"I can't move, but boy, can I ever pose!"

I just have to share these videos with the class. They've long been favorites of mine because they work as both a chilling picture of how one media figure polices her own body/image in the name of beauty and an unintentionally hilarious comic masterpiece (as made explicit by the vulgar, brilliant parodies I'll throw in at the end). This is called "Welcome to my home" - it's a lifestyle video released in 1987 by Young and the Restless star Brenda Dickson.

The first part is mostly cosmetic/beauty tips and fashion related musings. "Isn't it dramatic?"



And then we move on to exercise and diet tips. I think the conflation of "health" and "beauty" with slimness is particularly interesting, and some of the "tips" are as wildly incorrect as they are situated in a particular time and space, though Dickson implies a universal standard for all women. Note also the repeated emphasis on how effortless it is for her to maintain the "look" she has achieved - the enjoyment she derives from the process (which may or may not be truly felt, but is certainly linked with many of the articles we read in the first few weeks) and the neverending conversion of fascistic body practices (with regard to eating, perhaps less so with physical exercise) into something that she does to "feel good."



I think the humor in the videos is at least partially derived from Dickson's deeply earnest belief that her way is the way for women to achieve a "beautiful" appearance, but I wonder how much of the humor is dependent on the clearly dated looks put forth as "fashion." I want to say that this has always been hilarious, but I don't know that it's true. Certainly, the 20+ year gulf in time since the release date is significant in some way, but I'm not sure it's something I can articulate right now. And, of course, there is always this dilemma in the discussions we've had: at whose expense do we find this funny? Is it simply another case of "in the know" feminists opposing ourselves to "unsophisticated" fandoms? Does that argument even apply here, given that this is not itself a soap opera but rather aimed toward fans of Dickson herself? And if we turn the critique to Dickson, is the only way out to label her as a "victim" of beauty culture?

Anyway... here are some parody videos done by Deven Green (it's mostly the videos you've already watched with different voice over narration - and I have to say that if you found the first two videos enjoyable at all, you simply MUST watch these - they're endlessly quotable)





A meta acknowledgement: I guess the academic part of my brain always knew that there were some fruitful moments to think about in these videos, but I've always watched them for pleasure, so if there are any moments that you find particularly interesting, I'd love for you to share them.

questions from presentation, 9/26

1.  Riviere's definition of masquerade as the excessive production of femininity to conceal the possession of masculinity troubles Doane because it subordinates, at the level of theory, (causally and ontologically), femininity to masculinity.  (Cf. Freud's idea that there is only one, primary, libido, and it is masculine.)  Might a move to unyoke femininity/masculinity from female/male provide conceptual relief here?  Masculinity need then not be viewed as an exclusively male property: rather, one might speak of female masculinity, female femininity, male masculinity, male femininity....  The transferability or 'floatingness' of masculinity would point up its status as just as much of a masquerade as femininity.

2.  We could debate the usefulness and specificity of the concept of identification in film theory.  My own identificatory position while watching "Hard Candy" (2005) kept shifting: when Jeff is suffering, I feel for him; and whenever Jeff gets loose and picks up the knife in pursuit of Hayley, I fear/feel for her: I identify with whomever is down, like a spectator at a sports event who roots for whichever team is losing at the moment.

"Feminism in 21st-century American Academe"

Hello mates,

Here is the info for an upcoming USC event that might be pertinent to all of us, especially given this week's discussion of the institutionalization of feminism in the university...

"Feminism in 21st-century American Academe"

Presented by Lisa Bitel

Professor of History and Religion

and Chair of Gender Studies

Academic feminism began as part of a broader political movement whose goal was equality of the sexes both on campuses and off. Now that universities are enforcing gender and racial diversity and scholars across the discipline "do gender," many citizens of academe have been wondering: Is feminism over? Do we need Women's and Gender Studies programs?

Meanwhile, despite the growing number of female PhDs crowding graduate programs over the last two decades, women faculty continue to earn less money, get fewer long-term jobs, and achieve fewer promotions than men, especially in mathematics, the sciences, and engineering.

Are there any feminists left on campus? Are we all feminists? Do feminists still have political responsibility for shaping the 21st-century university?

UNIVERSITY PARK CAMPUS

Office of Research Advancement

New Credit Union Building

3720 S. Flower Street, 3rd Floor

CUB 329, Conference Room

Parking available in Exposition Parking Structure (formerly PS2)

for those coming from HSC, CHLA, LAS

Display USC Permit

Enter the parking structure from Figueroa Street at the driveway between the hotel and UGB/Sizzler

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

(Lunch provided)

REGISTER at usccer@usc.edu

or call (213) 740-6709

University of Southern California

Center for Excellence in Research Salon

'Nights in Rodanthe' reviewed by Manohla Dargis

The first paragraph seemed particularly interesting in relation to today's conversation.
Also, Ms. Dargis quotes Clueless in the italicized portion below the body of the review. Heh.

