually going through the same process to choose clothing for your characters. Although I didn’t spend 14 hours actually sewing the clothes, I can sympathize with Nielsen and her Costumer’s plight so much more personally having gotten up at 6am on several occasions to make a trip the Universal Costume House just to make sure the soldiers, who are literally in my film for less than 10 seconds, are dressed for the part. Having to actually make costuming decisions has brought a new level of understanding to the link between fashion and identity. I am literally controlling and creating a world and characters based on the split second visuals of these characters, which is almost exclusively dependent on their costume. I won’t go into too much detail about my film, but it was heavily influenced by the ideas we talked about throughout the semester. It is a sci-fi piece about a futuristic yet regressive totalitarian government that is reprograming its “deviant” citizens to fit into 1950-esque binary models of masculinity and femininity. (Also, hugely influenced by Sarah Palin as our possible prez.) So to get this crazy complicated idea across in 5 minutes, I had to have my characters really dress the part. I have some (poorly captured) stills that I hope will give you an idea of what my process was for creating this world. Both this course and the production process in general have really given me an entirely new appreciation for costuming and fashion in relation to femininity, feminism and identity in transformative ways. Thank you all for sharing your thoughts with me this semester. It has been a pleasure.

My main characters, present day (which is the past in my film). Aren't they deviant?

In the regressive future, after being reprogrammed.


The Sarah Palin inspired nurses, most definitely willing participants in their own hegemony.

My men. Tough Soldiers enforcing the government's oppressive control in exchange for a modicum of power.

Also, so Patty doesn’t have to be the only one with an (embarrassingly?) out-of-character picture posted, I’ll include one of me at my father’s wedding. I wish I could say something cool like, “back 10-years ago when I was Prom Queen...” but unfortunately this was last year. Oh the things you will do for family...ugh.

My mom is also remarrying this year, but thankfully she has assured me that I can wear whatever I want because she loves me for me and just wants her daughter there. After years of rebelling against lace dresses (see below), this is about the coolest thing she could ever say to me.

Fantasy in the Sweatshop

In reading Elizabeth Nielsen’s Handmaidens of Glamour Culture, I am struck by the nearly-scripted poetic quality of the immediate proximity of fixed and transformative identities in her study of early Hollywood costumers. In numerous descriptions of the endlessly labyrinthine interior of Western Costume, the racks and rows and shelves and hooks are filled with thousands upon tens of thousands of possibilities, so many the exact number of which “even Western doesn’t know,” while the article itself follows the realities of the women locked into their own places in support of this engine of transformation.
Throughout the semester, we have repeatedly returned to the idea of fashion as a site for (at least the potential) fluidity of identity, and in the final weeks we have explored both the historical and contemporary apparatus enabling that site of possibility. Like any good motion picture production history, Nielsen’s article contrasts the gritty, technical aspects of production with the magic of onscreen fantasy. In the case of the costumer however, there is an especially hypocritical relationship between the workers, often members of at least one and frequently multiple minority groups possessing limited options for employment, survival and social identity, and the fantastic transformations that they enable, both on the level of the character and the career and persona of the actor.
The relationship of reality and transformation/fantasy is also clearly explored in a more classed context in Real Women Have Curves. The female members of Ana’s family toil to create evening dresses for the social posturing of upper class women while the workers have no use for the goods they make and possess few other options for basic survival. The very title of the film with its semantic focus on “real women” highlights both the working, classed reality of the film’s characters as well as their deviation from the compressed, starved media-generated fantasy of women, particularly as they relate to fashion. Ana is the only character who is ultimately able to access the transformative power of the fashion fantasy and escapes the sweatshop. Most of the garment workers in Real Women Have Curves, Nielsen’s article and No Sweat are not lucky enough to try on that special red dress.

On a related side note, I also appreciate the Industrial Revolution era visual motif of machinery and mechanization running through much of the treatment of the issue of garment manufacturing. The contrast of the soft, intimacy of textiles and inhuman austerity of metal machinery is admittedly compelling. The clanging of metal and grinding of machinery is a nearly constant element of the soundscape in Real Women Have Curves, and many of the photographs in No Sweat feature workers dwarfed by machines or themselves appearing as virtual cogs in the apparatus. I think that man/machine imagery has taken on a mildly nostalgic quality in the modern era and while this tension may not hold the same cultural resonance it did in the context of industrialization in the late nineteenth century or science fiction in the nineteen fifties, I think globalization has created a new brand of insignificance that leaves people feeling threatened and small.

(Final) Thoughts on Virtual Identity and Masquerade

In combing back over the blog the last few days, I realized that I never actually posted my (final) thoughts about virtual identities and avatars in relation to costuming and “Masquerade.” It isn’t really final since I have been noodling with these ideas all semester and am constantly switching things up and trying to look at it from different angles. I’ll likely find even more as I continue to embark on this paper writing journey. Any thoughts or suggestions are always welcome :)
1) Virtual Communities could be the space to explore Masquerade beyond gender difference.
2) The avatar is the ultimate costume, providing a space for fantasy, escapism and (virtual) social mobility/boundary crossing.
3) Identity is dependent on consumerism. A virtual consuming self and a real consuming self are becoming one in the same.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to stay and chat, but I have to take my virtual self to the Avatar mall to buy a new hat to wear to my South of Nowhere online screening party tonight. I hope I have enough creds!

All About "Hope"

The above scene brings together lot of the ideas present in the readings for this week. Mrs. Glass feels that she is helping Estela to make a better life for herself by giving her an opportunity. But she “went out on a limb” to subject her to the same relentless deadlines and low pay that keep Estela consistently behind in her payments and deliveries. She can never get ahead and is forced into perpetually working in sweatshop conditions, on the brink of losing it all at any minute. For every Mrs. Glass (success story, representing hope for the workers) there are hundreds of Estelas and her employees getting stepped on under the guise of “helping them,” so that Mrs. Glass can maintain her tenuous position of power. It would all crumble down if Estela ever did get the means to open her own shop and sell her $600 dresses for $600 instead of $18.

A constant theme throughout the movie is the pride Estela has in her work. Her motivation is to make finer quality gray dresses than anyone else. Pride accessed for motivation despite horrendous working conditions is something Nielsen cites about the motivations of Costumers in Hollywood; “Costumers prided themselves on creating fabulous costumes seen on ‘the most beautiful women in the world’ on giant screens. The studios could then count on the loyalty of these workers because of the degree of personal satisfaction they found in their jobs which became the “intrinsic reward” for thirty-five years of low pay, low status and backbreaking work.” I also found this notion of pride surfacing in “No Sweat.” Many of the first person accounts of garment workers in “No Sweat” came from a sense of pride in even having a job and the thought that you were working, earning something, and could possibly provide something for your family. But of course, this only works if there are the Mrs. Glasses out there who have succeeded within the system. Pride can only happen if you have hope, like Estela designing her own line, that someday you too could escape the oppression.

Psychologically, it sounds a lot like the rhetoric of 8 years of Bush’s “trickle down economics.” Those with the money have the power and make the rules to keep themselves at the top, widening economic gap at the expense of the extremely poor. Clearly the recent economic crash has proved the flaws in this faulty system of deregulation. So how do we escape this? Many of the articles in “No Sweat” and even in the Nielsen were bent on making change by empowering the oppressed through organization, unionization and grass roots campaigns aimed at consumers. Although it is often touted that the power is in the consumers, a study in one of the articles said only 50% of consumers even think about the working conditions in the factories where their clothes are made. Honestly I think that is idealistic. I mean American Apparel, a company actively trying to eliminate sweatshops in LA by charging a ridiculous high price for a T-shirt can only charge this crazy price, not because people believe in their cause and are willing to pay more, but because their trendy advertising with waifishly oppressed models has clearly situated them within the Hollywood fashion elite. People are paying for the American Apparel brand, not their fair wage politics. And at what price? Clearly they are not supporting healthy body image amongst women with those ads. If we go back all the way to the beginning of the semester, I’m sure that American Apparel ads would be featured selections in the next incarnation of Killing Us Softly.

