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RSSHandbags, gowns and girl armour
Can fashion be feminist?
By Laurie Penny Published 22 October 2011 11:12
This week, the Guardian told me to turn up at their offices with my rucksack and talk to a lady. It'll be great, they said, you can talk about feminism and fashion, and because I love the Guardian, I obeyed. The resultant jolly interview, in which I look and sound precisely as baffled and overwhelmed as I was by the whole affair whilst trying to jam in some points about Marxism, gender and consumerism, can be read on the paper's homesite. I have been trying to put my finger on quite what it was about the experience itself that put me so very far outside my comfort zone, and it is this: I just felt scruffy.
I was asked along to make a case about shopping and the banality of consumer choice as a model of empowerment. Justine Picardie, my fellow interviewee, said lots of interesting things about Chanel as an icon and how empowering fashion can be, and I suddenly felt terribly unglamorous, as I usually do in 'proper media' situations. Sitting in those shiny offices, with my ripped grey dress and straggly dyed hair, I found myself, all at once, anxious to prove that just because I believe, with all my heart, that there is more to a woman's life than how she looks and what she buys, that doesn't mean I'm not light-hearted, not fun, not a proper girl. That tension is such an important one in the way we talk and think about feminism.
The thing is that these things do matter; fashion, consumerism and style matter, they matter to women in particular because we fritter away so much of our time and energy and money, whether we want to or not, trying to negotiate those boundaries of gender and status that are mediated through clothes, hair, shoes, makeup, bags, accessories. These are the ways that we prove we are good women, good shoppers, people who know how to conform and consume and seduce, people who want to please, to fit in, no matter how complicated the rules or how high the stakes. Not for nothing are feminists so often stereotyped as ugly, unfeminine, shaven-headed, androgynously dressed. To want any type of power other than the power to seduce, to please, to entertain and comfort and excite is to forfeit one's womanhood on some vital aesthetic level.
Consumer feminism only condones the latter kind of empowerment, and it is a mitigated type of power, and it is not the same thing as control. If you want a vision of a future for feminism, imagine a high heel coming down on a woman's face, forever. At the same time, a vision of a future without dressing up would be a dull feminist utopia indeed.
This has been on my mind lately, because I'm in the middle of a process of what my mother calls 'smartening up'. This involves gradually easing away from my former aesthetic of shaved-head-and-baggy-black-cyber-gear - a hangover from the days when I used to work in a shop in Camden Market- and trying to accustom myself to the niceties of hairstyles, handbags and clothes that don't give the impression, at various meetings, that I've been up all night at the sort of club where they sell pink drinks to teenagers to stop them chewing off the insides of their own mouths. I am finding the whole process confusing, upsetting and expensive.
I've always been fascinated and infuriated by the way that one is obliged, as a woman, to purchase the trappings of one's own gender, and infuriated by the way the rules keep changing the deeper into the game you go. I've been getting into more and more professional situations where it is no longer okay to turn up with huge biker boots and a slash of clashing lipstick and expect to be taken seriously. As women, everything we wear is a statement, and we have no right to remain sartorially silent. We negotiate a field of signifiers every time we open our wardrobes, or, in my case, every time we rummage through the clothes-pile on the bedroom floor.
Two weeks ago, I stayed with an impossibly glamorous friend who insisted upon dressing me up in her latest acquisition, an Alexander McQueen gown. I had never seen such a beautiful piece of clothing in my life, much less tried one on, but when she eventually persuaded me to do so, I stumbled out of her bathroom feeling like an animated doll, banging into things, blinking in uncomfortable confusion. I was afraid to sit down in the thing in case I damaged it. I was afraid to look in the mirror, in case I liked what I saw, and in case that mattered, but my friend made me look. And what I saw, underneath the gorgeous tailoring, the elaborate hairdo and the makeup, was a girl in battle armour.
"McQueen said the clothes he made were supposed to be armour for women," said my friend, taking a picture. Armour is just what that impossible dress was. Wearing it, I felt like a conscript in a war that I hadn't signed up for, a war that had almost nothing to do with fun. The simple joy and play of dressing up and experimenting with clothes and style seems so fraught with anxiety that I am beginning to wonder if we can ever start to reclaim it. Girl armour does give you power, but it comes at a cost.
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202 comments
That should have read 'up your arse' ...how come I keep on missing out important words? Sometimes I think I'm doing it subliminally on purpose and not accidentally.
Don't tell me what to do. I don't fuckin listen to chickens with lexicons stuck up their arses. I don't listen to airheads listening to Under Fuckin Milk Wood while their son is playing rugby.