Notes on a shopping trip

About three weeks ago, I visited my first Los Angeles vintage clothing store on the excellent suggestion of another student from this class. (I promised, at the time, not to disclose the name, and I’ll be true to my word.)
The items were more expensive than one might have found in, say, Goodwill, but less than I had seen in my hometown of San Antonio, where vintage clothing seems scarce and thus more valuable, apparently. It was a compromise I was willing to make, since the store had, to be crass, already cut through the bullshit for me. When taking 17 hours of graduate-level courses, one must be satisfied with the thrill of the abridged hunt.
I was able to find several things I liked, but narrowed it down to one: a housedress with bright blue flowers (and tiny black dots between them), and a subtle black frill that lined the collar and the edge of the button placket.
In choosing it, I was thinking of my grandmother, and so I was immediately connected to our past reading. The cut reminded me of something I had seen on her in an old picture. Somewhere between 19 and 20, I went from looking like my mother (who strongly resembles her father), to looking like my grandmother. I think it has something to do with length of hair, but beyond facial features, we have the exact same physical shape. Something about that seems to draw me to clothes that she always admires, saying: I think you and I have the same style. This makes me feel connected to my grandmother’s personal mythology, which is an element in the pastiche that is my wardrobe. A little grandma here, a stolen shirt from my sister (who is my best friend) there, a necklace that belonged to my other grandma (who hated me, may she rest in peace), a poofy dress an old director bought for 50 cents at a garage sale thinking specifically of me, and some shoes I found on sale on Amazon. (Yeah, I’m thrifty.)
There are other reasons I purchased the dress, ones I don’t recall our reading really addressing in much depth. There was a lot of focus on what a piece of clothing does to the body, what desirable silhouette it can create, but not much attention paid to how it highlights one’s other features. In this case, my housedress highlights my eyes, which, blue-green and patterned as they are, happen to be my favorite thing about myself.
I also imagined how I will now be a part of this dress’s history. What have people done in it before? What will I do in it? Who will have it after me? My thought process reminded me of the opening of Miranda July’s New Yorker story “Atlanta,” as she effuses wonderment over her dirty old mattress (in a way one can only expect from July):
“From the stains on the mattress it was clear that people had died on this bed, slowly, over the course of a lifetime. How great, I thought. How wonderful to be a part of such a long history. What would I do in this bed? In this room? What fluids would I secrete?”

Consuming Maternities?

I was just contemplating the films we have screened so far, and it seems that all -- save for Gone With the Wind, though this could certainly be thrown into the mix, and Blonde Venus -- present some really fascinating links between femininity, consumption and the figure of the mother. In Now, Voyager, a “mother’s love is tyranny:” it is oppressive and an impediment to Charlotte’s independence to “buy, wear and sleep” (a.k.a. ‘sleep with’) whatever and wherever she chooses. Indeed, in an opening scene, Charlotte rants, "My mother disapproves of dieting... My mother approves of sensible shoes. My mother, MY MOTHER!" Shortly after, the famous shot of Bette Davis standing atop the boat ramp begins at a low-angle, slowly tracking across her new pumps:
In Stella Dallas, Stella is a much more generous figure than mother Vale, but her excessive love of ruffles and “stacks of style” must be sloughed off before Holly can fully enter a stable class upbringing. In Clueless, the absence of the mother proves to be not just a convention of the teen film, but a part of the context for Cher’s freedom to “buy, wear and sleep,” as she pleases, so to speak.

These films seemingly suggest that a certain slaying of the mother must happen before the daughter can become a proper consumer and enter a normative symbolic order of femininity. This seems a particularly interesting connection given the centrality of the Oedipal complex in Doane and Riviere’s configuration. For Riviere, the mother must be symbolically tortured for the feminine rivalry she poses. Doane, on the other hand, doesn’t explicitly talk about the function of the mother in psychoanalysis, but does obliquely reference her at any mention of the castration complex and the female lack of temporal distance from her own body (she sees and knows simultaneously; or she sees the penis and immediately registers it as lack and therefore can never fetishize it away). I think it is Linda Williams who reminds that, for Freud, the little girl never has an identificatory break with her mother like boys do; she becomes her mother. Granted, the figure of the mother is, of course, going to loom large in both Now,Voyager and Stella Dallas, because they both could be read as maternal melodramas. But it seems peculiar and worth perhaps a longer discussion that, in these films, the mother is inextricably tied to the young girl’s development, not just as a sexual subject, but as a consuming feminine subject. Oh, the maternicide; ‘tis cruel.

And, of course, all of this can be explained outside of psychoanalytic language (particularly in terms of the ageism built into feminine style cultures; generational breaks must be made apparent so that ‘new’ consumers can be groomed -- perhaps a bit too Frankfurtian of a reading). But, I don’t want to veer too far away from the methods we encountered this week.

Hope this made some modicum of sense; or maybe I just have mom issues?

Masquerading as Marlene

At the center of this week’s readings is Joan Riviere’s “Womanliness as Masquerade,” whose basic argument focuses on the idea that women who wish for or display masculine qualities put on a masquerade of femininity in order to “avert anxiety and the retribution feared from men” (35). But when it comes to defining genuine womanliness and the line between it and the masquerade, her answer is concrete: there is no difference, they are the same thing.

Stephen Heath and Mary Ann Doane’s responses point out the major flaw in Riviere’s argument, namely her negation of the existence of femininity while at the same time affirming the existence of masculinity. They also bring her into the realm of the cinema, highlighting the contradiction between masquerade at once offering the possibility of feminine identity and simultaneously taking it away (because this identity is constructed).