So really, it is all up to Obama to find a way out of this self-perpetuating cycle of oppression, that has traditionally been fueled by the idea of “Hope.” Fingers crossed and here is hoping :)

Ethnicization of female labor (final reading response)

This semester, we have dealt variously with issues pertaining to fashion and feminine labor. We began with the second wavers who marked femininity as the onerous work demanded by patriarchy; we’ve oft spoken of the significance of fashion for women entering the work force after World War II; we have discussed the burden women have had to carry as homemakers and caretakers for white working class families and the boys of various subcultures; and we’ve seen the cinematic display of feminine structures of support by women of color in Clueless, Stella Dallas, Gone With the Wind, Maid in Manhattan, and Real Women Have Curves. In fact, the intersections of labor and gender have been here with us all along, riddling our discussion throughout the semester. It is why our fashionable pleasures are always contradictory and qualified.

This week we obviously have really honed in on the production side of things. I found the Nielsen article totally fascinating. What struck me most is the part where she talks about the kinds of ethnic specializations that divided the labor. Nielsen remarks, “Many of the women and men who labored to produce so many and such elaborate costumes were immigrant laborers...The various ethnic or national groups often specialized in the manufacture of the clothing of their native lands: beaders from Mexico, crochet workers from Armenia; turban wrappers from the Middle East; embroiderers from Japan and China” (168). This tiny moment in the larger arc of her article’s narrative was, for me, the most provocative and also the part that could stand to be unpacked a bit more. Indeed, she talks about the division of labor between men and women in the costuming department, as women were expected to work on the intricate-- and more labor-intensive-- details of the costume, whereas men made suits and dress coats (167). But, I really wanted her to spend more time with the ethnic divisions among the women, or the ways in female bodies were raced or ethnicized based on the specialty of their craft. I couldn’t help but look to the “The Myth of Nimble Fingers” essay in No Sweat, where Elinor Spielberg dispels the myth that children, or Asian children, have more nimble hands for the kinds of meticulous work required specifically by the garment industries. She notes, “Nor are the fingers of Asian children any more agile than the fingers of other children. The often heard statement, ‘but things are different over there,’ as if certain workers have a special capacity for suffering, is just another rationalization for child labor, promoted by businessmen” (118). This made me think about the tensions between how much the ethnicization of female labor vis-a-vis “craft” is mythologized not only to justify the exploitation of labor, but to compartmentalize exploitation itself to more efficient ends, and how much of it actually speaks to certain specificities of national culture. Maybe we can go into this more during discussion?

On No Sweat/Real Women Have Curves

"No Sweat" immediately evoked comparisons with another book I had read sometime ago on the same subject - "Threads: Gender, Labor, and Power in the Global Apparel Industry" by Jane L. Collins. "Threads" offers a dispassionate study of the insensitive, profit-oriented manufacturing arrangements followed by two US-based corporate firms retailing garments - Tultex (a mass-producer of knitwear) and Liz Claiborne Inc., and the ways in which the latter adapts successfully to global labor flows while the former fails since it continues working with an older model of directly owned manufacturing units within the country. "No Sweat" is methodologically different in its use of testimonies - of workers working in sweatshops, the 'defenses' of corporate firms (through the use of an interview) and the varying strategies of activism (ranging from covert investigation, to legal battles, to open letters) employed to revolutionize the working terms and conditions in these spaces around the world. It also does a great job of debunking the masculinization of labor that is corroborated by most Marxist studies of specific production and labor practices. While both the works try to explicate the profoundly exploitative and inegalitarian principles of the current 'globalized' economy by showing how '[it] has complicated the issue, at a time when the apparel industry is increasingly dominated by a few giant retailers, all of whom consign production to independent, offshore contractors. they do not own these companies or hire the workers',"Threads" stops at explaining how these diffuse conduits of manufacturing and retailing make labor unity and agitation difficult since often the workers have only a very dim idea of who the ultimate employer is. "No Sweat" on the other hand, presents a more optimistic picture by focusing on the specific organizations and strategies that have been forged to combat the rampant exploitation. The chapter titled "The Global Resistance to Sweatshops" refers to the 'wide array of citizen movements that are seeking to reshape globalization by rendering it more "socially and environmentally responsible', it also talks about 'the growing alternative trading movement that bypasses large corporate channels to deliver products made under more humane conditions from cooperatives directly to consumers' (page 49). I thought some of the chapters also did a good job of giving us a sense of the kind of tight-rope activists have to walk keeping in mind the possible repercussions that the media-exposures, negative publicity and consumer-boycott might have on the employment of poverty-ridden workers. The more militant approach toward Kathie Lee Gifford, Global Fashion & Wal-Mart can be juxtaposed with the more negotiatory 'open letter' to Walt Disney stating that '[we] want to join the Walt Disney Company in an attempt to improve conditions in these Haitian factories' (page 95). I particularly liked the way in which going beyond its specific focus on exploitative production practices and conditions of labor, many chapters of the book also displayed an awareness of the ways in which the mediascape as well as the public space within which the legal and ethical tussles between the firm, the laborer and the activist unfolded, were in themselves gendered so that a Kathie Lee Gifford had ins one ways less room to negotiate the 'horrific' revelations, and could succeed in doing so only by playing up particular feminine roles, while Michael Jordan, as an endorser of an exposed brand, could get away by displaying complete nonchalance.
Having read such a comprehensive analysis of the workings of the global apparel economy, I am intrigued by the kinds of questions the film "Real Women Have Curves" that also addresses the same terrain opens up. Keeping in mind the understanding "No Sweat" has provided of the industry, I am wondering about the kinds of consumers these workers themselves might be. The film helps the viewer get a tactile sense of these sweatshop-like spaces, and also perceive how these often inter-generational working spaces are riven by cross-identifications on the basis of class, race and culture. Ana's liminality due to her contradictory location in both the factory and the classroom is depicted very well. Interestingly, the male figures within her family are shown as being more supportive of her educational ambitions. By contrast, her relationship with her mother is shown to be the most fraught and the emotional center of the film. This dynamic of overt hostility and silent resentment seems to be structured by disidentifications of class and gender, which are often complex and contradictory, though on the whole Ana's is the voice that is adopted and politically/ethically avowed as the voice of the film, while the mother is sympathized with. While Ana has a very bourgeois disgust for factories and spouts disdain for the work the women have to perform there, she resists her mother's demand that she 'walk like a lady' and lose weight. Yet I am intrigued by the way in which the mother's obstinate disapproval of Ana's decision to move away and study, remains unresolved and 'excessive'. Returning to my question about garment-workers as consumers, the final scene of the film when where Ana walks the streets of New York, liberated, having transcended her destiny as a garment-worker, already acquiring sartorially the sophistication of a 'city-girl'/student, seems evoke a certain degree of ambivalence.

Final Reading/Screening Response on LA Garment Industry

Better late than never for some reflections on our last week's material and screening.

