One Last Lustful Sigh...

Check these beauties out: like the love-child of a spiny lobster and a medieval mace--Lady Gaga-esque fabulousness.

http://www.endless.com/Sam-Edelman-Womens-Lorissa-Pump/dp/B0035JK5OY/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&cAsin=B0048BHX70&fromPage=search&sr=1-4&qid=1303708810664&asins=B0048BFVO2%2CB0035JK58U%2CB0048BN9AU%2CB0048BHX70%2CB0048BJQIY%2CB0048BHWYO&asinTitle=Sam%20Edelman%20Lorissa%20Pump&contextTitle=search%20results&clientPageSize=100&node=241745011&sort=relevance-fs-rank&keywords=lorissa

As a side-note, and in a combustion of consumption and body control, I've been honing a shopping practice that I term "consumer bulimia." It's basically the shopping equivalent of indulging in a decadent, calorie rich meal, enjoying the flavor, and then purging to avoid the long-term consequences.

This method has been made possible and encouraged by the super-lenient 365-day free-return shipping policy on websites like zappos.com and endless.com. The policy allows me to have a little taste of something luxe and out of my budget, knowing I can easily return it--I get that thrill of receiving and opening a new package, I get to see and hold the item I'd been lusting after in pixelated form, and happily, that taste is often pretty satisfying. In fact, without the benefit of professional lighting, staging, and the "zoom in" function, some items simply aren't as magnificent, and I get over my crush...ofcourse if they are amazing (and the lorissa pumps above are amaaaaazing) and you lack self-control, this tactic has its flaws.

Big, feminized, essentialist, pouty-lipped, high-heeled kisses to you all!

Marika

52 Plastic Surgeries and Counting

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Watch Cindy Jackson on the Today show, with Kathy Lee Gifford, our favorite, justifying her 52 plastic surgery procedures. Apparently she was an art student too fascinated by aesthetics to not change her every facial "flaw." She also says human proportions were invented long ago by Da Vinci and Michelangelo?

Interesting points include Jackson saying she didn't want to look like a man, "what woman does?", followed by Gifford's "Let's not go there, Cindy!", and in the end, when Jackson says she only needs a man for one thing -- to be her surgeon. Gifford, considering the ideologies undergirding a show like this, "takes her to task" here again asking if she's never had a female surgeon.

UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin’s message on academic freedom and open records

from: http://www.news.wisc.edu/19190

Members of the campus community,

Two weeks ago UW-Madison received an open records request from Stephan Thompson, deputy executive director of the state's Republican Party, for email records of Professor Bill Cronon.
Professor Cronon is the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography and Environmental Studies at UW-Madison. He is one of the university's most celebrated and respected scholars, teachers, mentors and citizens. I am proud to call him a colleague.

The implications of this case go beyond Bill Cronon. When Mr. Thompson made his request, he was exercising his right under Wisconsin's public records law both to make such a request and to make it without stating his motive. Neither the request nor the absence of a stated motive seemed particularly unusual. We frequently receive public records requests with apparently political motives, from both the left and the right, and every position in between. I announced that the university would comply with the law and, as we do in all cases, apply the kind of balancing test that the law allows, taking such things as the rights to privacy and free expression into account. We have done that analysis and will release the records later today that we believe are in compliance with state law.

We are excluding records involving students because they are protected under FERPA. We are excluding exchanges that fall outside the realm of the faculty member's job responsibilities and that could be considered personal pursuant to Wisconsin Supreme Court case law. We are also excluding what we consider to be the private email exchanges among scholars that fall within the orbit of academic freedom and all that is entailed by it. Academic freedom is the freedom to pursue knowledge and develop lines of argument without fear of reprisal for controversial findings and without the premature disclosure of those ideas.

Scholars and scientists pursue knowledge by way of open intellectual exchange. Without a zone of privacy within which to conduct and protect their work, scholars would not be able to produce new knowledge or make life-enhancing discoveries. Lively, even heated and acrimonious debates over policy, campus and otherwise, as well as more narrowly defined disciplinary matters are essential elements of an intellectual environment and such debates are the very definition of the Wisconsin Idea.

When faculty members use email or any other medium to develop and share their thoughts with one another, they must be able to assume a right to the privacy of those exchanges, barring violations of state law or university policy. Having every exchange of ideas subject to public exposure puts academic freedom in peril and threatens the processes by which knowledge is created. The consequence for our state will be the loss of the most talented and creative faculty who will choose to leave for universities where collegial exchange and the development of ideas can be undertaken without fear of premature exposure or reprisal for unpopular positions.

This does not mean that scholars can be irresponsible in the use of state and university resources or the exercise of academic freedom. We have dutifully reviewed Professor Cronon's records for any legal or policy violations, such as improper uses of state or university resources for partisan political activity. There are none.

To our faculty, I say: Continue to ask difficult questions, explore unpopular lines of thought and exercise your academic freedom, regardless of your point of view. As always, we will take our cue from the bronze plaque on the walls of Bascom Hall. It calls for the "continual and fearless sifting and winnowing" of ideas. It is our tradition, our defining value, and the way to a better society.

Chancellor Biddy Martin

Tailor Tales

Angela McRobbie’s article got me thinking about an ancient form of production in India’s vast clothing industry that has somehow survived through modernization and even retooled itself to cater to contemporary desires -the neighborhood tailor who, during my grandmother’s times, was the sole spinner of sartorial tales. This ubiquitous fellow, often a wizened old man in command of a solitary sewing machine and a shop that was little more than an alcove at the street corner, was the person who tailored clothes for the entire family. Indeed, so significant was the relationship with their tailor, that families would rely on him for advice on what would look best (read: modestly appropriate) on the teenage daughter who would be attending a family wedding for the first time. I remember many sunny afternoons spent with my grandmother, devouring oranges lightly dipped in a mixture of salt and black pepper, where she would recount, misty-eyed, the glorious days of her teenage years enriched by the sheer beauty of the clothes her mother got tailored for her. So steadfast was her belief in the ‘nobility’ of getting clothes tailored versus buying unimaginative and overpriced versions from stores that even in her old age, she refused to ever wear anything that did not come from a trusted local tailor.