What interested me the most about the articles were the continuous references to Marlene Dietrich. Heath heralds her excess and the way she “hold[s] and flaunt[s] the male gaze” (57) and Gaylyn Studlar, connecting with Doane’s ideas about transvestitism, argues that Marlene exemplifies the way costuming can be used to subvert the gaze and traditional gender roles. Referencing Blonde Venus, Studlar places Dietrich in the position of “obtaining power through her knowledge of how others see her”(243). Few images have been more seared in my mind than Marlene shedding the gorilla suit in Blonde Venus. She doesn’t just co-opt a masculine identity, she co-opts the identity of a masculine jungle animal, and then becomes a sexualized object. So in certain ways Marlene seems to defy all expectations. But is she the answer? If I don a tuxedo will I take control of my identity and the masculine gaze? At the same time, there is no doubt that she is constructed as the object of masculine desire. Did she really control her image (think of all the weight she was forced to lose between Germany and Hollywood)? Confusions abound, to say the least. But I do think Studlar has something, because Marlene certainly controls my gaze when she is on the screen.

Reading the arguments of these theorists all at once makes it clear how they so easily tangle and confuse, complement and contradict; the circles continuously intersecting but never coming to any definite conclusions (or solutions). One problem may be their continual reliance on the theories of Freud. While I can appreciate Freud’s contributions to feminist film theory, I think that boiling everything down to Freud’s oversimplifications and generalizations may be a reason why these theorists keep hitting walls. And I’m sorry, perhaps I am incredibly unlearned and naïve, but I don’t want a phallus and I am sick of being told that I do.

Masquerade and My Avatar

What struck me when reading all the articles is how rigid and unspoken the binary definitions of femininity and masculinity were assumed to be. Riviere’s article, written in 1929, is the most specific and traditional in stating how she defines feminine women; “they are excellent wives and mothers, capable housewives; they maintain social life and assist culture; they have no lack of feminine interests, e.g. in their personal appearance...” (36). These are the outward performances that act as the mask hiding the possession of masculinity, which is something that, does not even require a definition. Heath, in his response to her article, is the one who actually spells out masculinity, through the display of clothes, he says “all the trappings of authority, hierarchy, order, position make the man, his phallic identity” (56). Doane’ s Film and Masquerade articulates femininity through position, femininity is associated with closeness and its masquerade through distance (which is also associated with masculinity). I find it interesting that she seems to readily accept that what is being masqueraded as feminine is pretty much inline with the passive, homely wives and mothers that Riviere spelled out over 50 years earlier. Rabine, in her article from last week demonstrated the expressions of femininity have been shifting through the years so I think it is important to look at what exactly is being masqueraded as feminine, because it is constantly influx, and not just where.

What is being masqueraded becomes particularly relevant in Doane’s response to her Film and Masquerade because she starts to talk about the masquerade of femininity happening at the site of language. I find this to particularly salient when discussing identity in virtual communities such as chat rooms and online video games. To me this is the epitome of distance from one’s body because the virtual medium literally allows one to masquerade as any gender, provided you know the right language to use to code yourself as masculine or feminine. In playing the MMORPG World of Warcraft I constantly flip-flop the presentation of myself as male or female, based on the language I use in the in-game chat function to talk to other players. Through my language I can very easily “masquerade” as a 16 year-old boy because the game medium allows me to be distanced from my body. The game acts as my mask and my language is the vehicle through which I become masculine or feminine. What I say and how I say become extremely important in my online identity because this is the only avenue that I have to interact with the other players in the game. For me, in this medium, masculine and feminine codes and their expression are much more fluid than the readings presented them and I'm wondering how this notion complicates the theories put forth this week.

The Proximity of the Masquerade Articles

In the past couple of meetings we have discussed groups of articles that represent varying distances from the objects of study as well as a range of theoretical positions. Although these readings are taken from different historical moments, these articles are all explicitly in dialogue with each other and deeply entangled (and conveniently all take up issues of proximity). All of these articles build off of Joan Riviere’s 1929 “Womanliness as Masquerade,” which posits the revolutionary idea that there is no distinction between masquerade and genuine womanliness (p.38). In “Masquerade Reconsidered,” Mary Ann Doane points out that this eliminates the concept of a “feminine essence,” but still assumes a masculine logic. Doane talks about this as subordinating femininity, but another way to describe this is that we are still thinking of femininity in terms of lack. Doane reveals the contridiction inherent in Riviere’s logic, but what interests me in the Riviere article (p.38) is that both heterosexual and homosexual woman have the same capacity for womanliness. This statement highlights an implicit difference in gender between different sexual orientations - a point that seems to assign value to gender expression right after declaring that femininity is empty. As Doane points out in “Masquerade Reconsidered” that the masks of gender further reveal the “truth” of sexuality in Lacanian psychoanalysis - “the mask is all there is – it conceals only an absence of “pure” or “real” femininity. Indeed, the assumption of a mask conveys more of the “truth” of sexuality…” (p.37). My point is not to address sexuality as comedy or game, but relates more to how gender and sexuality are being linked. Furthermore, if femininity is empty, do men have the same capacity for masquerade? It doesn’t seem like there is room here for the effeminate male.
As mentioned earlier, one of the key elements within all of these articles is the concept of distance. Writing post-Visual Pleasure, Doane points out in “Film and Masquerade,” “[t]he supportive binary opposition at work here is not only that utilized by Laura Mulvey – an opposition between passivity and activity, but perhaps more importantly, an opposition between proximity and distance in relation to the image.” (p.21). It seems that Doane’s movement away from a strict binary of active/passive can incorporate the work of the French poststructuralist feminists, but the conclusions between Mulvey and Doane do not seem to be radically different. Doane’s conception of spectatorship seems to rely on a certain level of slippage between the gaze and passive-active spectators AND the physical distance between spectator and screen. Thus there is an attempt to incorporate a certain level of physicality into the psychoanalytic model of the spectator. What seems to be particularly effective in Doane’s argument is the affirmation that masquerade is not merely a game, but that there are real socio-political results for masquerade (p.38). It seems like there should be a greater sense of playfulness within Doane’s theory of masquerade (and probably within this post...). Part of the issue within the squabble that Doane has with Tania Modleski is that the critical act is not a valid response to the joke. According to Doane, “you may understand the mechanisms but you will never get it.” While the point is well-taken in relation to timing and the temporality of reading, I’m not sure that I want to obliterate the value of my resistant readings (even in the concluding lines, we are left with one mode of spectatorial engagement and the need for structurally different jokes). It is not clear how Riviere’s patient is throwing male sexuality back as a joke – particularly if nobody is considering this as a joke. In her article “The Economy of Desire,” Doane points out that women are actively encouraged to participate in their own oppression through their positions as consumers, I think that there is a similar sentiment in these earlier masquerade articles in the sense that we are conducting a structural and systematic analysis at the expense of the text (Studlar’s article restores some form of textual resistence via Marlene Dietrich).