How can you represent the North if you're listening to some Welsh twat going on about Ms Pink Knickers when the game is on? And you don't know what game it is. Oh go back to yer stamp collection Spuddy boy.. you've got to glue some stamps in.
What sort of poofter northerner are you?
Divine
We've had this conversation before...about googling. As it happens he plays both...he plays league in the Summer.
You need to chill Divine...get yourself a pet Koala...great stress-busters I believe...although they're a bit hard to get hold of in Surrey.
The snobbery and utter prenentiousness of the fashion industry aside, it sounds like you just might, maybe, be growing up a little Laurie
I bet you can sell domesticated Javelinas for a pretty penny ...rich men like to pose with something unusual.
Let me assure you, you don't represent anyone but yourself.
I am really worried now! I have said naughting things about Penny, in the past! It is really important to know whether one should wear North Face or Berghaus when on the unemployed frontline, at St. Pauls, fighting for the IPod, god. Long gone are the days when you could wear a donkey jacket like in my left Foot, , toss it off, in Primrose Hill after a good days fighting for the poor and tuck into a good Red Bordeux.
"lexicons"
Whoa...hang on there...just a moment, Divine...according to Google, 'lexicon' is a 'poofter-word'.
So what have you got to say for yourself now, you silly man?
I'll pretend not to be a lunatic .. I can do it.. I know I can .. I've done it before I can do it again. Does that make you feel any happier?
I suppose it is for a good cause.
No we haven't had this conversation before. We haven't talked about rugby and THE FACT YOU LISTEN TO UNDER MILK WOOD and smoke a spliff while your son is playing rugby.
We haven't talked about you having a criminal record while you claim to be a teacher!
We haven't talked about you being a poofter and a bullshitter. Come on I' really am from the North .. I know when someone really is.
"You can't be a teacher with a criminal record."
No Divine. You tell me why you think you can't. Please...give me the exact regulation...word for word. Not hard...Google it. You're wrong...again.
"And FUCK YOU TELLIN ME TO CHILL."
Someone's gotta tell you, you big fuckin spoon. CHILL!!!!
ouch that hurt.. I told you not to punch to hard
he he he hen he he he he he
"Let me assure you, you don't represent anyone but yourself."
And, let me assure you, I never thought for a second that I did, nor did I ever try to.
But, from the tone of what you're saying, I detect that you think you do. So just how big is the demographic of delusional fuck-ups currently resident in bed-sit accommodation in the Home Counties portraying themselves as Macho Northerns who've run away to Australia...possibly because it's the only place they can vent their rampant homophobic tendencies in public?
Don't try to change the subject. You said you were a builder and a maths.. yet you had a criminal record. You can't be a teacher with a criminal record. Tell me exactly how you can be one?
And FUCK YOU TELLIN ME TO CHILL. I do what I want... have you got that shitface?
"Face it, no amount of word-trickery can breath life back into this 'debate'. If the important parts are between the lines then why not write them on the lines so we can all see them?"
What fucking debate Whatever?
There is no debate. Divine claims I'm a financially stable, reasonably educated woman living in the South East. I claim I'm not. There is no fuckin debate; one of us is right and he's wrong. And if you insist on perceiving such a binary dispute as a debate then no amount of writing 'on' the lines is gonna help, is it?
We're not going to reach some acceptable compromise whereby my left ear and right leg are female, and the rest male. Or accept that maybe my powers of logical analysis and moral values reside in Guildford, while my memories, sense of self and aesthetic preferences are situated on Teesside.
There's no debate to be had, Whatever.
My aesthetic sense is mainly situated around Greggs and the X Factor while my ethical code is straight out of the 1976 Andy Capp annual. However, my powers of logical analysis are cloned from a strand of Kurt Godel's hair which I found down the back seat of a second hand Renault 4 I was thinking about buying once.
no no mr Woogy I'm not a eurotrash .. I'm a red indian.
what about you mr.woogy...what sort of trash are you?
I reckon I could easily kick your butt as your butt is ten a penny. Come on tell me about yourself .. I bet you are too chicken. Where do you live approx and what do you do approx? Me, I'm a scouser living in Australia and I grow things. What about you? You're probably too afraid now that I've told you I'm a mean scouser and I wont hear from you again.
"I know when someone really is."
Yeah Divine...just like your forensic textual deconstruction which led you to assert that I'm a woman from down South. Mate, you're a fuckin idiot.
Anyways, later Divine...don't get any more wound up and punch the monitor, btw...head-butt the wall instead.
Better get writin quick .. I'm on yer.
I tell you what I' m here with my face right next to the monitor.. go ahead and punch the screen.. you woman.