Things were not vastly different for my mother; she too had numerous tales of the man who tailored elaborate dresses for her –a product of the flower power generation and a Mumbai native, my mother delighted in remembrances of polka dotted tunics, bell bottomed trousers, a much beloved lilac mini and the dearest red colored A line maxi skirt embellished with gorgeous cutouts of black suede flowers (which I proudly inherited and donned, many times over, as a teenager!) all created from the magic fingers of her Master-ji (tailors in India are still called Masters, the word ‘ji’ is a suffix intended to demonstrate respect). There was nothing the man could not create from scratch and perhaps the strongest evidence of his talent lay in his ability to create ‘western’ clothes, which were not very accessible to the average middle class Indian in those times.

Today, perhaps even more than before the tailor stands as an indispensable figure, despite India’s foray into the global fashion scene documented by the mushrooming of indigenous design houses and the entry of prominent foreign labels. Indian fashion designers rely, for production purposes, on a team of tailors led by the traditional figure –the Masterji. Most of these tailors hail from villages and small cities and are skilled craftsmen in their own right. However, unable to afford setting up shop on their own or, even more, lacking the enterprise and initiative to do so, they function as the backbone of a fashion house, creating pret collections and couture creations which make their way to the most exclusive of boutique stores both in India and worldwide, earning a miserable fraction of what the outfit is likely to sell for. Others continue to work out of dilapidated storefronts and decrepit street corners, specializing in Indian wear (in opposition to my mother’s times, today western wear in India is almost universally purchased in stores), contemporarizing his trade by offering to stitch, for a fraction of the cost, the exact replica of a designer outfit –all you need is a photo and a few hundred rupees. Yet others barely eke out a living by surviving on money earned through alterations of various garments –a priceless service rendered for an abysmally low price.

American Apparel in Peril and the Luxury of Guilt

Nadine's excellent post brought up some really provocative issues in terms of our daily, experiential relationship to fashion and consumption. Our desire and our right to know the provenance of what we buy (from comestibles to neon leggings) seems to inform some of the largest current cultural debates, but in my personal life, these arguments sadly tend to disintegrate under mundane if inescapable pragmatics and economic limitations.

When it comes to ethical consumption, it is now a truism that such selective and conscientious practices come at a cost, and often create a marked class distinction, furnishing all the (sometimes true) cliches about affluent and guilt-ridden (usually white) shoppers buying organic, hand-picked arugula and feeling self-congratulatory. I personally can't afford to buy organic or "go green," in the branded sense, so if I wanted to positively contribute, I would have to access an alternative mode of resistance, which ties into Nadine's suggestion that we have yet to establish and implement a truly effective and progressive method to counteract exploitation in production.

Sooo, much like watching the doc Food Inc., reading No Sweat filled me with a temporary sense of indignation and injustice, but left me ultimately with an inchoate sense of frustration and futility, knowing that I'm probably not going to change much.

In an example of cost-prohibitive conscience: I love American Apparel's T-shirts. Their tri-blend v-necks make my heart beat faster and the tops have gained a cultish following, lauded for their perfect light-weight gauge and vintage feel. However, I'll be damned (damned I say) if I'm going to pay $24 for a cotton T-shirt. I'm a student on a budget, and even though I'm fully aware that the elevated unit cost is directly related to renowned Made-in-LA production mode (paying workers in its downtown factory $12/hr), I still don't want to overpay for cotton for the sake of knowing I can purchase with a clear conscience.

Up until very recently, I simply got my AA tri-blends on ebay, where I could buy in bulk (usually 3 shirts for the price of one retail top) from random wholesalers. It was my negotiated approach to anti-sweatshop consumption: the shirts were already fabricated in LA, the workers were paid equitably, but Marika could pay less than in the store. So you can imagine my horror when AA cracked down this past year and have forbidden ebay sellers from offering their products under the guise of being officially licensed: now the ebay shirts must be branded with some kind of insignia to alert shoppers that this is not "authentic" American Apparel. Check it out.

Handmaidens of the Glamour Culture

Elizabeth Nielsen's essay fits nicely within a body of historical work that has set the course straight in accordance to today's prescriptive feminism. Indeed, "Handmaidens of the Glamour Culture: Costumers in the Hollywood Studio System" depicts yet another profession where women are/were given little agency in determining their own careers and the organization of the profession at large.

Even now, in this supposed age of post-feminism, female costumers are still underpaid and overworked. And while women have always held a majority, men are still appointed union leaders as they continue to be seen as more effective in business arrangements with male studio heads. Further, the women in the industry today "must not only be knowledgeable but she must be young and attractive" (174). There definitely exists, then, a double standard in which physical beauty assumes a greater role in determining women's success in the field than men's.

Nielsen doesn't consider in her research the participation of gay men in the trade, a project that if undertaken would better paint a picture of the typical male Hollywood costumer in relation to the female costumer she describes. If the costuming world is anything like the fashion world, a venerable assumption, then gay men play a giant role in the field and deserve recognition.

Neilsen talks about how "'creativity' is synonymous with rescoursefulness" (170). Clearly, the amount of acumen needed to confront production issues is crucial. It must've been disconcerting for women with such creativity, both now and then, to see their abilities not put to use simply due to discriminatory practices. This point is particularly sobering for me because not only do women suffer - women's suffrage being a cornerstone in the feminist argument - but film quality suffers also.

Now, to end on a more personal note:

There are only four girls in my production class this semester, and none of them seem heavily invested in the class. They offer few critiques, will show up late, and turn in unfinished projects. I think they would benefit enormously from a critical studies course where she would be exposed to feminist thought as I have. Women in critical studies, I feel, not only well represented but empowered. But this sense of empowerment needs to trickle into other SCA departments also. My second film actually offers a curious critique of feminism, one I hoped would force some response from the women in the class, but I had to prompt them to respond. Why am I having to do this? Nielsen would probably want to know too.