Steve Nutter reports on the ever-expanding Los Angeles garment industry and the thousands of mostly Latina and Asian workers that are subjected to the exploitative conditions of mass-produced, lifestyle fashion. The group of retailers that comprise the apex of this power triangle have become increasingly concentrated into a few major fashion firms and continue to put pressure on independent manufacturers by circumventing the labor system through manufacturing their own lines. The temporality imposed by “retailer low-inventory strategies” like ‘just-in-time’(JIT) and ‘quick response’ (QT) forces the mode and duration of production to accelerate to an exploitative and unhealthy level. (202) This forces us, perhaps, to confront our attachment to practices of consumption and our expectations of quick turnaround, especially with our exceedingly close proximity to LA. Nutter is right to criticize harshly the ineffectual regulatory agents that are supposed to be monitoring labor infractions and enforcing at least some of the necessary standards. How might we temper our desire with responsibility, given that if the location of the sweatshops is not in our own backyard, they are invariably in someone else’s. This doesn’t mean that I advocate the abandonment of consumptive practices or the condemnation of pleasure, but it might be productive to think about the relationship between the female immigrants ‘employed’ as sewing machine operators in the industry and their own systems and modes of consumption within their ethnic communities and the larger urban environment. One can think somewhat of our last screening in this respect, however, one might be too tempted to ascribe a top-down affective valence to Ana’s appreciation for the garments that they produce. Perhaps Estela’s independent crafting of a dress for Ana could signify an interruption of the exploitative temporality of the contractor system, however, it is my suspicion that the depiction of this 'gifting' of labor only diffuses the harshness of their situation.

sca(red)

I saw Warner’s costume warehouse for myself on a lot tour about a month ago. Somehow our guide neglected to touch on the labor practices that had created the decades-worth of clothing and shoes that my group was drooling over.
OMG, we were free to touch.
And I forgot, for a while, that the garments weren’t conjured from thin air. I merely fondled the fabrics, experiencing first hand the wide gap between style and labor issues.
Nielsen’s overview of costumers during the studio system is easy to take for granted when you read it. It simply lays out the facts about that era, and the long hours, the sexism, and the racism she describes are unsurprising in relation to the labor practices we know are still taking place today in the fashion industry. And yet -- out of sight, out of mind -- it’s so easy, reflexive even, to fold this knowledge up and put it away until it comes up again in the form of an academic article or news segment (or film, like Real Women Have Curves).
Perhaps (in addition to guilt and PR spin) we forget the individuals behind the costumes we love because, to paraphrase a theatrical lighting designer I once met: If you’re doing your job, they won’t notice you. If the fit or the beadwork is bad, you think about the people who constructed it -- just as when CGI is bad, you actually bother to acknowledge someone makes it. To that end, Nielsen’s closing statement really dug its heels in for me: “The choices of that key costumers exercise in selecting costumes affect the way in which audiences ‘read’ characters in films and the nit-picking attention of the set costumers helps to avoid breaks in continuity, thus aiding the all-important suspension of disbelief requisite to out enjoyment of entertainment.”
Like “Handmaidens of Glamour Culture” (and Hope in a Jar) the historical, non-theoretical nature of No Sweat makes it a useful and enlightening text of documentation of period practices, if not the richest read ever. I was essentially a zygote during the Kathie Lee Gifford scandal, so it was nice to become apprised of that. But more, I was fightened by the endless laws and codes and tariffs of myriad countries that the fashion industry bends and uses for evil, and the care with which groups like UNITE must work to improve conditions under and around these regulations without causing poor people to get fired. What a tricky web. What a scary reality.
I appreciated Ross’s nod at the fashion industry as “darling for preferred causes” like HIV and breast cancer (I want to vomit every time I see a Product Red shirt from the Gap.) (Wow, “the Gap” just got assigned an entirely different meaning. Just now.) I wish he could have taken it further.
Who wants sca(red) t-shirts for the holidays? At least one to wear until finals are over.

Summary of Real Women Have Curves

So after watching Real Women Have Curves on Friday, many of us were a bit confused because it appeared as though the projectionist either missed a reel or inverted the last 2 reels again. I promised to post the correct structure of the film on the blog to clarify, but after doing some Youtube/Google “research” on the film, it appears as though the order we saw the film in was correct. They finish the gray dress order and Ana gets the red dress before the ladies strip down and dancingly embrace their curves (despite Ana saying they are going to finish the order that night). And, despite my faulty memory, Ana never actually does try on the Red Dress for us to see (wtf? how is this not a key scene in a movie about finding a positive body image?). She does say goodbye to her white-boy boyfriend then find out about college, then sleep with him, then tell her family that she is going to college anyway, despite her mom’s wishes. (It was really hard for me to choose between my full ride at Columbia and working in a sweatshop with my mom who criticizes everything I do too, but in the end I think I made the right decision.) So, in summary, we were not duped again by our wonderful projectionist, the actual ending of the movie really is a structural cluster fuck. (If you are curious, I’m gleaning all this info from ever-reliable Youtube.)

In my humble opinion, it should have been:
1) Naked dancing empowerment, finish the dress order.
2) Get the Red Dress after the empowerment scene and finishing the order.
3) TRY ON THE RED DRESS and show us how beautiful you are in the damn dress!
4) Sleep with the boy. (Cuz aren’t you feeling pretty and confident now?)
5) Get into college.
6) Ditch the boy and your family for NYC.

Deep is the New Superficial

This article will make your life happier for a few brief moments. I promise.
It's Simon Doonan musing on the passage of superficiality and the impending era of social consciousness. Netflix is the new Shopping and museums are the new malls.

I'm thinking that if we keep down this dangerous road, the overworked-and-pissed-off-grad-student-in-orthopedic-shoes look will be the next heroin-chic.

My own key costumer

During my stint as a film & theater writer for an alt-weekly in Texas, my editor asked me to write a segment for a "fantasy theater" feature she was planning.

The assignment was basically this: Write 300 words elaborating on your ideal production of your favorite play. Cast it with local actors and use area directors.

I did that, under the assumption that the article-accompanying photographs would be of said local actors in the midst of a faux scene from the play I had chosen, Sam Shepard's Fool for Love.

Wrong. Down to the wire time-wise, my editor decided to have me recreate a scene by myself.

Super.

I pinpointed an appropriate backdrop, and spent the entire morning before the shoot combing my favorite thrift store, trying to find the perfect, iconic, 80s-ish red dress for the main female character, May. In the end, I had to settle for a spiritual cousin to the full skirt she's supposed to be wearing around the nouse in the beginning of the play.

1.5 years later, it's still my favorite thrift-store find.

New 007 and Bond Girls: Questionable bedfellows?

I never, ever thought this would happen: I am obsessed with the new James Bond movies. Not because they're good -- or as good as they portend to be -- but because now that the filmmakers are like so over that smarmy, non-character-driven gibberish of yesteryear, I actually have standards for the films. Ooh, how progressive, how realistic, Bond actually has feelings now.

Great, now I can spend the whole running time looking for logic and probability problems, as well as over-the-top breaks in the realism of the world they've created.

As much as anything, I mull over how a "smarter" iteration of the Bond narrative will reintegrate the bodies of "Bond Girls."

Their are a few fundamental elements that make Bond Bond and not some memory-undeprived British Jason Bourne. Those elements being: Gadgets, cars, martinis, and sex with awesome-looking women. I'm OK with that, so long as the contemporary ladies get to be character-driven, too, and if the realism of the new Bond world isn't broken with names like "Holly Goodhead" or "Chew Mee."

(Incidentally, sometimes I think the camera spends almost as much time in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace caressing Daniel Craig's body as it does the bodies of the women present. Is it me, or am I forgetting slow-pans up the, uh, sturdy frame of Roger Moore?)

Of course, if the reboot's filmmakers truly want to be realistic and progressive, they could try to avoid "Women in Refrigerators," a term derived from an event in Green Lantern that refers to female characters in superhero comics who exist expressly to be killed or maimed as a plot device to propel the male protagonist’s story forward. (Because really, how can human sacrifices -- for all intensive purposes -- be symbols of liberated female sexuality?)

Quantum of Solace, the second film of the Bond reimagining, fails wholly on this count. Director Marc Forster was so desperate to get his Goldfinger homage in (wherein a woman's deceased body is found coated with gold), that he introduced a character who had no business being around just so he could kill her off and steady his camera on her naked, lifeless, oil-covered body (can't find picture! grr).

The character is Fields*, an attractive redhead sent by M to reel Bond in from, well ... let's just say he's gone rogue-r than Sarah Palin on the campaign trail. Over Fields' dead body, M discloses that she was "just an office girl ... she filed reports." Seriously Dame Judi, er, M? You sent an office girl to retrieve that dude who just headbutted three guys to death in an elevator? Riiight. How dare the filmmakers have you look so careless.

*Yes, "Strawberry Fields" in (and only in) the credits. Blurgh.