Lastly, would it be possible to get footnotes on future articles?

These professors make academia look good

This comes from the annual "teaching" issue of the NY Times Sunday Magazine.  Take note: well-dressed academics wear Brooks Brothers and Proenza Schouler (and I am not referring to her Target line)

More on the Music-Fashion Connection

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/145755-sonic-youths-kim-gordon-starts-fashion-line


The impetus for this post is a combination of this article and a bit of development off of an earlier post. Patty and Stephanie brought up the music-fashion connection in relation to the soundtrack-teen identity formation connection. Patty mentioned that this might come up in the subculture week, but this is certainly worth addressing in relation to a much broader consumer culture context. There have been some very successful fashion lines connected to musicians in the past several years (I am thinking specifically about Gwen Stefani’s L.A.M.B line, but we could also include J. Lo’s children’s line, the Hilary Duff line, etc.), which can attribute much of their success to the fact that these lines seem like natural outgrowths of the styles of these musicians. This article from Pitchfork talks about Kim Gordon’s new limited edition jacket. I particularly like all the effort on the part of Gordon and Pitchfork to link the limited edition jacket to limited edition LPs and other musical side projects.

COUGAR ATTACK!! Stella Dallas!

Robert Wagner (22) getting mauled by 45 yr old 'Stella'!!!

Robert Wagner's secret affair with film icon Barbara Stanwyck

May/December romances -- now called cougar attacks -- are as old as the Hollywood Hills.

Robert Wagner, 78, is now revealing a secret affair with a much older Hollywood screen legend in his new autobiography, "Pieces of my Heart," co-authored by Scott Eyman. Click here to see Wagner speak about the book.

Wagner writes about his four-year romance with tough-gal actress Barbara Stanwyck. They met on the set of the 1953 movie, "Titanic," when he was 22 and she was 45. She was divorced at that time from Robert Taylor.

It had been rumored that Stanwyck was a lesbian, which she denied until her death in 1990. But she was, as Time's Richard Corliss points out, often referred to as "too much woman for one man," and he describes her as the screen's "toughest, tastiest cookie," and recalls the line in "Ten Cents a Dance" when she sniffs, "You're not a man. You're not even a good sample."

Wagner writes that Stanwyck gave him "self-esteem." What did he give her? Worth thinking about. But he admits it was she who broke it off after four years because they were both busy working and the age difference was too great.

Wagner writes he "would always have been Mr. Stanwyck" and they both knew it.

Are you surprised by any of this news? I am. Who knew Robert Wagner was working a lot in his mid-20s.

For the first time, Wagner also writes about the controversial drowning death of his wife, Natalie Wood, which plunged him into a long and deep depression.

Photos: Top: Lionel Stander, Stefanie Powers, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Wagner at the Emmys in 1983. Bottom: Wagner and Natalie Wood at the premiere of "The Godfather" in 1972. Credit: WireImage

Lollipops or Heifers? 90210 Discussion

This an article and comment blog from the LA times about the questionable body politics of the CW's latest installment of 90210. Perhaps the debates serve a more reactionary purpose by primarily making value judgments about vague categorizations (“fat” vs. “thin”), often naturalizing and fetishizing the emaciation of these actresses (that some girls are just “naturally” that thin and/or their labor in maintaining a waiflike structure is effaced), and failing to recognize that “fat” is discursively constructed. Heifer/Lollipop is the new Madonna/Whore…it never ends.

If nothing else, enjoy the diatribes against “fat” (whatever this means) mobilized through both “scientific” research and social insecurities.

Changeling

A preview for the last movie I worked on is now online.  It's a 1920s period piece directed by Clint Eastwood starring Angelina Jolie.  I worked as wardrobe slave through pre-production, production, and post-production so I'm very excited to see how it turns out.  From the trailer you can get some idea of what the clothes are like.  

What the designer seemed to struggle with the most was how to find a balance between making Angelina look beautiful (in a delicate, motherly way), but not too beautiful.  The film is based on a true story about a woman named Christine Collins, who was a very plain and "homely."  While those involved in the film's production were not about to actually change or distort Angelina's physical appearance, any "homeliness" had to come in through her clothing and an emphasis on her at times grotesque thinness.  So the costumes, about half of which were vintage and the other half constructed, were deliberately made to look unglamorous and plausible as belonging to a 1920s middle class single mother (so no flapper dresses and long strands of pearls).  Successful or not, we shall see.  But she looks pretty good in a straightjacket.  