Inside the Sweat Shops of Los Angeles

A very interesting, and very sad article on the garment industry in downtown Los Angeles and East L.A.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0803-02.htm

Reporter Andrew Gumbel accompanies California's Labour Standards Enforcement Bureau into one of the non-descript garment factories in downtown L.A., and describes what he observes.

L.A. is a choice location for the manufacturing of garments because of its proximity to design and retail quarters which ensures a faster response time to orders. This responsiveness eliminates costly backlogs and markdowns when slow responses mean an over-saturation of the market, and allows retailers to capitalise on popular products. In addition, it thrives off illegal labour, getting away with paying workers dismal wages. No Sweat has an enlightening, if somewhat distasteful interview with the owner of Nicole Miller, who despite not using sweat-shop labour, argues for the profit-driven benefits of keeping garment factories in his New York back yard.

This is a poster from the Emmy award winning documentary film, Made in L.A. which follows the story of three immigrants working in Los Angeles garment sweatshops as they embark on a three-year odyssey to win basic labor protections from a trendy clothing retailer. More information can be accessed here: http://www.madeinla.com/

How Sweatshops Put it All into Perspective

No Sweat resonated deeply with me, so much so that I spent the whole of Friday and Saturday reading most of the articles and the interviews between its covers. Clichéd as it sounds, and often unabashedly sensationalist as the book was, No Sweat was one of those books that will actually change some aspect of the way one lives and in particular provoke one to be more critical of one’s consumption habits. It places fashion and production/issues of labour in conversation with each other, something which the fashion industry today has so effectively managed to dissociate. For this last reading response, I’ll engage a little with our readings from No Sweat before considering what implications this may have for neo-colonialism, feminism, and fashion, and ponder what we might do as consumers about the situation. This book really puts all we’ve been talking about this semester – the possibility of agency through consumption, recuperating female pleasure through shopping etc – into perspective.

McRobbie’s article summarizes and traces how the shift in feminist discourse from the 1970s to the 1990s maps a concurrent blindsiding of problematic issues of labour and production alongside the increasing celebration of shopping and consumption. 70’s feminists critiqued women’s fashion consumption – from its exploitative conditions of production, to fashion’s representation of women, to the insidiousness of women’s consumer culture itself. Then, McRobbie writes, the possibility of recuperating fashion consumption and female shopping pleasure as legitimate practices in feminist discourse, began in the mid-80s. The subversive and empowering pleasures accessed by women through shopping were celebrated. But along with this impulse, came silencing of the question of where the clothes came from and under what conditions they were produced. Pessimistic arguments about neo-colonial exploitation through transnational labour industries became a Pandora’s box with no hope for solution, and therefore a blight on the celebration of women and consumption. But McRobbie warns against the loss of political valance in this shift, arguing that we ought not to celebrate the agency of the clothes buyer/wearer when it means the silencing of the women who make the clothes. I am completely with her on her call for a feminist framework which accounts for both women’s shopping pleasures as well as pessimistic truths about the labour behind the clothes.

Such a question becomes pertinent with the shift in the fashion industry toward mass-produced “designer” fashion – as embodied by Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Steve Madden and the host of L.A. sweatshop produced designer denim (I’m sure J Brand, Current/Elliott, AG don’t have their hands clean all having their factories in the L.A. area). The practice of “downsizing” and sub-contracting, incentivised for American companies through the Reagan and Bush administration since the 80s, means that the manufacturing of clothing and its accompanying issues of labour exploitation are hidden from scrutiny halfway across the globe. The increasing ethnic paranoia in the U.S. and the demonisation of immigrants as an assault on (white) America drives matrices of illegal labour deeper underground. Even though illegal immigrants provide the very foundations for labour on which the country’s capitalist system is predicated on (involved as they are in manufacturing and labour intensive work), their transgressions as “illegals” take precedence in the public eye before their rights as workers. Whilst we celebrate increasing access to greater variety in clothes, and whilst we might discuss clothing as enabling expressions of female agency and identity and “resistance”, how can we in all decency do so knowing under what conditions these avatars for agency were produced? As Paul Smith writes, identity though style ought to be thought of in relation to production. I wish there could be a way to celebrate both female consumption pleasures whilst also remaining politically active on the part of the sweatshop labourers who make these pleasures possible.

McRobbie has suggested several ways in which this gulf between consumption and production might be breached. One of the most resounding comments she offers is the need to dissociate fashion from just art in the training of new designers, or at least, be clear about fashion as a production and labour process. In addition, various writers in the book, including McRobbie have suggested the boycotting of labels assosciated with sweatshops. But I wonder, how does boycotting sweatshop produced labels help the workers?

No doubt I completely agree with this move, and will work at implementing it in my own shopping. But I wonder if thinking that a bad rep, boycotts, and dropping sales is all it takes, or is even an effective strategy, in doing good for the garment workers and put an end to labour exploitation. I don’t wish to be pessimistic but factory closures due to consumer boycotts does not pay the garment worker, nor replace her job. Lets take the case of Guess for instance. After public criticism of its involvement in sweatshop labour in Los Angeles in the mid-90s, Guess moved its factories to Mexico. Nike is known to move its factories from South Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia after changing labour laws and their enforcement. And it would be naïve to think that “third world” governments, for fear of losing foreign investments to competing countries, would crack down on labour codes. Corruption between officials and manufactures is the norm rather than the exception. My ex-boyfriend from Malaysia (which is not even by any means “third-world” and I do detest that term), factors in bribes for officials into his plans for developing a hotel. It is true when McKenzie Wark argues that low-skilled labour will not lead to long-term economic growth. However, short term foreign investments into the country provide much needed relief from an overtaxed system too deeply entrenched in structural problems and a history of colonial exploitation, to be thinking of long-term development.

