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Sep. 29th, 2005 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseI'm having massive feminist anxiety again.
Actually, it's all sort of dogpiling me at the moment. I'm digging through writing a paper on "Cinderella," trying to do what Gilbert and Gubar did for "Snow White" in "the Madwoman in the Attic," trying to find some way of justifying my feeling that the story is not nearly as sexist as we think it is. This is turning up some really weird stuff about feet and girly bits, esp. with Bettelheim, who somehow comes up with the sister's mutilation of their feet as a symbolic castration, but moving on...
Twisty, who blogs at <http://twistyfaster.typepad.com>, has been talking about women's clothing and fashion. To her, all fashion is misogynistic. And I've felt really uncomfortable with my heels and lipstick.
Part of this is the uneasiness that I feel over the paper--am I excusing a reprehensible story? is it really a story of subjugation to the patriarchy? am I a bad feminist for writing this?--and part is just the old insecurity about "bad feminists."
I'm clinging to my "fashion as theater" concept, and it's sort of saving me. The idea is that clothing is costume, and you pick your part. Some mornings it's one thing, sometimes another. High feminine drag can be used ironically. Right? but is that really why I love it so much? The trouble is that, yes, I agree with the rhetoric that points out that no choice is made in a vacuum. I can't reconcile breast implants with feminism or feminist choice for that reason. But yet I'm saving up for a corset. How the hell does this work?
Awareness has to be the key. The corset attracts my inner antiquarian, my inner submissive. But when I wear it, I am no less than any other person. If men think that it's for them, I'll do my best to disabuse them of that notion. Female desire is a valid motive, and female sexual expression is necessary to the feminist cause.
And Cinderella is a self-motivated agent of femal sexual awakening, damn it!
Actually, it's all sort of dogpiling me at the moment. I'm digging through writing a paper on "Cinderella," trying to do what Gilbert and Gubar did for "Snow White" in "the Madwoman in the Attic," trying to find some way of justifying my feeling that the story is not nearly as sexist as we think it is. This is turning up some really weird stuff about feet and girly bits, esp. with Bettelheim, who somehow comes up with the sister's mutilation of their feet as a symbolic castration, but moving on...
Twisty, who blogs at <http://twistyfaster.typepad.com>, has been talking about women's clothing and fashion. To her, all fashion is misogynistic. And I've felt really uncomfortable with my heels and lipstick.
Part of this is the uneasiness that I feel over the paper--am I excusing a reprehensible story? is it really a story of subjugation to the patriarchy? am I a bad feminist for writing this?--and part is just the old insecurity about "bad feminists."
I'm clinging to my "fashion as theater" concept, and it's sort of saving me. The idea is that clothing is costume, and you pick your part. Some mornings it's one thing, sometimes another. High feminine drag can be used ironically. Right? but is that really why I love it so much? The trouble is that, yes, I agree with the rhetoric that points out that no choice is made in a vacuum. I can't reconcile breast implants with feminism or feminist choice for that reason. But yet I'm saving up for a corset. How the hell does this work?
Awareness has to be the key. The corset attracts my inner antiquarian, my inner submissive. But when I wear it, I am no less than any other person. If men think that it's for them, I'll do my best to disabuse them of that notion. Female desire is a valid motive, and female sexual expression is necessary to the feminist cause.
And Cinderella is a self-motivated agent of femal sexual awakening, damn it!