My Biggest Guilty Pleasure…Tonight!

This is the moment that I wait for every cycle, America’s Next Top Model Makeovers!! There is something about Tyra telling her naïve little protégés that in order to be the pinnacles of femininity in our society (aka Top Models) they have to chop or even shave off all their hair. Oh the identity crisis that arise in the name of “high fashion” and “couture!” Tonight’s episode also promises “one makeover that will make Top Model history,” cut to a shot of transgendered Isis. Is this a hint that her makeover will include the reassignment surgery she has always wanted?

Here is a little video clip I put together to wet your appetite:

Or check out the preview on the (trashy) CW website.

YellowMan Fashion

Here is an interesting article on YellowMan clothing line, worn by Hollywood industry "hipsters" - if its good enough for J Depp, I suppose its good enough for me. The name of this fashion line suggests a reappropriation (and commodification) not only of a disparaging word but also of Asian culture and empowerment. Or is this more coopting by the social elite? (Store is located right across from the IVY on Robertson) More commodity fetishism? At $218 per shirt - the exchange value certainly seems to outweigh use.

"Adam's Curse" link

"Adam's Curse"

Given the concerns of the course, I thought people might enjoy (re)visiting the Yeats poem "Adam's Curse" (1903):

http://www.slate.com/id/3409/

In the poem's precise terms, it's not that you "have to suffer to be beautiful"; rather, it's that you "have to *labor* to be beautiful." Sarah Berry contends that, in the shift to post-Depression, consumer capitalism, "people have come to be identified with what they consume rather than what they produce" -- a shift away from a capitalism "based on Max Weber's famous Protestant work ethic" (xiii). Maybe so: but it still seems interesting to conceptualize a woman's labors to feminize herself as a form of "labor." Brownmiller dwells much on the labor-intensive nature of femininity's upkeep. A further, large, question, of course, is: To what degree and in what sense is such labor "alienated," and can any of it be recovered as "unalienated"?

Instructive Hair Politics

This is from about a year ago but I like to inject it into every conversation about femininity (or race, sexuality, gender, and class, for that matter).

http://jezebel.com/gossip/your-roots-are-showing/glamour-editor-to-lady-lawyers-being-black-is-kinda-a-corporate-dont-289268.php

or

http://www.racialicious.com/2008/03/04/glamour-magazine-on-women-race-and-beauty/

Take-aways: please neuter your hair.

Making Catwalk Dreams Come True...

Since deep down, every woman just wants to be a model...

http://tech-chic.glam.com/

Could the site's name be any more buzz-word-y? Tech, Chic, Glam! Well, I'm sold.

Bra-Burners, Showgirls, and Male Masochism

I was impressed by Rabine's formulation of a "contradiction," by which recent fashion trends, which allow a woman to dress more 'sexily', at once articulate women's growing freedom and ownership over their own bodies, and, at the same time, further enmesh them in an economy of subjugation, tethering them to the body and its susceptibilities to abuse (60). This contradictory dynamic is visible, I think, even in the paradigmatic "bra-burning" of Second Wave activists. In one and the same gesture, bra-burners symbolized their liberation from confinement within norms that restricted female mobility (in the name of male control) and enforced a fetishized homogenization of the female form, *at the same time that* 'going bra-less' also (presumably) renders particular females more susceptible and vulnerable to the male leer and its objectifying, dehumanizing, sadistic-producing properties.

Having recently watched "Showgirls" (1995), I was interested in the figure of the 'dominatrix' in this regard. I am defining 'dominatrix' as any scantily dressed woman who is also armed and fully equipped to violently retaliate should she meet with any disrespect. We also see this figure, perhaps, in Wonder Woman in the seventies, in Charlie's Angels (?), and in films like Kill Bill (2003, 2004) and Sin City (2005). Such women raise the spectre of male masochism and seem to offer a potential for a reversal of the conventional S/M positioning that situates woman as passive object and male as active agent.

Given Rabine's formulation of this 'contradiction', which she situates in the postwar period, it doesn't seem surprising that this figure should arise at this historical moment: the figure of a sexily dressed woman who is also fully armed and prepared to wreak violence.

"She could be a farmer in those clothes"

This reading response is going to be a bit more of a straightforward bringing together of one of the readings and last week’s screening...

The title of this posting, of course, comes from the scene well-etched into our collective memories where Ty first appears visually in the film’s screenspace and diegetically at the schoolgrounds of Beverly High. She stands garbed in a loose-fitting flannel, brown baggy jeans, a t-shirt with a logo more reminiscent of Hot Topic than ‘Calvin Klein.’ And, I have to give an irrelevant shout out to her blue denim-esque notebook, a familiar vestige from some of our childhoods that, like the one she dons, was so oft stained with Sharpee traces of boredom, friendship, fandom and crushes. But, the snarky Amber quickly frames Ty’s arrival within a spatial and temporal hierarchy. That she’s a ‘farmer,’ which clearly is to be read as a disparaging characterization, places her within a geographic imaginary where the rural and urban is an irreconcilable division. But it also smuggles in a certain assumption that she’s “behind-the-times,” or not “up-to-date,” with fashion’s lightning-speed trend cycles (we need only to think of Cher’s comment to Travis in a later scene: “Duh, that was so last season”). And, of course, these spatial and temporal mappings are inextricably tied to Ty’s alleged disconnection from a certain mode of femininity and desirability. I’ll get into what that ‘certain mode’ is in a second.