In addition, entire regions in large developing countries are reliant on the garment industry and on producing products for First world consumption. This reliance is one deliberately embedded within the country’s economic and political structure – through imperial history and the creation of channels of Eastern production for Western consumption, through neo-colonial processes of transnational “sub-contracting”, and though deliberate political measures to gear a country’s economy toward the service of Western metropoles particularly the U.S. (e.g. Reagan and Nicaragua). The rhetoric of informed consumption and boycotts, though romantic and enabling to the Western consumer (and certainly well-meaning), should not be considered near helpful enough. Before we can dream of ending the garment industry's involvement with exploited labour in such countries, we must first ensure their ability to survive independent of the whims of U.S. demands, or at least more autonomously from this transnational ball and chain. And this would be a utopic situation I cannot even begin to imagine in today’s world.

I wonder if all the rhetoric on being informed and discerning consumers, though certainly necessary, takes the attention away once again from larger and far more complex problems underlying sweat labour. Just because we stop buying sweat-made clothes doesn’t end the problem. This is not just a problem for the fashion industry to solve, but one in which an understanding of its complexities involves conversation with political history, imperialism, neo-colonialism, immigration, race politics, government, and a critique of capitalism itself as a failing system.

Shoes with Built-In Drawers

This video is all the rage in Brazil right now. I'm not exactly sure if these shoes are for sale or if they are just a sexist-classist joke on working-class Brazilian women who do their shopping at outdoor markets. Pay special attention to the objects that the male narrator (who, of course, would know what women need to take with them when they are out and about) suggests the wearer can keep inside the shoe (as we know, the foot is one of the most "common" fetishes, whatever that means): a condom, a tampon, a ring (wedding band?), an earring and a lipstick. It's interesting to see what this fantasy of a shoe/foot imagines the woman's foot hides inside her feet. Not something perhaps more neutral and practical like keys or a driver's license, but the accoutrements of femininity, female-ness and sex. The narrator makes some references as to where it might be a good idea to wear the drawer-shoes, citing places that would be popular among poorer women (25 de Março Street in Sao Paulo, a rodeo party and a Baile Funk at the favela, shown below). He also says that the shoes are great to hide your goods in case one is mugged ("assalto" in Portuguese, the same word for "(sexual) assault").

The French, The Veil and The Look

The NY Times just ran this interesting piece on France's recent ban on the veil in public places. Some of the essays we have read this semester serve as great tools for understanding the potential for symbolic intervention that the veil may pose. And, perhaps, how feminists may appropriate it in a way that divorces it from its religious attachments. As the article notes, the veil "interrupts the circulation of coquetry" and reminds French people daily that the "civilizing mission" of its colonies has failed. Mostly, it allows women to "see out," without allowing anyone (men) to "see in." When Interior Minister Claude Guéant defends the principles behind the ban as "secularism" and "equality between man and woman," it's easy to see how threatening to the economy of the patriarchal look the veil is. We know that this claimed "equality" is actually one in which women are looked-at and man look at her (despite possible fissures). If the veil blocks the always already male-to-female look, then the very circulatory system of patriarchy, which guarantees its functioning, gets jammed. The veil announces a withdrawal from an economy that basically founds human subjectivity as we know it,and experience it, rendering the effects of the mirror into impenetrable opaqueness. It disables recognition and, therefore, mis-recognition. It, at the same time, and ironically, invites another kind of look that bounces back to the Western looker (in disapproval, or even horror), perhaps calling attention to the naturalization of an economy that should be "absurd" (similar to the possible effects of camp vis-a-vis the feminine masquerade). Of course the niqab usually means more than just this perhaps ancillary, perhaps accidental, symbolic intervention. If we think of the veil as a feminist refusal, accidental or not, we may be able to see through the self-righteous rhetoric of "equality" and join Luce Irigaray in asking: "Equal to whom?"

Pointy Mexican Boots Taken Too Far

A buddy of mine posted this on Facebook today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEiMA3QtYWc&feature=player_embedded

Next Class

Hi,

if you all could watch RuPaul's Drag Race Episode 12, Season 3, "Jocks in Frocks" for Monday that would be great. You can watch the entire episode for free on the Logo website by clicking here.

Feel free to watch other episodes. This will seem very tangentially related to this week's readings, but pay attention to the ellipsis/absence of the actual making of the sartorial spectacle. It will also bring up a lot of other texts we read throughout the semester. As for bringing something to class, I'm not gonna ask you to come to class in drag, except for Sean, but maybe you can look extra extra fierce just for fun.

Some jabroni for the Onion

We've been discussing eating disorders throughout the semester, so I thought this was an interesting piece by some jabroni at the Onion. I don't know how to respond since he seems to be pretty serious, even if he's writing for a joke news source. But do you think he's right? http://www.theonion.com/articles/women-have-to-stop-starving-themselves-past-the-po,11168/

Rachelle: live online performance for Low Lives 3

From Rachelle:

Hi all,
 I will be participating in Low Lives 3, an online exhibition of live performance on April 29 and April 30. 

The performances can be watched live via UStream http://www.ustream.tv/channel/low-lives-3
My personal channel is  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rachelle-beaudoin.  I will be performing Locker Room Tease from my studio in Peterborough. 

Hope you can check it out live or later via the recorded performance.

Some of my newer videos will also be linked here: http://da2011.i-a-m.tk/ 

Thanks,
Rachelle

In Homage to J. Crew's Sissy Boy

These are my feet circa 2007. I can't remember if the person painting my toes pink is my main fag hag Emily or my sister, Barbara. Either way, some kind of maternal proxy the sissy boy identifies with. See the hag and the sister, respectively, in all their female drag below:





I love how Barbara is wearing her Victoria's Secret paper bag like it's a Lanvin clutch! The "I know but all the same" of the fetish comes to mind. Any prop will do to...prop this fantasy up.

Jon Stewart on Toemageddon

Thanks, Jon.