Exclusion on the Walk of Fame

I read recently that the ONLY woman of Asian decent who has been awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was Anna May Wong (of The Bitter Tea of General Yen, portrait on page 113 of Screen Style) who received her star in 1960. Wong was also present at the groundbreaking for Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1927 although she was never asked to immortalize her and hand and footprints in their courtyard. As of this year, the limited number of other performers of Asian heritage who have been awarded stars on the Walk of Fame have all been male.

I couldn't stop thinking about this as I walked over Donald Trump's and Ryan Seacrest's stars on the boulevard last night. Sigh...

Some Thoughts on Leisure

I was recently re-reading Kaja Silverman’s Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse and Mary Beth Haralovich’s paper on the 1950s suburban homemaker, and I was reminded of an issue that struck me several times throughout the semester. In the opening of her paper Silverman discusses the transition from lavish masculine dress to more modest styles, principally citing the demands of work and industry as the reason for the change. As we know from Sarah Berry among other sources, clothing styles, particularly for the upper classes, had long been associated with the specific activities for which individual garments were intended. The emerging middle class in the eighteenth century pressured the upper classes, formerly associated with leisure and luxury, toward a more modest and industrious ideal. Even for men that did not work, it was no longer fashionable to make that fact apparent. Of course the fashionable expectation of productivity had its limits, and a specific brand of gentlemanly, managerial occupations became the only suitable labors for upper class men.

I find the implicit tension between industry and leisure in Haralovich’s essay very interesting. In the sitcom (and in Haralovich’s paper) women are constantly navigating the space between ornamentation and servitude. Clearly these suburban goddesses are not allowed to obtain outside employment, but even their work in the home is veiled—often implied but rarely shown. When a woman’s labor is shown, it is often dressed up in pearls and party dresses like a game or peculiar feminine folly. This is due in part to the rhetoric of the shangri-la of the suburban home of this era, but the tension seems to extend deeper than this in interesting ways. Haralovich notes that the work of the male is also veiled in that his place and type of employment is often ambiguous and the only official site of work that actually extends into the home—the man’s den or study—is often shrouded in mystery, with little of the show’s action revealing the space behind its generally closed doors. At one point, Haralovich notes that visible labor is classed, as she discusses the rare evidence of a “bad (working class) neighborhood” in an episode of Leave It to Beaver. People are not only doing work in public in the neighborhood Wally wanders into, but work (a car being reassembled, garbage collection) has also invaded the private sphere of the residential neighborhood.

While it is a bit of a leap, I feel that this positioning harkens not only to the leisure/work tension discussed in Silverman’s article, but also works to establish the value of the middle class in the 1950s. While not quite an idle ornament, the 50s housewife is value added to the suburban home beyond (and possibly in spite of) her domestic labors. It seems that there is an element of this ‘value added’ idea in some rhetoric surrounding the place and position of the middle class at large in the postwar period.

Debates around work and play, industry and leisure, form and function, ornamentation and utility, and appearance and content seem to permeate most discussions on femininity and feminism. These questions are clearly central to the issues of place and purpose that challenge and inform modern feminine identity, which is inextricably interwoven with the same tensions in relation to other signifiers like race and class. I realize that this discussion would have been more fruitful several weeks ago when we were discussing sitcoms, but this week’s particular attention to labor has caused me to revisit some of these readings and ideas.

Home Shopping & me

Over Thanksgiving break I visited my family in San Antonio, TX. Unopened, in the corner of dining room was a Turk'n Surf box. (That would be an indoor, propane-free turkey fryer for sale on TV.) It reminded me of a quotation included in "The Home Shopping Club: A Television of Attractions," that hit a little too close to home:

"Who is the typical Home Shopping Club shopper? They are those people in restaurants who can't tell if the coffee they're drinking is real ... They seek to get ahead in the world by studying diesel mechanics, dental hygiene, or welding."

My mother is a dental hygienist.

Now, she's awesome, so she won't mind me telling you that "after a few impulse buys, addiction [did] take hold," just as the article describes. (She's transferred her affections back to the mall lately -- she articulated becoming "conscious" of shopping channels' methods of pressure, like timers and "limited quantities.")

I started noticing items like the Turk'n Surf, closet-organization kits, and gold box-chain necklaces around her house after I had finished undergrad. I was shocked. She waited until now? I had spent what seemed like my entire elementary-school life watching HSN and QVC to learn gemology. (To this day -- clearly not having pursued a vocation as a jeweler -- I can still pinpoint quartz and corundum on the Mohs scale.) The channels had a primarily pedagogical function for me, but still, sometimes as an item sold out, my little 10-year-old heart would break.

Mom can keep the Turk'n Surf though. Maybe it'll get some play next Thanksgiving.

RIP Pushing Daisies/Pushing Daisies costumes

You may already be aware that Pushing Daisies (one of my very favorite shows!), has been cancelled (blurgh!). It's a dramedy/fantasy about a baker/gumshoe named Ned who can bring people back to life with one touch, and return them to their dearly departed state with another.

If I had to describe the look and voice of the series, I would say it's whatever look and voice emerges from a lovechild of Tim Burton and Amelie raised on Care Bears and noir and injected with daily shots of sweet-heartedness. The effin' costumes sealed the deal though.

Charlotte Charles (aka "Chuck") was Ned's childhood crush whom he revived permanently sort of accidentally. (Long story. And yes, that means Ned loves a person called Chuck he can never touch -- there's definitely lots more going on below the surface here.)

Because she cannot be seen alive, Chuck is often negotiating the limits and possibilities of her new life, and one site that plays out is in her clothing. As she begins to assert her independence in her life -- and her presence in the world -- the shift is signified by a switch from 50s-style dresses to 70s-style getups.

I'm gonna miss those clothes.

Sci Fi Fashions

I think my next band name is going to be "Ubiquitous Unitard." For the most part, these are the iconic ladies of sci-fi that I would have picked as my favorite fashion vanguards.

Ooh, Ooh, Inauguration

Women's Wear Daily compiled a slideshow of famous designers' sketches for Michelle Obama's inauguration dress (linked to title). After that Narciso Rodriguez disaster, maybe she should take note... or she can just wear another fiery sunburst glittery explosion.
If you're really bored, here are some peanut gallery observations to pass the time...

Did Betsey Johnson think this was a joke?
What the hell was Zac Posen thinking?
Rachel Roy is only a step above Rachel Zoe.
Why is Rodarte designing for an alien?
Elie Tahari, Michele is not a Golden Girl (although we could use a Blanche Devereaux in the White House).
Diane Von Furstenberg, this is not the Kennedy inauguration.

Girls and Subcultures

This is late, but I keep thinking about McRobbie's analysis of girls and subcultures in light of some of the reading I've been doing about the Otaku scene. McRobbie suggests that if the subcultures of girls somehow "provide their members with a collective confidence which could transcend the need for 'boys'" that it was a sign of progress (33). The Otaku cafes where girls dress as boys, for girls to come and pretend "flirt," seems to fit this description. Girls protect themselves from having their feelings hurt by boys who do not understand them, but they get to engage in play-flirting that is engaging, but completely harmless. I think this is an empowering move!

Beauty and Technology

Mechanical Imagery in the Beauty Salon: 

Vertov : Man with the Moving Camera

(Credits: Kino, 1997)

Money is so In

In the last week, amidst news of terrorism and plunging international markets, I came across two fashion stories that so frustrated every ounce of my humanist sensibilities that I had to share.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Karl Lagerfeld, apparently unsatisfied with having teddy bears fashioned after him and designing white t-shirts and mugs for charity, is now making money. Yes, money - perhaps he can contrbute to the bailouts. The coins will be in commemoration of Coco Chanel's 125th birthday and will be stamped with her likeness (yeah, like Queen Elizabeth).

The Times (the UK Times, that is) on the other hand has a lovely story about a new online vintage boutique called "Vintage Academe." Aside from the title's shameless invocation of old-world, European money, the article is full of gems like this: "What they've done... is to sense that there is a mood to shop and dress differently." That kind of insightfulness is clearly academe-worthy, because who would have ever guessed that "difference" (consumed in moderation) can yield commercial success? Furthermore, the economy of high-end vintage fashion probably exists in a vacuum, far far away from those bailouts and that pesky recession because, according to the author, the boutique owners have "realised... that the day of the £1,000 must-have handbag is over. So too, if we're not in our teens, is the day of the cheap, cheerful, throwaway little number (why bother?)." Rejoice: the days of poverty are over. All this time, we've been opting for the "cheap and cheerful" look. How passé.

