Fashion is symbolic, sometimes overt and sometimes subtly communicated by arrangements of visual motifs on the body. A stain or mark could be suggested as a symbol of shame. Spilt blood, lipstick, food drippings communicate clearly a disruption of the “(…) continuity of the cloth” (Sorkin, J 2000-2001 ‘Stain: On Cloth, Stigma and Shame’) on an otherwise inconspicuous appearance, a self-conscious symbol of clumsiness or misbehaviour. A stain on clothing is a potent concept, a business man with a food stain on a white shirt communicates a weakness and a cause for shame. The discovery of a stain on oneself particularly in a public context by and large generates an experience of shame. If we are to believe that clothes offer socially protective characteristics, the stain compromises an individual’s exterior, our carefully arranged presentation of self.

In A Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn the heroine Hester Prynne wears an ‘A’ on her breast as a mark of shame for her adultery. An imposed stain, that is, using the experience of shame as a lawful reprimand but altogether intended to disrupt the connotations of an otherwise acceptable exterior.

Following on the Amish-on-Amish hate crimes of last year (see our blog post from 10.11.11) there is much to be said about the symbolic power of hair. Samson famously lost his strength when Delilah cut his seven locks as he slept and in religion hair, long, shaved, covered or flowing has always played a significant role in symbolizing devotion and humility. Hasidic Jewish women often shave theirs when married and instead cover their head with a scarf or a wig, orthodox muslim women customarily wear a headscarf and the Amish, stop shaving their beards, in the case of men, or cutting their hair, in the case of women. In the Corinth letters St Paul writes:

“Doth not nature itself teach you, that if a man have long hair it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her.”

(1 Cor. 11: 14-15)

Sociologist Anthony Synnott wrote in the introduction to his 1987 paper Shame and glory: a sociology of hair that

“[...] the shame of one sex is the glory of the opposite sex. Indeed the debate over hair symbolism is both ancient and complex, and applies not only to gender but also to politics, as Hippies, Skins and Punks, amongst others, have recently demonstrated. Hair is perhaps our most powerful symbol of individual and group identity – powerful first because it is physical and therefore extremely personal, and second because, although personal, it is also public rather than private. Furthermore, hair symbolism is usually voluntary rather than imposed or ‘given’. Finally, hair is malleable, in various ways, and therefore singularly apt to symbolize both differentiations between, and changes in, individual and group identities. The immense social significance of hair is indicated by economicss: the hair industry is worth $ 2.5 billion in the USA (New York Times, 7.1.85).”

Have you got any more examples of the link between hair and shame? Do share with us!

January seems to be the most unhinged month as far as diets and ‘health’ are concerned. In the pages of gossip magazines the rich and famous are either too fat or too thin and regular folk appear to be equally consumed with stepping in line and slimming down – the classes at my local gym at least are jam-packed and overflowing!

Here are some wise words courtesy of The Guardian on the topic:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/01/preoccupation-diet-industry-national-neurosis

Reading the Vestoj blog today and its open question about British girls in their micro-minis led my thoughts to the following excerpt from Kirsten Pullen’s Actresses and Whores (Cambridge, 2005):

“[Mae] West showed a half century of women (and men) how to be sexy, powerful and successful while also being a whore. Dressed in beautiful gowns, surrounded by servants, and inhabiting louche boudoirs… In addition, West exercised an enormous amount of control and power over her career and image… She’s simultaneously a camp figure and hypersexual throwback too whorish for incorporation into discourses of self-empowerment. Ultimately, West defies simple categorisation: is she an agent of sexual expression, or is she a victim of a patriarchal discourse that determines a woman’s worth by her body?”

I can’t help but feel that the voices in Tanith Carey’s article in the Daily Mail are of a rather sexist kind – men who believe that the more sexy a girl dresses, the more he is allowed to treat her like a slut. But what is really the difference between dressing ‘slutty’ and dressing ‘sexy’; is it really anything but a question of class? Carey claims that girls should be allowed to dress as they like, but can’t seem to help turning into a moralist. In between the lines she appears to wail, “For the love of god, what will the neighbours say!”

It’s an interesting point of entry to fashion, shame, since it seems to be both a force of and a key to social differentiation – at the same time both personal and an indicator of times in which we live. What are we ashamed of and when? ‘Should’ these girls be ashamed of themselves?

The converse of shame is desire, and in some ways it seems to me that shame isn’t actually connected to fashion so much as it’s inextricably linked to the social roots of getting dressed. People have used clothing since the beginnings of time, whereas fashion as we know it is a creative and cultural expression that emerged only in the seventeenth century and with Louis XIV. To get dressed on the other hand has always had a practical function, but it has also been a way to differentiate us: man/woman, old/young, rich/poor etc. Here shame becomes important as the purpose of shame is to understand when we are doing something wrong, i.e. something that breaks the established order – for example how much sexuality you are allowed to express through dress before you become the object of contempt and slander.

This type of social differentiation is of course also apparent in fashion, but in this case I find desire to be the prime motivator. In fashion the desire for self-expression (a creative aspect) or the desire for novelty (an aspect of coveting) lead the way; differentiation is founded on identification and on the will to immerse yourself and become one with the new or the latest (just as with Mae West, a style icon through her great popularity).