Boys Whose Favorite Color is Pink

J. Crew customers received an ad last week featuring creative director Jenna Lyons, who I wish were my mom, pictured with her son wearing pink nail polish. They are bonding in a moment of extreme joy and, perhaps, identification. The picture is like watching the train of misery and abjection arriving at the little boy's body, dumbfounded by the action and turning right back to wherever it came from. The caption reads "Lucky for me I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon." Now conservative bloggers and even some psychologists are outraged at a picture which apparently announces the end of gender boundaries and, worse, the end of child rearing as life's raison d'être!

In Gawker's report on this we learn that a certain psychologist Keith Ablow, mourns the fact that girls "beat up other girls on YouTube" and "young men primp and preen until their abdomens are washboards and their hair is perfect." He continues: "And while that may seem like no big deal, it will be a very big deal if it turns out that neither gender is very comfortable anymore nurturing children above all else, and neither gender is motivated to rank creating a family above having great sex forever and neither gender is motivated to protect the nation by marching into combat against other men and risking their lives."

Not a surprise that Mr. Ablow has written a book with Glenn Beck and is Fox News' "expert" in psychiatry. The concepts of male identification with female's sartorial artifice developed by Kaja Silverman in "Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse" are turned into panicky disavowal here. Being faced with a border whose daily labor is supposed to turn into concrete and yet remains porous, and so unabashedly celebrated like this, is a hard one to take. And it's all very contradicting. The same rhetoric that claims a kind of undeniable ontological and physiological truth to gender also believes that the mere applying of a certain color on a subject's toe will suddenly reverse the course of history? Of course the problem isn't so much the child's predilection for pink, but the mother's approval. The mother, designated to precisely do patriarchy's dirty work of surveillance and hetero-pedagogy is here a traitor.

Photos From My Thrifting Escapade at the Goodwill Store Yesterday

Hey everyone, for my presentation later, I thought I'd put up some pictures of my thrifting experience at the Goodwill yesterday. I cant wait to see everyone's thrifted items.











1. A street view of the nondescript Goodwill store on Lankershim Boulevard In North Hollywood.






















2. An equally non-descript main entrance.






3. Organisation in the thrift store.




4. The thrift store as a social space.




4. A logic of value.




5. The dressing room. (!)




I did walk away with a pair of brown linen 1980's boyfriend pants and a bohemian-esqe nude top, so this expedition in the name of scholarship did have its payoffs!

Also for next week...

MOCA has a new exhibit featuring the sisters behind the fashion lable, Rodarte.

This might usefully be juxtaposed with controversy generated by the designing duo when they decided to use  maquiladoras in Mexico's Ciudad Juárez as the 'inspiration' for a fashion show.  See more here.

No Sweat readings for next week

Unless Diego wants to steer us elsewhere, I'd recommend the following articles from No Sweat:
Intro by Andrew Ross and the pieces by Wark, Smith, and McRobbie.  Several of the other pieces are worth a quick look, especially the ones from non-academics.

On Punk and Utilitarian Fashion with mentions of thrifting, dumpster diving, and anti-consumption consumption

It took me awhile to start caring, even a little, about fashion. As I've mentioned in this blog, I spent my formative years playing bass and singing in punk bands.  In Reno in the late 90s and early 00s, all of the punk girls-gay, straight, whatever-had short hair. The boys and the girls wore tight clothing. I remember looking fondly at my friends in a basement show and realizing that one of my favorite things about punk was the androgynous style. Boys who looked girls. Girls who looked like boys. I even wrote lyrics about it in a song called Boys will be Girls will be Boys...

In the punk/hardcore community that I grew up in, punks weren't supposed to care about fashion beyond utility and looking off-putting to the rest of the world. You could care about your appearance but if you spent over 25 minutes on your mohawk you would be ceaselessly mocked for trying too hard. We wore black. Black Chuck Taylors or black boots, the better for dumpster diving. (Even the most staunch animal-rights activist vegan in our town declared himself a "Freegan" when we realized that Krispy Kreme donuts were thrown out in clean plastic bags every hour.) Black bandanas, black jeans, spiked or studded black belts, black t-shirts with white screenprints that were made in our friend's garage. Sometimes, usually in the summer, we would wear white t-shirts with black screenprints. And always the black hoodies or jean jackets.

At the time, skinny jeans weren't in vogue with the rest of the world, so we would buy baggy black Carhartts, cut them up, and sew the legs with dental floss. Everyone had one or two pairs that were worn to literal shreds and then patched with various band patches. (Always a lot of local bands but also the heavy hitters like aus-rotten, Amebix, Casualties and CRASS.) Our look said "These Converse All-Stars are held together with packing tape."

The entire community was built on a Do-It-Yourself mentality that extended into fashion. We would buy the XL $6 t-shirt from the touring band and then cut it to make it fit. We would thrift a bunch of t-shirts from Goodwill and then screenprint them for our own bands. If you found a t-shirt from a band that you liked and that already fit you, then you were really lucky. (BTW, this was in the days before social networking, so touring bands gained notoriety from word of mouth and maybe the occasional zine article.)

In my experience, punk was about outsiders coming together and remaking themselves into the fashion of a specific community. This was for kids who hadn't managed to find a group to hang with at their high school and who didn't have a healthy outlet for their physical aggression. (No one played sports or did any other sort of BS organized activity.) This was Punk. We had a community, a sense of history, and if we didn't have a written purpose, we had a shared goal of making music and having a good time. Our clothing, and sometimes our filth, distinguished us from the rest of the world.

It took leaving my hometown in my early/mid 20s, for me to feel able to shed my punk clothing. I'm still not sure if I'm REALLY over it at all. Luckily, black clothing is also popular in the art world.

And now for the embarrassing photographs...

Shopping at Ross: A Survival Guide

I haven’t legitimately thrifted in some time. Lately my purchasing practices have been centered around the mass-produced McFashion of Forever21, and my longstanding, negotiated relationship with that mecca of off-price shopping: Ross. I guess I’ve been shopping (slumming) at Ross my whole life, since my mom took me there as a child and taught me not to be seduced by cheap fabric content and how to spot shoddy seam-work. Since I’ve had my own car, money, and style, I’ve continued to frequent Ross, and having spent hours in a wide range of Los Angeles locations, I consider myself an expert. So if you’re inclined to brave the down-market chaos, here is my guide for How to Shop at Ross.