Ps don't punch too hard.. it might hurt me.
"Better get writin quick .. I'm on yer."
Ha
HE HE HE HE HE HE HE HE HE HE HE
the bait again.
Divine
Bait's a 'poofter-word'.
i can't write for laughin
bye
that's what you call real under milk wood.. i've got have a coffee.
The previous 20 posts were brought to you by 'Schizo's R Us.'
A not for profit organisation supporting people who clearly have too much time on their hands.
Do you fancy a coffee too Des?
Mr Divine. It is superficial to say they are live like Native Americans just because they have tents, sing songs, and use signs; they are hardly going to build houses to protest in - apart from anything else they wouldn't get planning permission. Native Americans lived in tents so they could move around, but the protesters are intending to stay put. Native Americans were not protesting either, but belonged where they were. Protesters don't belong there, and that is why they are a nuisance, which is what they want to be so people listen. So all your talk about feathers and what-not is at best selective.
'one of us is right and he's wrong'
Whatever
#The previous 20 posts were brought to you by 'Schizo's R Us.'#
No they weren't, "Schizo's R Us" changed its name in 2004 in response to multiple complaints alleging the term 'Schizo' unfairly stigmatised sufferers. It's now "Differently Psychosocially Oriented R Us". I find your continued use of the term 'Schizo' insufferably boorish and discourteous.
"A not for profit organisation supporting people who clearly have too much time on their hands."
Would that be the same as a non-profit organisation? "Not-for-profit-organisation" was dropped in the late 90s in favour of "non-profit organisation" following multiple complaints that the former represented an egregious manifestation of the sort of clunky, awkward prose which might lead the reader to suppose the author was a semi-literate buffoon with no feel for, or appreciation, of the language.
And, I've only got time on my hands because I've nothing on today. But my time on here is hardly wasted...that said, clearly it's wasted on the likes of you Des Demona, with little or no appreciation of the subtlety and artistry of my 'craft'...but to others, it allows a brief, if occluded, glimpse into the mind of one of the world's foremost alcohol-dependent cultural, political and sociological thinkers.
...and, as a not-so-serendipitous by-product, it also gives you a chance to experience that dark vortex of delusional torment known as Mr Divine.
Got to agree with you there Spud Middleton. I have a number of schizophrenic friends in my mental health group and I have 'experiences' myself in that direction ... and those of the vortex!
I thought you were going mate? That was quite a rush! I think I am going .. the hot water bottle is ready and I'm knackered.
see you late mate
Steve
Mr. Woogy is scared of you Mr. Divine. He's one of those one shot commentators who runs away after one of his poofter punches. I bet he wont return. He's an airhead.
Woof woof. It's all the same thing. But you'll never understand. To you, I'm somewhere out there in the great beyond. You've put your sticker on me head but you don't know what it means. I don't know but I have a 'feel' for it, an experience of it. You think I'm like all the other 'fruitcakes'. Yet how many fruitcakes and 'straights' have seen beyond the veneer? And why is it that I have met with you, the owner of the ranch, in this way? Am I not like you, a cosmic and material blend of the human race?
It must have been very stressful for Maggie, all those people screaming at her. Apparently she could hardly sleep a wink at night ... imagine that! But she had it coming some might say ...she was a victim of her own sword.
"Baudlaire looks quite natty in the photographs. It was Rimbaud who dressed down and didn't like washing, which didn't keep him out of Verlaine's bed. Of course it is easier for men. We really can wear what we like and some of us think that any man in a suit is a prat. I remember the poet Laurie Lee saying to a Beeb make-up person, 'but I always look like a bit of old knitting'. And so he did, so he did."
Re Baudelaire - I meant more with respect to his being willing to suffer for an uncompromising originality. I pondered the wisdom of using a notorious dandy to make that point as I writ it. Bit of a brat too in many respects.
Re men dressing as they please - I've never really found that to be true. I very much doubt Paxman could turn up for work in a nose ring and bikder leathers, though I'd give him a fiver to try it. Moreover particular forms of dress can easily earn a male a jolly good kick in in the right parts of the right town.
Some people handle a suit well. It's just you rarely - if ever - see it in a professional role and mainstream media. No matter how many times DC removes his jacket and takes a sip of water, authoritatively pointing at another ubiquitous, besuited media-geek, he still looks like a spiritually bankrupt, simulated twat.
And yet, for sure, in the company of such high-power corporate adults, I have no doubt in my mind that I'd feel like a child in their midst. Without question, I absolutely know, through dress, manner, culture, breeding, that nothing valuable in my world could cross over into theirs, and by the same token, they too can keep that world for themselves as well.