The aforementioned scene certainly bears relevance to Sarah Berry’s introduction. Her chapter, which I quite enjoyed, traces a general shift during the 1920s in the U.S. from a class hierarchy based on birthright to one based on, what Bordieu calls, a “symbolic struggle.” That is, the mass marketing of popular fashions allowed for American consumers to self-signify, through style and fashion, a class position different from one that might be determined by pedigree. This shift was particularly significant for women, who were leaving the home and entering the white-collar workplace where appearance was a critical component of the job’s requirements. Of course, as Berry primarily argues, the female protagonist-driven class ascension films of the 1930s proved crucial to this overall transition from “class-to-mass” marketing, as the movie screen “bridged the gulf between urban and rural merchandising,” at the same time that they demystified class hierarchies. As the quote from Hollywood-- Style Center of the World states, “The motion picture has annihilated space.” Berry refers to this “annihilation” later as a “democratization,” as any woman could now access and stylize themselves after popular female celebrities.

Indeed, Ty transforms from “farmer” to fabulous, from tomboy to feminine. And as the rural/urban division of the 1930s has since been re-mapped in new ways onto a suburban/urban distinction, she moves from a provincialism to a cosmopolitan, the screen serving as a “shopping window” for all of the accoutrements for a stylish metro- femininity. Knee highs = glamorous? But really, femininity bears critical ties to geography. Of course, as the films of the 30s did, Clueless critiques the make-over, as it does in the end produce “a monster,” suggesting that class mobility, femininity and fashion are more soul-sucking than rewarding. We remember the scene when Ty cruelly tells Travis, after his endearingly “inappropriate” display of body humor (he spits his gum in the air and catches it again), “Don’t the loadies belong on that grassy knoll?” We can think also think of this in comparison to the scene in which Cher, Ty’s style mentor, screams at Lucy because her Fred Segal shirt is still at the cleaners, which exposes the (often racialized, classed and gendered) “systems of support” that femininity requires, as we discussed last week. Moreover, and perhaps the most biting critique of the film, is that her re-styling does not exactly ‘democratize.’ Elton’s comment that he and Ty don’t ‘make sense,’ that their couple-dom doesn’t fit within a class logic where eros and social position are tied (a very different contention than that posited in Pretty Woman, to be sure) troubles the ease with which “class passing” is at times represented. Needless to say, when Berry speaks of women moving into the white-collar workforce and being able to signify class mobility, I think a consideration of race would maybe reveal this ‘symbolic struggle” to be a little less fluid than she makes it out to be.

Nevertheless, Clueless, Berry, and the other readings we encountered this week, offer a much more nuanced reconsideration of femininity and fashion than those with closer ties to second wave theories. We can’t just simply understand femininity, fashion and the mass market as oppressive and inconsolably patriarchal. Rather, there is a complicated, often contradictory set of processes at work. Fashion is the site of conflict. It is both prescriptive and pleasurable. In Clueless, it is both glamorous and monstrous. And I think this contradiction, this split is certainly a theme that runs through this week’s readings.

Trying to bring it together...

I thought this week's readings forged an interesting dialog as well as counter-point with the film we watched. There was also the sense of a rich polarity between some of the readings. While Leslie Rabine claimed in a post-Foucauldian vein that fashion as a symbolic system 'produces' the feminine self and not merely 'expresses' it; Iris Marion Young tried to stress upon the rich possibilities of the 'abortive' fantasizing that fashion, or a garment as an object engenders in the feminine imagination. My partial dissatisfaction with Young comes from what seems to be a naive celebration of the content of the fashion-generated 'intransitive, playful utopia' and a tokenistic doffing of the hat to feminist studies that has drawn attention to the ways in which the fashion system and garments as material objects are implicated in, as well as obfuscatory of the global neo-imperial late capitalistic economy. I am also interested in the ways in which the political and (pop)feminist valence of fashion and clothes is understood, acknowledged as well as contained within popular culture.

Clueless, seems to assert, through its two primary characters- Cher and Dionne, the idea that fashion, interlinked with a discretely differentiated array of femininities constitute a system of signs that women can manipulate and ace with their psychological, social and sexual acumen. It is the often successful interpretation of not merely other bodies (especially the scene where Cher dismisses the shabby fashion statements of a group of boys in her high school), the girl's location in the position of an evaluator, as well as the girls' acute reading and seeming fulfillment of the gendered expectations of them (by men) that the film seems to celebrate as 'girl power'. Interestingly, the drama is propelled and humor is generated by errors in this act of reading. However, this idea of 'playing at' also posits a notion of an 'inner core' as it were, which fashion and the behavioral codes of femininity can be used to mask and protect. What was most enjoyable in the film, in terms of its critical value was a rich ambivalence that is preserved in the film regarding Cher's motivations. Her preservation of her 'virginity' while generating a very different social perception, could be seen both ways. As, at once, a reassertion of a very conservative ideal of femininity (namely, chastity); but also what might also be seen as a kind of resistant sexual practice in an ethos where women are expected to sexually service men. Thereafter, the film does a double-take on itself, by allowing the character of Tai to mess with the workshop in 'self-improvement' that Cher and Dionne so uncritically try to emancipate her with. Interestingly, the movie doesn't really punish Tai toward the end or dwell on her earlier 'heartbreak', and she is recuperated gleefully into the power-triad.