First, let me preface this by cautioning that if you are looking for something specific (i.e. a black pencil skirt, or a white oxford shirt), look elsewhere—the characteristic hodgepodge of Ross stores borders on the schizophrenic, and with such a vast and utterly disparate pastiche of items and demographic styles you will NEVER be satisfied if you go in with an agenda. It’s about scouring, gleaning, and discovering hidden gems, a mentality that the chain has recently recognized and capitalized on, with little signs on all their mirrors that say “Enjoy the treasure hunt!” which is just a euphemistic way of saying, “Enjoy sifting through this disorganized shithole!”

Second but related, if you don’t have patience and you like a clean, orderly, aestheticized shopping experience, go elsewhere. Rosses are notoriously crowded, chaotic, messy, occasionally dirty, and given the stained linoleum and heinous fluorescent lights, it is not a leisurely sensual experience. So why do I put up with all this? The prospect of insanely amazing deals is what lures me—I’ve been known to hit up three Rosses in one day for the fix. The general prices are really amazing (waaaay cheaper than Forever21 and often for the same exact item) and they also feature high-end and designer items for ridiculous mark-downs. For example, the boots in the link below retail for $375—I paid $25. So, given those caveats, here’ show to survive

http://www.endless.com/dp/B003DA5ZRC?_encoding=UTF8&tag=tinyprice-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B003DA5ZRC

1) Go early: Ross opens at 9:30, which is when I arrive, and weekdays are best. At the better Rosses there will already be people waiting outside the door in the morning. If you wait until the afternoon or (God forbid) the weekend, the crowd, the lines, and the infamously surly staff can be unbearable. Also, you will have the best choice of the goods, which are picked over quickly.

2) Dress for functionality: much like a sample sale, you will probably be rushing through numerous items, and it’s a pain to get undressed/dressed for each sojourn to the fitting room—I recommend leggings and a cami so that you can try things on over them quickly.

3) Selection: Grab anything and everything. If something even momentarily catches your eye, grab it and put it in your cart, because it will be gone by the time you reconsider. Give everything a chance, even if it looks unimpressive of just plain fugly on the hanger—some of my favorite pieces were things that just seemed oddly intriguing on the rack and then fit like a dream

4) Selection II: you can bring 8 items in to the fitting room, so choose your most hopeful pieces first and save the wild cards for later in case they disappear. You have to leave the extras outside the dressing room, which puts them in danger of being restocked. My solution: I use a hair-tie to bind together the hangers of my chosen items, and I bring a hand-written note that says “I’m Buying These Items Please Do NOT Remove,” which I attach to the clothes with a bobby pin. I usually write this note before-hand, but on occasion I’ve improvised with a napkin and eyeliner (yeah, I’m a little obsessive, but it works and they leave my stuff alone)

5) The Fitting Rooms: simply put, they’re gross. I often bring an old jacket to put on the floor so I don’t have to touch it with my bare feet. Make sure you choose a dressing room stall with a magnetized lock that works (loose, unruly children often push them open. Feel free to smack them—it’s justifiable self defense).

6) When in doubt, buy it: Ross has a very relaxed 30 day return policy as long as the tags are on, so if you’re on the fence about an item or you’d rather try it on in a more pleasant environment, just buy it and return it later.

7) Prices: designer items tend to be more expensive, but generally tops should be in the range of $6.99-$11.99 (they seem to be priced by sheer volume of material used and embellishments); jeans are in the $14.99-$21.99 range including designers like Levi. Bras (including Calvin Klein) tend to be around $5.99. Shoe prices vary the greatest, but you also can find high quality, like beautiful leather-work from Enzo Anglioni, Steve Madden and Sam Edelman, and quirky pairs from Dollhouse and Betsey Johnson.

8) Regional Rosses: I’ve found that the La Canada Ross has the best overall selection. The Pasadena Ross has an unparalleled shoe section with great designer brands like Michael Kors and Calvin Klein. Glendale Ross has great tops and home goods, but the clientele is the most aggressive and offensive so you really have to be dedicated.

If all this isn’t a deterrent, you will find some truly epic scores, plus the added frugalista self-righteousness of knowing that everyone else is overpaying. For under $200, I’ve left with tops, pants, skirts, jackets, shoes, and even a bag and belt. When you walk out of the store, weighed down by the decidedly unglamorous grey and blue plastic Ross bags, you will know that for the same price that someone else paid for one top on Bluefly.com, you got an entire season’s wardrobe.

Now go forth and economize.

Fun google-ism

Here's a fun fact... I was randomly searching for fashion trends amongst Bollywood actors trying to see if there has been a significant shift over time in sensibilities (in response to Silverman's article)... apparently the search string 'Bollywood actor' when qualified by the word 'male', throws up topless men in the first five images (there's more when you scroll down the screen) and when changed to 'Bollywood male' gets even more spectatorial as demonstrated by the above images... masculinity in India is clearly going the objectified way!

Trau(Stig)matized!

I keep mentally revisiting last week’s documentary Stigmata (which, doubtless, has me scarred for seventeen lifetimes at least) and Acker’s interview perhaps because it discomforts me as to how underwhelmed I feel in response to what was obviously meant to be a strident, ‘call for arms’ type of sermon. A detached, critical scholar, part of me wants to empathize with these women who have chosen a radical transfiguration of their bodies as both a proclamation and a reclamation of their personal space but this whiny voice in my head keeps saying “seriously?”. And, lest I might be considered a callous byproduct of a privileged, conformist regime, I would want to say outright that it is not the struggle for rightful self-assertion that I object to it is this particular expression of it (by no means do I subscribe to cosmetic surgery and liposuction either) –even more so when (ostensibly) validated by the ongoing commentary around the gut-churning visuals.