I'll grant you though - 'I always look like a pile of knitting' is an infinitely more charming and gentle souled way of dealing with this kind of anxiety.
I'm left pondering on what the reaction of Goodison Park might be should Spud turn up, six pack in hand with make up and a frilly blouse...
I'd give him a fiver to find out too.
I thought the mooning news link was quite funny. I really enjoy the stuff you write as well. Of course Laurie is right out there.
Here, I'm starting to become like ET! The songs have a heart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnYo10QUgX4&feature=related
It's not just the things on the screen that link.
Ricardo: The protestors have moved camp to Finsbury Park just like the nomadic Red Indian Native America First People.
Ian: Some people consider any English word to describe Red Indians as bad. The word doesn't matter, the meaning does. Besides as someone who has seen a Red Indian in the mirror coming through my face and felt the Great Spirit moved me through the wind I consider myself partly a Red Indian. You may think this means I have some sort of 'mental illness' but how do you know that it is not you that has a mental blockage? If you look closely in the mirror you can see that Red Indian. It is telling you to fight against the Corporate Cowboys that pollute my earth with their dirt and destruction. It is saying put some little feathers on your person to show your defiance of the alienation of this money grasping profit driven world. Return to seek pleasures from the earth; the clean air, the clean water, the fire that burns bright, the stars at night and the love of your fellow beings.
Mr. Divine is right. Take a look at how the demonstrating woman on the left is dressed. If that isn't a modern day version of a native American I don't know what is.
thttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknews/8831021/Occupy-London-thousands-of-anti-capitalist-protesters-demonstrate-in-the-City.html?image=19
Laurie, I think what's needed is for women to start designing clothes for women, & without trying to conform to the previously existing traditions, stereotypes or whatever. I think the problem with women's clothing is that the majority of designers are guys, & most of them are guys who don't even particularly like women. There's a few notable exceptions, but they tend to do just pretty derivative garments. The trouble is the garments themselves, too - there's a range of garment types we class as "women's clothing" & anything that comes out is always quite firmly within that area - so, a dress is a dress is a dress, & all designers ever do when designing dresses is design dresses, very little variation, just flouncier or slimmer, or whatever, but at the end of the day it's only ever a dress. They need to think a bit more, be a bit more original.
Couldn't agree with you more Sciamachy. Its a bit like peeling an onion...in the end all it is is skin. The important thing is to find the clothes that demonstrate the bones.
Okay, maybe you have a point.
Ricardo: If you look at the picture again you'll see that the woman on the right is wearing a red robe and her hair is parted in the middle and she looks like a native American.
In fact that whole gallery is very interesting. Assange is there wearing a 'leather' jacket and this makes him look like a slimy snake... what does that tell you? There is a picture of a man in a suit looking at another man in a suit like he was a mirror image.
What gets me is that there is a bloke eating his breakfast from a cardboard container and it looks like its some junk food. First off trees have to be cut down for these boxes and secondly God only knows how much DDT is on his chips.
Why doesn't someone cook breakfast? Pumpkin, the American native staple, would be perfect as it is cheap, easy to cook and easy to slice up into holdable pieces. No need for containers as the skin does the job.
Steve, Maggie was many things. A victim was not one of them. Scargill was putty in her iron fists.
I wish participation in this article hadn't been accepted. I groaned when I saw and read it.
Making concessions to sexism by thinking it can be negotiated with..as with racists and racism...inevitably weakens the impact of the point.
Next time..tell them to find someone with less to lose ..
i agree with everything mr divine says, since we become mates again,,mr divine is always right and you lot are always wrong,,get it..
what exactly was you doing india mr divine,,sounds a bit dodgy to me..
stuart; i was having a good time..riding a bicycle..popping in to factories and temples...i wouldn't bother going to perth stuart, i would go to india,,,it's cheaper and a lot more fun for someone your age.
Consumerism is a concentrated form of labour power, which is accelerated over time by rapidly changing ideas of attractiveness which target young men and women, and put the fear of hell into the minds of older women; viscious and hugely profitable.
This Spud Middleton guy is listening to Under Fuckin Milk Wood by Dylan Fuckin thomas WHILE HIS KID IS ROUGHIN IT. TWATHEAD. What fuckin shit Northerner does ya think ya ARE? FUCK off Middleton. Who do you fuck do you think you are? Eh SHIT FACE? What FUCKIN CODE SHIT FACE? We don't need about any more poofters FROM THE SOUTH PRETENDING TO BE US. FUCK OFF WITH WITH YER LEXICON. SHIT OFF PRETENDER.
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