All the readings also seemed to be concerned with feminist methodologies and academic praxis. Interestingly, Rabine, Morris and Young all feel the need to define themselves and their respective locations, in fairly qualified statements while also stating the claim that their experiences and insights, while being generated by their specific class, race and cultural locations, may also resonate with women in other locations. Meaghan Morris' de Certeau-ian exploration of shopping practices as well as shopping structures reminded me of Cher, Dionne and Tai's use of the mall - not merely for shopping for clothes, but as a site and activity which fosters a particular kind of feminine intimacy (Young). These scenes, in particular the unfortunate incident with Tai (the two boys) as well as the ambiguity of spaces and doubleness of bodies that women have to inhabit (Morris' argument about women's two bodies) so that a woman exerting her sexual independence and deviance, is also prey to sexual predators. I was also thinking of the kinds of practices that women may engage with in relation to commodities and items of fashion in non-western cultural contexts. It would be interesting to see how these critical explorations of shopping and consumption may relate to a film like the Iranian director Majid Majidi's Children of Heaven, in which the little girl's craving for her lost pair of pink shoes also gets linked with an idea of the care of the feminine self, particularly in a cultural context where her gender assigns her to a position of relentless social devaluation. However, there is also a powerful scene in the film where, embarrassed till now for having to where her brother's plaid pair of canvas shoes to school, the girl feels suddenly upbeat and unafraid of being noticed when the teacher praises her for being the only girl wearing the shoes appropriate for physical education. Thinking through practices of consumption in context-specific and historicist ways can help us understand better the ways in which these are both in the grip of and structured by totalizing commercial and ideological forces as well as also always ridden by individual praxis with myriadly subversive potencies.

The Geopolitics of Fur

Always in search of topics related to our ‘fur’ry friends.

Although the Olympics have come and gone ( aplogies for the belated temporality of this issue), I stumbled upon this Peta ad featuring a “nude” Amanda Beard extolling the “virtues” of self-confidence and abstinence from the use of animal fur. This image alone highlights the intersection of several issues regarding consumption, the fashion industry, animal “rights”, politics of place, the body, and desire. Here Beard’s body is the result of both countless hours in the pool and the effort of calculating aestheticians working on the photo shoot (ensuring flattering lighting, make-up for her face and body that would most likely fail anti-animal cruelty standards), the labor of both fetishized away in a project of naturalizing beauty and feminine compassion. The consumption of animal bodies is critiqued as we simultaneously consume Beard’s.

There are various debates that you all should look at circulating around the blogosphere regarding both China’s role in the global fur industry and Peta’s/Beard’s hypocritical righteousness. I am by no means a fan of Peta and their often questionable tactics, but I often find myself at the uneasy intersection between advocating the agency of non-animal others and accounting for cultural specificities and disparate pleasures.

Check out these sites for further commentary by angry bloggers:
latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedishrag/2008/08/olympic-gold-me.html (critical of Peta)
blog.peta.org/archives/2008/08/olympic_champio_1.php (a more "kool-aid" approach)

Your tip sheet for dressing like Gossip Girl

Can we say product tie-ins, anyone?

Um, this is supposed to make me vote?

Help for your skin!

Apropos of last week's discussion of the zoning of the body into more and more minute "problem" areas, this new photo-imaging technology can help reveal INVISIBLE problems....

Palin's 'do the new "Rachel."

And her glasses are selling like hotcakes.

I STILL know you're killing us softly

Jezebel's take on the Brits' stand against sexist advertising:
http://jezebel.com/5046721/sexist-advertising-would-banning-or-boycotts-be-more-effective

Here comes another one: Palin's 'No-Nonsense Style'

This was in today's LA Times.

Reading response (or, How all-encompassing is CTCS 677?)

So, to begin, a little anecdote from this week: In my Poetry and Prose into Drama class, which is essentially a class on adaptation (and completely wonderful), we were tasked with writing a quick scene based on an iteration of the Cinderella story. Our assigned readings had been both the Grimm telling and Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Ash Girl. What I ended up with was a scene that comprised references to Project Runway, McFashion, and inhumane labor practices. I’m thinking, yeah, CTCS 677 is already having a profound impact on my life …
In discussing Cinderella, we of course addressed the fact that it is originally a Chinese myth, and from there discussed foot-binding, of all things, and how that aspect of feminine beauty (small feet, that is) has remained throughout numerous Western retellings. At 5’9, I can say lotus blossom feet are never going to happen. Anyway, I appreciated Brownmiller and Bartky’s attention to height, as that is something, I must say, even my “feminist” partners have taken issue with. Being guilted into not wearing heels isn’t quite hobbling, but it sure isn’t pleasant.
How can I bring heels up without the fabulous quote from Femininity, “Femininity deserves some hard reckoning”? This is exactly why I’m excited about this class. Yes, we have been slaves to femininity psychologically and economically, but at what point do we say, “I know what that represented in the past, but now it’s mine.” (I’m thinking specifically of the Silk Spectre’s redesigned costume for the Watchmen film that includes a corset.)
Finally, much of our reading, in addition to the films we screened Friday, brought to mind another book I’ve been working my way through (slowly but surely), called The Lolita Effect, a book that addresses our culture’s weird demand that women be soft and innocent (in contrast to men), but also virginal and sexy at once. Women and girls must be sexy without having sex. Hm.