Body art as a defiance of patriarchal domination can perhaps still be justified (body as site of personal expression that flouts conventionalities of womanhood) but vaginal piercings and corseted-to-an-inch-of-their-lives waists just strike me as a sad U-turn to the very conformation they set out to negate. It only gets weirder from here. Acker proudly says in her interview that while oral sex is painful for her, getting spanked and whipped is a much more exciting alternative; am I the only one who reads this fetishistic role play as the most generic form of slavish submission? And what is to be made of this strange self-perpetration of pain in its most depraved form? How does cutting your own wrists again and again (per Acker) become a symbolic assertion of an undaunted womanhood? How does feminism get translated into bodily disfiguration? Are there really women out there who get their nipples pierced not because they think it looks sexy but because it provides them a visual voice of dissent? Also, where are the lines drawn for this deviance? Would not the justification of ‘women are not expected to do this stuff, hence I do it’ eventually apply to, say, prostitution by extension? After all, isn’t that also what ‘good girls’ never do? While I confess that I much lesser saw the documentary as much as I heard it (I am squeamish beyond redemption), that sudden inclusion in the end of the penis piercing scene completely threw me off.

I am, by no means, putting the above out as my penultimate reading of the film or the interview; it is more a genuine inability to the logic of transfiguration as applied in this case to a subversion of conventional femininity. Any explanations to ease my tortured mind regarding the above will be much appreciated!

Giving Feminists the Respect they Deserve

I am aware of my following response not relating too heavily to fashion, but since I feel I am among smart, open-minded people, I’m going to address something pertaining more to academia in general, something which one of the readings got me thinking about again.

Angela McRobbie’s “Setting Accounts with Subculture: A Feminist Critique” touches on an interesting issue I brought up a few weeks ago – that for feminists often the personal is the political. In my post, I admitted to how uncomfortable I am writing in the first person, trained as I was to stay in the third person so as not to rupture the distance necessary to supposedly evaluate critically. However, feminists over the past fifty years or so have largely succeeded in promulgating their agenda and doing so by “recogniz[ing] the close links between personal experience and the areas chosen for study” (McRobbie 18). Avoidance of the first person by male academics, or a refusal “to admit how their own experience has influenced their choice of subject matter,” could very well be the most damaging legacy of modern academia (McRobbie 18). Academic language continues to come off as remote and unfeeling, and if an academic chooses to share his personal experiences with the subject matter, it is done so in a largely shallow and unfeeling way. Clearly, feminist theory is many things, but impersonal is not one of them.

It's true: the nasty “B word” continues to haunt academic writing: “Boring.” I remember my first semester as an undergraduate taking a course on popular music, and saddened by the dullness of the assigned readings. Most of the writings took on an elitist tone toward the subject. I remember looking forward to finishing skimming through these texts, so that I can get back to leisurely reading the lively writing of men outside the academy – the work of Richard Meltzger, Lester Bangs, Nick Tosches, etc. As music and culture critics who worked in the trenches penning articles for mainstream magazines like Creem, Rolling Stone and The Village Voice, they wrote to survive, cut off from a reliable source of income enjoyed by professors and academic instructors. In fact, I can't imagine someone like rock critic Lester Bangs, who in the 1960s and 1970s used the album review in the mainstream press as a forum for his wild stream-of-consciousness ego-trips, ever being comfortable in or inspired by the lap of luxury academia provides. Bangs wanted the vibrant, rebellious, raw spirit of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll to remain intact during a time when rock was siphoning off into different niches while becoming increasingly commodified.

So, as a disciple of Bangs, Tosches, and those feisty guys, I can now relate to and hold a begrudging respect for the raw, reactionary stances by firebrand feminists whom I once thought were "sorta ridiculous human beings." Are a lot of views held by feminists, inside and outside academy, largely unfounded and over-the-top? I sure think so. But so what? Clearly, the writing I enjoy is as well.

Tomorrow, I hope the class will touch on Kaja Silverman’s “Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse” as well as McRobbie’s piece, since they both are rooted in a reactionary feminism that I find fascinating.

Televized Sisterhood

I’m sorry this post is a week too late but I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between the suburban housewife and television programming and how, following McLuhan’s assertion that we are the media we consume, we can ratify the response this particular demographic exhibits to primetime programming, especially, in the Indian context.

Television in India took off to stratospheric heights post liberalization in the early 90’s which allowed both private and foreign investors to engage in industry operations. Following the subsequent channel explosion primetime programming, in its most popular (and lucrative) format came to rest upon a genre similar to the western soap named the ‘serial’ (ostensibly owing to the serialized format of programming). While there has been a fair amount of experimentation in theme and content, one can reasonably describe the bulk of this programming as focused on women-related issues, specifically the relationship between a woman and her husband’s family, with all its attendant concerns ranging from grave social issues such as women’s emancipation, child marriage, dowry etc. to somewhat antiquated (nonetheless selectively relevant) familial concerns such as a nitpicking mother-in-law, a conniving sister-in-law, caste issues etc.

What amazes me about these serials is their capacity to reaffirm, even as they strangely subvert, some truly regressive notions of femininity as they display a male subjugation that borders on servitude and an idealized womanhood that is both incongruous and self-defeatist in contemporary times. The woman in this televised world is always decked up in heavy-duty saris (traditional Indian garb), dripping with gold and diamond jewelry and caked with makeup fit to warrant an effortless entry into the Indian version of What Not to Wear (were such a show to exist)! What makes the whole setup even more bizarre is that these women cook, talk, dance, sing, eat and even sleep with this highly contrived look in place 24/7 in the plotted world of their televised existence.

