Choice feminism and the infantilization of women

I thought this recent Klausner piece on Jezebel was right on. It's about the trend for grown-ass women to dress and behave like little girls.

There's so much ukulele playing now, it's deafening. So much cotton candy, so many bunny rabbits and whoopie pies and craft fairs and kitten emphera, and grown women wearing converse sneakers with mini skirts. So many fucking birds.
Girls get tattoos that they will never be able to grow into. Women with master's degrees who are searching for life partners, list "rainbows, Girl Scout cookies, and laughing a lot" under "interests, on their Match.com profiles.

Now I don't agree with everything the author attacked in this piece, but I do agree it raised some good issues on the larger context. Of course the article created quite a stir, in part due to the fact that the whole "panic pixie dream girl" is in vogue right now, and partly because we want to believe that we chose our own choices. "In this case, that means that some women want to believe that their predilection for rompers and kittens and baby voices reflects their individual personalities and not some trend toward retro, non-threatening femaleness." (Source) Unfortunately, no one chooses their choices in a vacuum. This got me thinking about the phenomenon of “choice feminism,” where women argue that even anti-feminist behaviors are feminist because “feminism is about choice.” If you choose to infantilize yourself - or if you decide that it's ok for others to infantilze you - that means that it isn't misogynistic, because anything you as a woman choose to do is feminist. In fact, the real misogynist is the feminist who’s trying to tell you that the infantilization of women is bad. I've never been entirely comfortable with the idea of labeling some life choices as "feminist" and others as not feminist. Feminism is about how to achieve total legal, social, religious and economic equality for women. Then again, I have no problem saying that women who claim the mantle of feminist but actively support the patriarchy and denigrate other women as making unfeminst choices. But in this case I think it really comes down to the larger issue -

it is a lot easier for men -or even guys or bros-to demean us, if we're girls. It's much harder to bring down a woman, or to call her a moron, when she's not in pigtails and Ring Pops.(source)

You should be able to make the choices that are right for you and that includes dressing how you want. Where choice feminism falls down, though, is in assuming that any of those things are actual choices right now. They're not. You can decide to be OK with it, or you can decide to fight it, but the options aren’t equal -- one of them’s going to make for a much harder life, including being on the receiving end of hostility from people who think you shouldn’t complain. So if you want to wear rompers, talk in a baby voice, and in other ways act like a child. Go ahead! It's your choice! But don’t fool yourself that you’re doing so of your own unconstrained free will.

Feminsit Fashion: What about the workers?

I stumbled upon the old post from Feministe entitled Lipstick Feminism and Dressing the Part Which discuses beauty and fashion as it tends to be debated amongst feminists and others:

"Beauty as power is something that is taught to every young girl. Common adjectives that are used to compliment girls often refer to how pretty, sweet, or kind that they are. Very seldom do we reward girls for their intelligence, assertiveness, or passion. As a child becomes a woman she internalizes the idea that is what is most valuable about her, is her physical appearance."

"Feminism has engaged with beauty on many levels. Some feminists feel that performing beauty even to gain personally is internalizing the male gaze. Others feel that the daily ritual is a sign of their autonomy in that they actively chose which beauty procedures that they will adhere too and which they will reject based on personal desire. The debate between the lipstick feminists and the I will not subject my body to social discipline feminists has been waged since the 1970′s.

What is beauty without the finery and the flash? Each season the fashion industry deploys an army of models to inform us how to best maximize on our feminine whiles. One simply cannot be caught wearing the wrong shade, or sporting a purse that is the wrong size. On the other side of the equation, you have women that are blissfully unaware of the fashion trends and dress for comfort over style. These are the “utility women,” who find power in thwarting the seasonal call to the mall. Utility women take pride in dressing only in what makes them feel comfortable, while at the same time voraciously attacking their dolled up sisters as patriarchal dupes."

However then the piece goes on to note that this debate ignores the greater implications of fashion and beauty - whether one chooses to buy designer or shop at a retail discount store they are still participating in the impoverishment of other women who work in the factories where these goods are produced.

"When women who are middle/upper class engage in a debate as to whether an article of clothing, or makeup is suitably feminist what they are ignoring is that they are in a position to engage in this particular conversation, because they exist with class privilege."

According to The Feminist Majority Foundation, “Women make up 90 percent of sweatshop laborers. Women are paid as little as six cents an hour and work ten to twelve hour shifts. In many instances overtime is mandatory. In some cases, women are allowed only two drinks of water and one bathroom break per shift. Sexual harassment, corporal punishment, and verbal abuse are all means used by supervisors to instill fear and keep employees in line.

Many of the companies directly running sweatshops are small and don’t have much name recognition. However, virtually every retailer in the U.S. has ties to sweatshops. The U.S. is the biggest market for the garment industry and almost all the garment sales in this country are controlled by 5 corporations: Wal-Mart, JC Penney, Sears, The May Company (owns and operates Lord & Taylor, Hecht1s, Filene1s and others) and Federated Department Stores (owns and operates Bloomingdale1s, Macy1s, Burdine1s, Stern1s and others).

Several industry leaders have been cited for labor abuses by the Department of Labor. Of these Guess? Clothing Co. is one of the worst offenders – Guess? was suspended indefinitely from the Department of Labor’s list of “good guys” because their contractors were cited for so many sweatshop violations.

Other companies contract out their production to overseas manufacturers whose labor rights violations have been exposed by U.S. and international human rights groups. These include Nike, Disney, Wal-Mart, Reebok, Phillips- Van Heusen, the Gap, Liz Claiborne and Ralph Lauren.

The argument is clearly more important than whether one is dressing to please oneself or others. There is no denying that basically any purchase you make comes at the exploitation of women. Why is this dialogue missing from both the feminist and style communities when we talk about fashion?

French Style

A great little read on French style and aesthetics
French women do not dress for men. “French women don’t dress to be sexy. Of course we do dress to seduce — that’s different from trying to ‘catch’ a man by wearing flamboyant clothes. The basic attitude is different. A French woman never feels she’s offering herself. There’s never a sense of surrender, but an attitude of ‘I belong to me’.”

I think thus is a great quote and a great attitude one should have told fashion in general. Rather than surrendering oneself to the current trend or in the interest of garnering someone's gaze, it's important to rock what looks good on you and most importantly what makes you feel good.

1920s Jazz Age Lawn Party Style

Pictures from the 2011 Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governors Island in New York. Here are a few of my favorite shots, more can be found at the above link.

“If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, but you think it’s a pig … it’s a pig.”

A great article on a great woman and feminist icon "On Her 77th Birthday, Seven Things I’ve Learned from Gloria Steinem" . This got me to thinking about feminism and fashion. Gloria Steinem --the feminist in a miniskirt, who worked undercover as a playboy bunny in the early 1960s to write about how women are treated at those clubs. Yet, like many other second-wave feminists, Steinem often avoided discussion of women’s bodies for decades to come. Steinem herself could never leave behind those photos of her in the bunny suit, and it was upsetting to her that her looks and her body were often so commented on. It was not until 1981, with the publication of her essay “In Praise of Women’s Bodies,” that she really began to discuss the relationship between societal pressures and how women view themselves.

The pressure on women to have it all, and do it all, can manifest itself in our relationships with our bodies, as much as it does on us to have both a promising career and domestic stability. To quote Ms. Steinem, “Women are told they can have it all, that they can do anything, as long as they also keep doing everything else they were doing before.”