(Article linked to title)

Costuming and Creativity, Local 705

Nielsen's discussion of "creativity" being "synonymous with resourcefulness" really reinforces my perception of the film industry as a highly exploitative money-making machine. Seduced by the glamour of working in the business, thousands of people continue to flock to Los Angeles to work in the biz for less than survivable wages to ultimately apply their "creativity" towards bringing in "substantial savings for the producer" (171).  

While it seems predictable that the heads of departments were generally men, when I read that Vera West made a lot of important decisions but was still not the head of the department, I found it to be a saddening fact. Luckily Ellsworth marked a moment of transition with the rebound of the industry during the war and his position as a business agent in 1942, but he notes that the age discrimination issue was quite rampantly at play. I wonder what the cause of the demand for younger women was, considering that it seemed to be much less of an issue in the 30s? Why did it go in the less-progressive direction? Did it have to do with the notion that younger women had a better fashion sense, and somehow being attractive and well-taken care of herself, indicated that she would be a better costumer? These notions obviously abound still today--now the existence of the metro male shows that these ideas are projected on both men and women  (if you take good care of yourself, it is a reflection of how well you take care of other aspects of your life).  I suppose that in the 30s the women in the industry were mainly doing the "workerly" aspects of the job (the more manual aspects of costuming) and therefore it mattered less how she "visually" represented the studio. 

The fact that women in the finished department were pretty much required to be young and attractive (in addition to being knowledgeable)  still irks me. Clearly it is the reality of the biz, and in other industries as well, but the reliance on judgments drawn based upon the "personal image-resume" can't be avoided, unfortunately, especially in the film industry where a look or appearance is the first and foremost factor of determining promotability or the success of a product. How the production crew "look" translates into how promising the final film will "look." Funny and sad, simultaneously. 

Misogyny and Socialization

I'm interested in discourses of misogyny through the ages.  The mind-body dualism gets mapped onto male-female.  (Is that the inaugurating misogynistic gesture in Western culture?)  But that mapping, of course, is differently inflected in different historical time periods.  For instance, in the twentieth century (according to Andreas Huyssen), women are identified as the dupes of mass culture, always eager to consume the latest sensationalistic romance or what have you: the sense in which a stigmatized mass culture engages the body means that it must needs appeal most to women, as the more bodily of the two genders.  The misogynistic notion of women as lacking rationality gets articulated, in consumer culture, as their greater susceptibility to advertising and their "baffling," mindless compulsion to make purchases of non-utilitarian items and "trinkets."  This association of women with the "compulsive"/mindless recalls notions of hysteria (or simply the idea that women were more prone to madness) with which women were pathologized in earlier eras.

Second Wave feminists reacted against a "feminine" look--since they were eager to resist the socialization which constructed women to behave as subservient and submissive to men.  One might speak of the "misogyny" of Second Wave feminism as it's disparagement of the "feminine" on the grounds that those who instantiated it were mindlessly in the grip of socialization--that their feminine masquerade, in other words, was an unconscious one, without reflection or awareness of the actually alienated status of "femininity."  A "feminine" look, from a Second Wave viewpoint, becomes permissible only when accompanied by the requisite sense of ironic distance on the part of the woman wearing it.

Feminism, as a movement, then, made a particular group more aware of the ways in which their peculiar identity markers were conventional rather than innate.  There needs to be a similar movement with respect to men (perhaps there already has been) to make men more aware of the degree to which male heterosexual desire, for instance, is socialized--mediated, conditioned, and commodified by images of hegemonic female beauty that are sold to men in mainstream advertising and pornography.  Such a men's movement would be feminist in inspiration and inclination--would in fact be a feminist off-shoot.  Of course, the bare mention of a "men's movement" sounds risible and insufferable.

DIY at its Hairiest - Woof!

Providing inspiration for dog hair scarves...

Race and Manufacturing (reading response)

In Handmaidens of the Glamour Culture: Costumers in the Hollywood Studio System, Elizabeth Nielsen traces the work of costumers from the “Golden Studio Era” of the 1920s to the present, and the role organized labor played in excluding certain female laborers (particularly African American) during the studio era to the current state of a female driven and influential Hollywood labor union. Neilsen contends that women were restricted from most Hollywood unions until the 1970s to keep men’s salaries high, and most women during this era were clustered in two local unions—the film lab workers and costumers union. Neilson points out that many of the women employed in as costumers where immigrant laborers from such countries as Mexico, Italy, Japan or Russia inter alia. They often specialized in the manufacture of clothing in their native lands and English was a second language in the shops. Interestingly, Neilsen points out that African American were not among these workers, and to illuminate Inna’s point about the “obliteration of labor from the final fantasy,” –the issue of why African American women were excluded while Latino or Asian immigrants were allowed (albeit limited) access to costumer positions and the union should to be addressed. Neilsen does not engage the issue further—whether Black female bodies associated with “agitation” more so than recent immigrant laborers. I am reminded about a similar issue involving Latino and Black professional athletes, where some Black players have public raised the issue that professional sports organizations prefer Latino players over Black players due to the perception that Latinos are easier to ‘control.’ Is this the same rationale adopted by the union leader and studio heads, or as Inna suggest, a deliberate mechanism used to disrupt a collective and unified female union? If, as the author suggests, costume labor was not a respected profession, and the conditions and wages for costumers were among the worst in the industry, why were studio and union heads reluctant to hire a skilled Black seamstress or relegate her to “dirty work” while employing other ethnic minority costume laborers?

Creativity in the Political Economy (Reading Response)

Nielsen’s piece “Handmaidens of the Glamour Culture” and Andrew Ross’s collection of essays on garment workers and sweatshops generate the sort of productive anger that I think is essential to academic work that aims at social change. Somehow, despite our progressive awareness of the economies of slavery and exploitative labor practices, the types of examinations Nielsen and Ross engage in never fail to infuriate (and hopefully politicize). It seems clear that analyzing the division of labor in these practices is conducive to the Marxist project – the obliteration of labor from the final fantasy, the alienation of the worker from the finished product, validation of exploitation via myths of personal work ethic and integrity of labor, etc. Ross asserts that the tradition of sweatshops in the garment industry has always paid allegiance to “a three-tier system of small producers.” Meanwhile, Nielsen goes to great lengths to delineate the hierarchy of labor (in Hollywood movie studios), only to ultimately suggest that while the segmentation of workers into specific tiers of expertise complicates simplistic binaries, the Marxist logic of proletariat-owners still holds. Crystallized bureaucracies, as evident in contract agreements that cement roles of laborers, are deliberately rigid, ultimately prohibiting growth and innovation. Assumingly, what this segmentation also accomplishes is the fracturing of potential labor coalition. Nielsen talks about African Americans being employed in predominantly specialty shops as a result of discriminatory hiring practices. Solidarity among workers then works only to the extent that racial exclusion is possible. Furthermore, Steve Nutter, in his essay (in “No Sweat”) on the LA garment industry breaks down expertise by racial identification. But these fragmentations are also layered with class, gender, and age (post-feminist disassociation) politics. True to the Marxist method, both Nielsen and Ross’s contributors look to the political economy to explore how domestic deregulation and rapid globalization (usually, as a result of even the slightest hint of potential regulation, as was the case for Guess) undermine the labor movement.
My point in unpacking the Marxist project with regard to labor in the fashion industry is to suggest that this methodological lens is simply not enough to facilitate the kind of social change that these authors are (admirably) shooting for. It occurred to me that perhaps considering the life of the creative cycle (rather than only the manufacturing) would be another productive point of intervention. In other words, where is the site of creativity? And – because I’m convinced that it is neither stable nor residing only at the top of the food chain – how is aesthetic innovation harnessed through the division of labor? What critical lens is necessary to interrogate the flow and temporary hubs of creativity in fashion manufacture?
To be fair, Nielsen tries her hand at “creativity,” but her version is “synonymous with resourcefulness.” While this is a completely valid component of creative production, I’m proposing to look at aesthetic innovation. Robin Givhan’s essay on “ugly chic” (in “No Sweat”) is more in line with the notion of interrogating aesthetic innovation. She looks specifically at designers’ (violent) appropriation of poverty, homelessness and perhaps even drug use to create a sort of “ugly” aesthetic (poor-boy and poor-girl chic). What is rendered as “exotic poverty,” deliberately paired for obvious incongruence, on the runway is an inescapable material reality for most of the world’s population. She concludes that this branding of poverty (much like the branding of race, girl power, and class consciousness) not only de-politicizes the actual struggles of these constructs but also works to reveal that fashionable edge often relies on “the poor, resourceful masses.” While this abstraction is certainly important, it seems clear that not only is Marc Jacobs pilfering from the poverty-stricken and globalized masses, but from the exact same workers employed in his sweatshops (figuratively speaking – I don’t know for sure that he has sweatshops). Yes, designers are “mocking global poverty,” but more pointedly, they are appropriating the creativity of their very own workers. These practices, coupled with Howard Becker’s examination of the collectivity of artistic innovation (I’m thinking of his book “Art Worlds”) are, I think, instructive in beginning to examine the life of creativity in the processes of the fashion industry.