Foucault's notion of the "micro-physics of power" is deployed by the readings.  The impression given is that a woman is literally incarcerated in her clothes/body--born into a body whose perceived shortcomings mean that she must artificially sculpt another body for herself, a second body that fits her like a straightjacket.

The truth in this, in an age in which corsets were worn, is easy to visualize; and, more recently, mini-skirts and high heels obviously hamper freedom of movement.  However, ease of action and access to brute force as a resource, are but one modality of power; just because, physically, women are socialized to hem in their movements--to move less forthrightly than men--doesn't mean that they lack power altogether, since power comes in multiple modalities.  As Brownmiller points out, royalty used to be immobilized under the weight of sartorial gear, and such immobilization was the sign not of weakness, but of freedom from physical labor, since all one's wishes were being carried out by servants.

Nowadays--now that women are no longer cooped up and can be sighted jogging in Central Park--one serious sin that the Beauty Myth continues to commit is that it limits opportunities for people who are physically or temperamentally or otherwise unsuited to play by its rules; such people may be discriminated against in multiple ways (passionally, economically).

Bartky, citing the Foucaultian discourse on surveillance, points out that a woman driven to conform to her society's template of 'ideal femininity' internalizes a witness who sits in judgment on her efforts to measure up.  Narcissism (for which the woman is typically blamed) is actually mediated through this third term, this introjected otherness that stands in for the 'gaze' of the patriarchal culture, a gaze whose view of 'beauty' has very definite, set parameters.

Bartky is understandably reluctant to formulate the pleasures that might come out of "objectification" in a looser sense--the pleasures of masochism, e.g., or merely the license to luxuriate in one's embodiment that the surrender to objecthood entails--other than as forms of false consciousness.  The readings, as a whole, take an overly totalistic view of the efficacy of the parameters of 'beauty' set out in any given fashion cycle or phase.  They are reluctant to recognize that a plurality of 'looks' may be found winning by given individuals in any given phase.  Real life, nowadays, is less rigorous than the paranoid Foucaultian notion of a "micro-physics of power" is prepared to concede.  Today, the Beauty Myth is never singular or monolithic in its view of beauty, even synchronically.

 

First lady fashions

Okay, I'm totally blowing the blog up -- sorry -- but I wanted also to share something I saw in the LA Times during DNC week before I forget or the link disappears. I still haven't quite processed this yet, but I think it would make for an interesting conversation one day to discuss the ways in which First Lady fashions have mobilized, at different historical moments (and in other national contexts; we need only think of Imelda's shoe connoisseur-ship), questions about femininity, taste/style, class, race and their ties to the national body (by "body," I refer both to polity and biology, which, of course, as Foucault tells us, are inextricably linked).

The title of this blog entry links to a photo spread the LA Times did on Michelle Obama's many style choices during the democratic campaign. I think the article invites many a-conversation about national attitudes and assumptions about racialized femininities, particularly black femininities, and how they are situated within the field of political spectacle/visual culture, which certainly produces its own set of desires, especially erotic ones.

A friend's blog

I just wanted to share a friend's blog (he's also Charlie's friend!): lipstickeater.blogspot.com. His name is Joon Lee, and he writes memoirs as a Korean American femme fag whose jaw-dropping knowledge and penchant for fashion makes me want to kick off my Nike Dunks-a-la-DeGeneres and throw on a pair of Jimmy Choos. Okay, well not really. But his writing is exquisite and offers a provocative untethering of feminity from whiteness, female biology and a heterosexual economy of desire/fantasy. If you click on the title of this blog entry ("A Friend's Blog"), you'll be redirected to a posting of his that I particularly enjoyed, but please peruse the rest of his site if you should so fancy. I'm already having fun in this class....

LACMA + Street Fashion

This LACMA event celebrating street fashion in the 70s (and today!) looks fabulous.

Class Presentation Sign-ups

CTCS 677: Cultural Theory
Consuming Femininities: Shopping, Beauty + Media Culture
Sign up for a presentation spot. Use the comment feature (not ideal but it should work.) First come, first served! Extra props for taking on this week....
(ADDITION: updated as of 9/11/08)
9/5: Week 2: The Beauty Myth: Femininity, Beauty + Feminism

9/12: Week 3: Refashioning Feminism/Rethinking Femininity + Consumption

9/26: Week 5: Wearing Womanliness: Feminism + Masquerade: David + Inna

10/3: Week 6: Setting the body: Femininity, Spectacle, + Scenario: Amanda

10/10: Week 7: Troubling Gender: Crossdressing, Madonna + Feminism in the 90s: Annie + Arunima

10/17: Week 8: Consuming Class + Showing Fashion: Need to schedule different class meeting time: Kate

10/31: Week 10: Unruly Bodies + Disciplined Bodies: Eating, Working Out + Other
Modes of Bodily Comportment: Charlie

11/5: Week 11: Making Up + Doing Hair: Kelly

11/14: Week 12: Airing Consumption: Shopping + Electronic Media: Ashley

11/21: Week 14: Niched Bodies and Subcultural Practices: Mike

12/5: Week 15: Suffering for Beauty: Labor and the Fashion Industries: Patty + Elizabeth

Max Factor

Hello! A friend of mine found this neat article/book over the weekend. It's a summary of the a book that just came out about the history of Max Factor. Since it intersects with beauty culture, make up, advertising, cinema and all sorts of good stuff I thought I'd post it here for everybody. The picture on the first page is priceless...

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/09/01/080901crbo_books_updike