As an ex-advertising brand manager, I often had the chance to interview middle class and lower middle class housewives (as defined according to a socioeconomic grid created by research analysts specifically for urban metropolitan cities) and the conversation would more often than not steer to their media consumption habits, prominent amongst which was their viewership of these serials. Contrary to my excessive disparagement at what I felt was (and continues to be) a shamefully regressive pattern of allegiance to a nationally inscribed feminine identity; here was roomful after roomful of women who were most vocal in their subscription to the viewpoints propagated in these texts. Was/ is the average Indian housewife a relapsing figure who only aspires to submit to a patriarchal domination? Strangely enough, what these women were getting out of the serials was a subliminally coded message of female empowerment even though the approach was decidedly orthodox. Somehow, the daily squabbling between mother and daughter-in-law, the family’s fall to disgrace because of a relative’s betrayal or the differential treatment accorded to the daughter-in-law from a wealthier family was getting decoded as an empathetic representation of daily struggles combined with a strangely feminist advocacy that prescribed noble suffering and resilience as the logical path to achieving a matriarchal familial status. Opinions ranged from (paraphrased here) “that is exactly my story”, “… I learned that confrontation does not always help and when my mother in law tried to incite my husband against me, I just kept quiet like she (character in serial) does…” to “whenever I get overwhelmed with what’s happening in my life, I ask myself what Tulsi (character) would have done” thereby essaying the significance of the role the shows were playing for these women’s lives. For, while the roles essayed may have a traditional bent, the setting is blatantly a feminine space; male characters play at best supporting roles (even in romances) and conflicts are staged largely between female characters.

Updated to cater to contemporary audiences, today these serials incorporate a (relatively) more refined sartorial sensibility, characters that are somewhat more realistic and themes that extend outside the domestic homefront to the working world and, in the other direction, to rural settings; yet they are still all about the average Indian middle-class woman, her concerns, her frustrations and, perhaps most importantly, her much strived for triumphs.

Call for Fashion Papers: UCLA's Queer Studies Conference

Fashion

UCLA’s 13^th Annual Queer Studies Conference

October 14-15, 2011

Call for Papers

Deadline May 13, 2011

UCLA’s LGBTS Program is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for its upcoming Queer Studies Conference featuring presentations by graduate students as well as faculty and advanced undergraduates.

This year’s conference will explore and exploit issues of fashion, queerly construed. We wish to invite a wide range of questions and panels on subject topics as drag, female masculinities, male femininities, queer making and self-fashioning, cloning and styling, and, of course, the culture and politics of the fashion industry itself. Questions of class, economics, history, ethnicity, race, (im)migration, geography, exploitation, and sublimation are at the forefront of our query. We seek to know what might be a new analytic or interdisciplinary methodology through which to attend to multiple registers of fashion.

Keynote Speakers:

Jack Halberstam, Monica Miller, Mignon Moore,

Karen Leigh Tongson, and Deborah R. Vargas

Closing Performance:

“Queerture: A night of rocket science and fashion design”

with artistic director Tania Hammidi

Proposals for individual papers should take the form of abstracts; panel proposals should also include both a list of participants and paper abstracts. CVs must accompany all abstracts. Submissions from undergraduates should be accompanied by a brief letter from a faculty member highlighting the strengths of both the student and the student’s proposal.

Deadline for abstracts and CVs: May 13, 2011

Send abstracts and CVs to lgbts@humnet.ucla.edu

Contact: Catharine McGraw (310) 206-1145 & lgbts@humnet.ucla.edu

For Next Week's Class 11 April 2011

Hello everyone!

I'll be presenting next week and for the reading on thrifting, I thought we could each bring an item we have thrifted, and which has special meaning to us. This can be piece of clothing, curio, shoes, ornaments, or anything at all picked up at the Goodwill stores, flea markets, random junk yard sales, or even online from sites such as ebay from private sellers (as opposed to online designated vintage or consignment stores).

With regards to the item, it would also be great to share our thoughts on several things:
1. Why do you have a specific attachment to this item? Was it in the excitement of its discovery? Its value to you?
2. Its imagined history: Who do you think it belonged to, what past life do you think the item had?
3. How you navigate a thrift store, flea market, junk year sale, or online "thrift". I'd love to hear how you navigate the space of the thrift, how one would make sense of the very specific "grammar" of thrifting and the thrift space.

Thanks alot everyone! Looking forward to seeing your items and listening to their stories on Monday.

Best,
Nadine

Following Up on White's Critique of HSN

In 1992, when Mimi White published her book, Tele-Advising: Therapeutic Discourse in American Television, the Home Shopping Network had become a household name. White’s article, however, predates the network’s entrance into the e-commerce industry and its campaign to engage with younger audiences through social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter) (“Home Shopping Network,” Wikipedia). By keeping pace with technological advancements, the channel has remained a viable shopping option, a cultural institution, and one that offers comic fodder.

In the mid-90s, Saturday Night Live spoofed the network brilliantly, providing yet another opportunity for Will Ferrell and Chris Kataan to shine as middle-class, mustachioed everyman hosts who pitch to an intended white, middle-class viewership. SNL points to how attractive the channel is not only to female viewers, but male viewers as well, who will watch HSN not for jewelry or clothes but for the sports or entertainment memorabilia being sold. Ferrell’s and Kataan’s impersonations of hosts Don West and Eddie Lewis are not too far off the mark. Much like other white, middle-class males, I remember watching West and Lewis late at night, a thoroughly entertaining diversion during Late Night with Conan O’Brien commercial breaks. The manic, boisterous personalities with a penchant for exaggeration made shoppers laugh, truly a “television of attractions,” as White suggests (91).

In one SNL sketch using HSN as its premise, they actually sell “the real Mark Hamill” (the actor who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars) as a collector’s item during a hyped-up “Star Wars bonanza!” (follow link below).

http://www.hulu.com/watch/10350/saturday-night-live-shop-at-home-network

Quite famously, Hamill’s acting career was haunted by his success as the Star Wars trilogy’s protagonist, and the writers of SNL are working at that level, as if Hamill has being cryogenically preserved for twenty years. This skit’s broader message, however, no matter how funny, is a disturbing critique of HSN appear so desperate in their hard sell they would even set a price on a human being, literally only steps away from black market street vendors or even whoring.

More generally, this course often returns to the dark side of modern day consumption and its dangerous effects on humanity, be it sweatshops in Third World countries, the increasing trend of eating disorders among women, or the racial inequalities that stem from America's present economic model. White and SNL both further that course.