Otaku: The Japanese Nerds Stand Tall and Proud

In my continued research on nerd / geek culture, costuming, the immasculated male, my head keeps turning to Japan, and my fascination for the Otaku, the Japanese nerd, is starting to verge on obsession! They "live out their fantasies at 'maid cafes' " and the funny thing is, I hear there is one here in our very own city of Lost Angels! 

Garment Worker's Center-- Shop with a Heart 2008

From a friend over in the ASE department, in anticipation of our last class:


Shop with a Heart 2008

Fair Trade Fundraiser Dec 4th, Thursday 6pm
The Garment Worker Center is gearing up for our annual fair trade sale. We have a new site to sign up to support our event. Please check it out and share with your friends:

www.garmentworkercenter.org


Our fair trade sale, which will be on December 4th thru December 11th will give you an opportunity to buy fair trade gifts - meaning that the workers who made those items were paid properly and worked in safe environments. Part of the proceeds then help to support local garment workers in their effort to organize and stop sweatshops in LA.

There is no fair trade store in Los Angeles right now - so come to our event and buy your gifts and feel good about your purchases. We will also have our fair trade store open for a week after the reception date to give people more chances to shop.

Please join us for an evening of fair trade shopping and a very special reception honoring exiting Executive Director Kimi Lee and the Bet Tzedek Employment Rights Project.

With Kimi's departure, we enter an exciting new chapter in the future of the Garment Worker Center. We cannot continue our work without community support and we hope that you consider sponsorship to help make our fundraiser a success!

GWC: 1250 So. Los Angeles Street, Suite 213, Los Angeles, CA 90015

www.garmentworkercenter.org

Happy holiday shopping!

Ode to Jeans

In light of our Friday conversation about jeans (skinny jeans, specifically) and Kate’s brave post on the matter, I wanted to add my two cents in.

On skinny jeans: it seems everyone is in agreement that skinny jeans are manifestation of a masochist mechanism that attempts eroticize and infantilize grown women (they do, after all, look an awful lot like little girls’ leggings… all we’re missing is the matching scrunchie). I totally agree. They don’t fit anyone how they’re supposed to, they’re way too expensive for a fad, the colors make me think of ice cream, and the ankle opening might as well be a joke. Plus, the really popular ones like J Brand (I think I might have railed against the brand in class already), are pretty much made for pre-pubescent boys – the inseam zipper is like 2 inches.

That said, I have a pair of skinny jeans. Black ones. And I love them. And here’s why: utility. (Stay with me) For those of us who go back-and-forth between wearing high heels, higher heels, and flats, the same problem emerges: length of jeans. I’m convinced that it’s the industry’s way of making us purchase a million pairs of jeans (seriously, can’t they make a secretly unfolding bottom hem? Seems so simple) I know, I know, it’s a major life dilemma. But here’s the thing, the skinny jeans completely solve that problem because they can go with any heel height. Plus, you can wear old dresses that are way too short to wear as originally intended, as tops.
So, if you’re publicly shaming wearers but secretly pining for a pair, I think the trick might be in the fabric – they have to be real denim (I had to go up 2 sizes, but they fit). Not the 90% stretch kind, but the hard denim variety, with maybe only 1-2% stretch. Levi’s, Gap, Apple Bottom, and AG make good ones. Levi’s and Apple Bottoms are especially good for curves. If you’re unconvinced by the skinny, Joe’s “Muse” jeans are cut like regular pants – slightly higher rise, wider leg, and longer – and fit many different body types. And, the best part is that they go on huge sales, pretty often at Nordstrom Rack and sometimes Marshall’s.

xoxo,
Shallow

Denim advice

It's Friday night, so I am going to bring down the level of discussion on the blog...sorry guys! So here are my denim suggestions to get the ball rolling...

Deener denim - They have a bit of give (but they aren't stretch denim), so they are a bit forgiving in the hip region (although the calves are a bit tight). They are an LA company, but I have only seen them in NY, so here is the website...

http://www.deenerdenim.com/

I also recently discovered Martin + Osa's jeans...they are very forgiving, they come in different lengths and they do free alterations if needed...they might not have the cool cache of some brands, but they did have the best white denim that I could find.

Star Doll: The Ultimate Fashion Power

In researching for my last post I came across Stardoll. A site where you can dress up your favorite celebrities paper doll style in infinite wardrobes of your choosing. I created an Avril Lavigne doll using outfits from her new clothing line, Abbey Dawn. Talk about genius marketing.

Dress up Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson and many more, but with the power to make them fashion disasters at your whim. I think I am enjoying this way too much...

Subcultures as newer economies of re-signification.

From this week's readings, I was interested in the kinds of political affinities between diverse subcultural practices, and was thinking about how practices of retro-dressing could be compared with those of thrift-shopping. Both seem to proceed with a messing up of the logic of quick obsolescence that the capitalism-fashion nexus works with and perpetrates. I am particularly interested in the ways in which the practice of thrifting seemed to undo the rigid and limited typologies of commodities and consumers that first-order retailing imposes and structures demand, perception and consumption with. So the work of thrifting as a political practice seems akin to feminist media studies as well as subcultural studies in so far as the latter work by deconstructing monolithic notions of femininity, class, subjugation, protest and pleasure. And this might seem unconnected and may be a bit of a stretch, but I was also wondering if, in Mi Vida Loca, Ernesto's car is a signifier of his vertical, phallic and resistant power, as well as his desire for competing in the male exhibitionism of a car show; then the feminist collective initiative, the tussle over and staking of claim to it, as also being a kind of recycling and re-induction of the fetishized commodity into the feminine realm of domestic utility and feminine pleasure (doing laundry, as well as going out).
Silverman's brilliant explication of how exhibitionism is fundamental to the constitution of male subjectivity (and not just female) resonated with my understanding of the display and valence of bodies in Mi Vida Loca. While costumes of the characters were fairly conspicuous, I was intrigued by the adornation and styling of hair, and the plethora of styles that were on display with both male as well as female characters. Perhaps, these practices could be connected with a notion of care of the self even when living within financially straitened circumstances. I am also grappling with how naming is shown to work within the dynamics of this particular class and ethnic community of Echo Park. The nature of the names adopted by the characters at one level seem to express a disaffiliation with the individual proper names of mainstream white culture and a distinctive economy of individuation; and at another, the almost incantatory reference to each other as 'our home-boy' or 'our home-girl' seems to signal an equal desire for a collective identity, a shared sense of honor and responsibility. The unique and distinctive kinds of styling and self-identification seem to emerge in starker contrast within the homogenous precincts of Burger King and McDonald's.

Avril Lavigne and the Mainstreaming of Subcultures

For me, Silverman's article is the best jumping off point to explore this week's loosely defined theme of "subcultures." Silverman's historical examination of the the gendered role of fashion in relation to power structures contextualized and defined what is "mainstream." The readings this week primarily defined (or assumed) "subcultures" to be located outside mainstream society. She says “masculine clothing ceased to proclaim hierarchical distinction and became a harmonizing and homogenizing uniform” (141) thus placing all marks of class on the fashion of the woman. Male fashion remains relatively constant, linking male sexuality to stability, whereas the changing locations of “erotic gravity” on the female body over time and the rapid turnaround of women’s fashion serves to destabilize and undermine potential power derived from her clothing/body. Siverman’s definition of mainstream since the 18th century locates sexual difference as the “primary marker of power, privilege and authority, closing the specular gap between men of different classes, placing men and women on opposite sides of the great visual divide” (147). She subsequently defines subcultures through “imaginative dress” that challenge “not only dominant values, but traditional class and gender demarcations” (148). Then she goes on to say, contrary to my expectations, that there is power in having deviant dress be absorbed by the mainstream. “If a given “look” is appropriated by the fashion industry from a subculture or subordinate class, that is because its ideological force and formal bravura can no longer be ignored” (149).

In reading this I was forced to re-examine my feelings on the new Avril Lavigne designed clothing line, Abbey Dawn, now available at Kohl’s. Avril Lavigne’s style has always been punk inspired, but her mainstream music and now fashion line has always been a point of contention for the the true punk rockers out there who find their power in their position outside the mainstream. This is true in general for the readings this week, subcultures can only be defined as oppositional or outside mainstream, but what happens, in the case of Avril and her clothes, when the subculture is now available for mass retail? This has been a reoccurring theme for our class this semester in terms of agency. Can one have power while operating within the established repressive order? Silverman seems to think yes. And although I was mighty tempted to buy myself an Avril Lavigne designed sweatshirt the last time I was shopping at Kohl’s with my mom, if only because her subculture style definitely fits my idea of my own relation to fashion much more than Kohl’s traditional mainstream fair, I just couldn’t do it in the end. A mass produced Avril Lavigne sweatshirt just misses the heart of the punk rock credo.

McRobbie’s article, while interesting in its exploration of race, class, style, youth and gender as organizing principles for subcultures was tremendously confusing to me having not read the 2 texts she continually references. She assumes a definition of mainstream that is unspoken and can only be understood as whatever she doesn’t define as a subculture. Example: “It has always been on the street that most subcultural activity takes place” (29). And so the leap is that mainstream does not take place on the streets. But if it doesn’t rely on the streets for visibility, than where does mainstream visibility lie? Malls, media? I was having continual problems locating what she considers mainstream in relation to her extremely varied examples of subcultures which seemed to be loosely defined as anything “other.” Maybe I just missed something?

I don’t really have anything concrete to say on the Fergosa article other than that I found her anecdotal method of address to be refreshing and easy to follow. Ditto for the Acker interview. The “On Thrifting” article did not work for me. Its mix of academic and colloquial language and reliance on personal experience was frustrating for me. The exploration of value coding was insightful and useful, but the tips and the totalizing generalizations of thrift shoppers as a whole distracted me from the value of the authors’ other arguments. I thought this article would be my favorite to read since it is in “Hop on Pop” edited by Jenkins and Tara, but man I had to put it down and come back to it several times. Am I crazy for responding in this way?

Tinkom, Fuqua and Villarejo's discussion of the complicated ways that people assign value to goods has caused me to return to an issue that I was thinking about for several weeks earlier in the semester in regard to relationships clothes and their wearers. Tinkcom et al. assert that the lack of consumer society's ability to use up the high volume of goods it produces creates a small niche space where thrift operates. In the basic model of producer to consumer first-order shopping values are largely assigned based on where a particular good falls in hierarchical pecking order of its market. Goods in thrift however can frequently be worth almost nothing monetarily and quite a lot to individuals for a complex array of potential reasons. As the authors map out, the age and history of a thrift garment is often something to be embraced unlike in first-order fashion which rewrites its history into complete obsolution almost the moment the goods are produced in order to maintain a market that is constantly in need of something new.
I would argue that women (or people in general although I will use women here) do not write their fashion histories out of existence however. Most women build on those histories as their styles and wardrobes evolve but are not constantly erased as they are on the main cultural and economic stage of fashion. I think women develop complex affinities for individual fashions, and particularly for individual garments.
The archetype of the fashionista who "never wears anything twice" and whose life is a revolving door of looks and garments is clearly very different from the average consumer, and I think for most, not at all the ideal. I think for many women, a garment that fits well and makes them feel good is a rare find and becomes like a friend. They develop an intimate tactile and aesthetic relationship with it and the garment often takes on the character or value of the experiences that occur while she is in it. Unlike the fashion industry ideal in which the closet is a bottomless pit of newness and surprise, the closet of most women is more like a library of cherished possibilities, many endowed with meaning and value beyond their surfaces.

Subcultures and domesticity

I thought there was an interesting overlap between the Acker, McRobbie and Fregoso articles, as domesticity figures centrally in all of their works. McRobbie offers a feminist re-appraisal of subcultural studies, noting the remarkable absence of attention paid to the gendered implications of what are usually masculinist, homosocially organized subculltures constituted by men: “If we look for the structured absences in this youth literature, it is the sphere of family and domestic life that is missing...few writers seemed interested in what happened when a mod went home after a weekend on speed. Only what happened on the streets mattered” (19). Here, McRobbie comments on the ways in which academic conceptualizations of subcultures -- though her grievance is with both male-centered theories and praxis “in the streets” -- are mapped spatially onto feminine domestic and masculine public spheres. I believe Kelly has already pointed to this in her post. In other words, while the boys were busy giving the finger to the pressures of entering a normative domestic life, women were there to provide feminine structures of support for the boys’ other life on the street; they were left to take care of the kids, make the food, endure the physical violence after a bad comedown, and were expected to be available for the occasional (or frequent) shag. And, as McRobbie notes, it is not only that the women weren’t allowed into these subcultures, but that “access to its thrills...would hardly be compensation” because the girl’s function is so deeply instantiated (I know I haven’t included all of the subtle class readings that McRobbie makes).

As for the Acker article, because it is an interview, it is not as coherently organized. To be sure, her comments on domesticity are tangential to her broader comments about a woman’s relationship to her own body’s sites of pleasure/pain/fantasy/play. But, perhaps this is why these moments struck me. When she challenges the misconception that women who want to be spanked position themselves submissively, she moves into an argument about suburban women who really “are” submissive: “Actually submissive women freak me out; I like women who know what they’re doing... I guess everybody makes a choice, somewhere down the line: that they’re going to abide by society’s rules and hide in their nice suburban house and do what they’re told... and maybe, just maybe, they’ll be ‘safe.’” To me, this seems uncharacteristically uncomplicated -- as are her comments about plastic surgery -- but perhaps signals a particular feminist discourse circulating at the time (1991). I mean what would Lynn Spigel say? Or maybe Spigel’s comments about post-War domesticity and post-Reagan domesticity would be different. I digress-- more importantly, Acker positions the woman contained in her suburban house as a foil for those women who are more polymorphous(ly perverse), adventurous, “true to themselves” and not to society’s norms. But, who’s to say that these women aren’t finding their own radical pleasures and getting kinky somewhere behind or on those well-manicured lawns when no one is looking? So, while Acker points in some way to the existence of sexual subcultures that are inclusive of women (orgies in her room, BDSM communities, etc.), she does so by re-inscribing the domestic as something separated from the vibrant worlds lived “in the streets.”

Fregoso’s comments about domesticity versus the streets perhaps offers the most textured account. She begins by re-constructing for us the image of the pachuco, whose immediate familiarity already offers evidence of her point. Chicano urban style has been representationally reserved for the province of men, in spite of the vast presence of women in the actual barrios. If anyone went to see the Cheech Marin collection at the LACMA this summer can attest to just how masculine and heterosexual Chicano art of the 1960s and 1970s was, though it was a really impressive show. Needless to say, the feminist absence in spite of its historical importance, with the exception of a few Diane Gamboa pieces, was striking. Fregoso, like McRobbie, critiques the gendered street/domestic divide, though she addresses it more specifically as it cuts across with race. The body of the pachuca, and the chola, ruptured these spatial divisions; she “refused to be confined by domesticity” (75). However, she returns to these "domestic refusals" in her analysis of Mi Vida Loca. One of her primary complaints with the film is its construction of the dysfunctional Latina family in spite of the crucial importance that the extended system of support that the family provides in the barrio.

I know this post was all over the place. I just really wanted to zone in on the trope of domesticity, because it offers such an interesting contrast to last week's conversations about domestic sitcoms.

8 Things I Hate about "Pretty in Pink"

I'm sorry for being so vocal (and annoying) this week, but I just couldn't resist this.  I’m going to say it: I hate and have always hated Pretty in Pink. And here's why:

1.  Andie's clothes do not look for a second like they were handmade.  And they are ugly.   

2.  Ducky is really a very tragic character, and for some reason we are meant to laugh at him (and somehow his uncoded homosexuality makes this acceptable).

3.  The idea that prom is one of the most important moments of your life. Gross.

4.  That Andie is never, even in the end, proud of her clothes (even though I wouldn't be, if I made them).  

5.  The fetishization of wealth and the signification of clothing as a division (but only of class because race and sexuality are non-issues since everyone is white and (apparently) straight).  

5.  Iona's normalization -- I am so with you Stephanie!

6.  That Andie's dreamboat Blane (with that awful 5 o'clock shadow mustache) is a cowardly sniveling asshole and we're supposed to be thrilled that they get together in the end.  

7.  That it has one of those dumb "poor girl goes into a high-end store and gets snubbed by the snobby staff" scenes.  

8.  And lastly, that prom dress is one of the ugliest articles of clothing I have ever seen.  We're supposed to be happy that she decided to wear a pink bag with some lace on it to prom?    

I'm not all negative though, I do like the music and James Spader. 

"Thrift Store Chic"

I must admit I was positively giddy reading this week's articles, and (in a very narcissistic, lifestyle affirming way) I was especially beaming with "On Thrifting" and "Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse" and I just have TOO much I want to say about them!!!!

Although incredibly spot on, I do think that "On Thrifting" needs an update.  While reading it I started thinking about how the barriers between first and second order forms of clothing are being increasingly blurred.  Retail stores like Urban Outfitters and Top Shop, and designers like Marc Jacobs and Chloe are designing clothes that look like they are from a thrift store but with a first-order (and often very extravagant) price-tag! Scouring the net for examples of high-end thrift inspired clothes, I stumbled upon an article from The Independent about Chloe’s spring 2002 collection titled “Thrift Shop Chic at it’s Finest.” Here are some quotes: “Sweaters looked as if they had been worn and washed for decades” and “It was thrift shop chic at its finest and at designer prices.” Is it just me, or is that counter-intuitive?  This is taking value-coding to a whole new level by assigning absurdly high prices to clothes that are replicas of clothes that cost a few dollars!

One result of the increasing collapse of first and second order clothing is an increased acceptance of thrift store clothes, via either new "thrift store chic" or the real thing, in mainstream culture.  The articles, Fregoso's in particular, look at counter-cultural fashion and identity as an expression of individuality that violates culturally inscribed positions.  I'm a bit miffed that the articles didn't really address the fact that subcultural styles are still dress codes; how can something be an expression of individuality if everyone that dresses in that way looks the same?  Silverman points out that "deviant dress" is always quickly absorbed by the fashion industry, but that this absorption, instead of neutralizing its political messages, signifies that its "ideological force can no longer be ignored."  I understand this argument, but I'm not sure its possible to argue that there is anything politically subversive in something like Hot Topic.  

I prophesize that if the grimness of our economic times continues, thrift will not only become more and more popular, but also more and more necessary.  In fact, my prophecy is already a reality, as mainstream merchants are struggling, many secondhand stores are posting record sales, up 30% overall from a year ago.  So what happens to its cultural and political message when thrift store dress is subsumed by mainstream culture?  

In another vein, what the articles had trouble reconciling for me was the gap in the theorization of subcultural fashions and their lived experience. Although I very much admire Kathy Acker’s idea of tattoo art as a way to remake the body as a challenge to the way the body has been culturally contained, I don’t know how many of the women that get tattoos think of it in this way. And I don’t know how many women that wear thrift store clothes are, in Silverman's words "re-reading them in ways that maximize their radical and transformative potential" (even though I really want them to be!!!).   

***As a side note, I know for a fact that Marc Jacobs can often be found rummaging the aisles of Western Costume borrowing (or stealing, although you didn't hear it from me) inspiration from Hollywood’s moth-eaten and well-worn history. And he’s not the only one. So now what we read about in Nielson’s article is being filched by the much lauded, prolific, and "creative" high-end designers.

Reading Response: Subcultures

Kathy Acker articulates a longing she has for the emergence of communal ritual in a privatized world: "I mean, ecstasy--be it sexual (or some other kind...) should be taking place somehow in our 'community'" (184).  This might be the sort of thing one gets from being in a subculture (or organized religion...or political activism...)--an intensely felt, cathected, group feeling, experienced in the public domain.

If being in a subculture might be a way of getting away with feeling intense emotions in public, McRobbie and Fregoso note the way in which subcultures (at least as they are taken up within popular and academic discourses) tend to be coded male, and they tend to be enacted in the male-coded space of "the streets."  The rough world of male subcultures that McRobbie adumbrates generates a negativity in their members against The Man, (whether by this we denote a racist and/or a class authority), but this very toughness may be vented, in an access of impotence, upon the domestic, private world of women whose subservient, unpaid labor supports these working-class males.  In a familiar misogynistic move, men blame capitalism on women--since women "seduce" and entrap men (by giving birth to their babies) into a position where they need to capitulate to the daily grind of soul-killing labor in order to earn the money to support them.  In effect, such males revolt against patriarchy (and its paternalistic responsibilities to care and to provide),  ironically, in a way which leads them to behave in revoltingly sexist and irresponsible ways towards the women in their lives.  There is, sadly, no sense, in McRobbie or Fregoso, of the possibility of a male-female alliance against patriarchy.

McRobbie's piece is interesting for the way it brings out certain complexities in male sexuality, in a way that the Silverman piece helps to delineate.  If, for Silverman, exhibitionism is a fundamental drive equally shared by males and females (but historically lost to mainstream males since the Great Masculine Renunciation in the 18th century), subcultural style enables males to regain access to sartorial excess, to show-boat in the visual field.  The result, McRobbie insinuates, may be sexual self-sufficiency, (at least temporarily, McRobbie hastens to clarify)--a means of escape from the oppressive strictures of adolescent heterosexuality, into an intensely felt, homosocial world.

McRobbie rightly resents girls' relative lack of access to a similar path of escape from compulsory heterosexuality, with its tediously inevitable marriage plot and relentless teleology towards a "premature middle-age induced by childbirth and housework," a premature shutting down of the possibilities (33).

McRobbie notes that the press tends to rationalize and play down the outbreak of subcultural activity as "boys having fun," "sowing their wild oats" (27).  Even sexually subversive gestures such as tranvestism in youth subcultures, may be rationalized and recuperated as just a healthy, temporary kink on the developmental path towards flawless heteronormativity.  In a way, McRobbie reinscribes these assumptions in that she does not challenge outright the assumption that subcultures are the exclusive property of "youth culture."  Instead of romantically privileging youth as the time of transgression and stylishly symbolic rebellion, it might be nice to try to see the possibilities of being subcultural as extending throughout the life-span--maybe even increasing with age.  (Cf. Acker on getting beyond "the age of beauty" (179)).