To be pleasing is a culturally conditioned virtue and a winning concept if you want to achieve appraisal. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that ‘safe’ sexiness is what all our contemporary style icons subscribe to. I would then argue that dressing ‘sluttily’ in a micro-mini and towering heels is a way to prove that you are both comfortable in your own body and self-empowered enough to look any observer straight in the eye. The woman dressing like this is a sexual subject, rather than a mere object (think of Manet’s 1872 painting Olympia and the subject’s confrontational gaze). This woman dresses the way she does because it gives her affirmation and appreciation, and because she enjoys it.

The women who fought for women’s liberation at the beginning of the twentieth century dressed like men in order to get respect for their intellect (female fashions signified vanity, fickleness and self-centredness) but when the right to vote had gone through and women began to appear in the workplace the transformation brought with it an extensive sexualisation of women’s appearance. Make-up and fashions that had traditionally been associated with prostitutes could now be seen in both offices and at universities. If there was ever a ‘pornofication’ of our culture this was the time, a time that we have come to know as the liberator of the domesticated woman. This was the time when women took control of their own economy and, consequently, their sexuality. But the sanctimonious discourse that condemns the whore and celebrates the madonna lives on.

It is surprising that we still moralise about women who do and dress and they please, and that men still haven’t learned that women have a sexuality that exists for our own sake, and not for theirs.

Lisa Svensson, MA student in History of Ideas and Sciences at Lund University, Sweden

Many times upon seeing the girls dressed in short skirts and low-cut tops in sub-zero temperatures so ubiquitous in London, Manchester, Newcastle, Bristol and Cardiff, I have wondered if they are maybe a new kind of bionic woman impervious to the cold. But really the question is, are these girls dressing sexy and with confidence or are they coerced into looking like ‘sluts’ by an increasing pornofication of contemporary culture and the pressure of fitting in?

The Daily Mail has this to say on the matter:

“It comes as little surprise to discover that the more the women dress like strippers, the more men treat them that way. Among the men we spoke to, one described the women out on the town as ‘eye candy for free’ — and a chance to ‘window shop’.

Toby Harris, 29, a project manager from London, says he likes women dressing in barely-there clothes ‘because you get to think whether you want to sleep with them later’.

‘It’s a certain sort of women who dresses that way — easy chicks,’ he says. ‘They’re definitely not a long-term prospect because they are easy.’ In many cases, that sexist view may well be crass and unjustified. After all, shouldn’t women be free to dress as they please without being judged? But whatever their motivation for dressing as they do, there is no escaping how the micro-skirted mob are perceived by men.”

Read the full article here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2067391/Why-DO-young-women-dressed-like-We-meet-nightclubbers-unsettling-answer.html

What do you think?

As a rather fitting follow-up to yesterday’s post, we just got this rather incredible image from one of our contributors, Laurindo Feliciano. Merci!

Prom Night

She put the dress on for the first time on the morning of May 27, in her room. She had bought a special brassiere to go with it, which gave her breasts the proper uplift (not that they actually needed it) but left their top halves uncovered. Wearing it gave her a weird, dreamy feeling that was half shame and half defiant excitement.

The dress itself was nearly floor length. The skirt was loose, but the waist was snug, the material rich and unfamiliar against her skin, which was used to only cotton and wool.

The hang of it seemed to be right—or would be, with the new shoes. She slipped them on, adjusted the neckline, and went to the window. She could see only a maddening ghost image of herself, but everything seemed to be right. Maybe later she could—

The door swung open behind her with only a soft snick of the latch, and Carrie turned to look at her mother.

She was dressed for work, wearing her white sweater and holding her black pocketbook in one hand. In the other she was holding Daddy Ralph’s Bible.

They looked at each other.

Hardly conscious of it, Carrie felt her back straighten until she stood straight in the patch of early spring sunshine that fell through the win­dow.

“Red,” Momma murmured. “I might have known it would be red.”

Carrie said nothing.

“I can see your dirtypillows. Everyone will. They’ll be looking at your body. The Book says—”

“Those are my breasts, Momma. Every woman has them.”

“Take off that dress,” Momma said.

“No.”

“Take it off, Carrie. We’ll go down and burn it in the incinerator together, and then pray for for­giveness. We’ll do penance.” Her eyes began to sparkle with the strange, disconnected zeal that came over her at events which she considered to be tests of faith. ‘I’ll stay home from work and you’ll stay home from school. We’ll pray. We’ll ask for a Sign. We’ll get us down on our knees and ask for the Pentecostal Fire.” “No, Momma.”

Her mother reached up and pinched her own face. It left a red mark. She looked to Carrie for reaction, saw none, hooked her right hand into claws and ripped it across her own cheek, bringing thin blood. She whined and rocked back “Washed in the Blood of the Lamb,” she whis­pered. “Many times. Many times he and I—”

“Go away, Momma.”

She looked up at Carrie, her eyes glowing. There was a terrifying expression of righteous an­ger graven on her face.

“The Lord is not mocked,” she whispered. “Be sure your sin will find you out. Burn it, Carrie! Cast that devil’s red from you and burn it! Burn itl Burn it! Burn it!”

The door slammed open by itself.

“Go away, Momma.”

Momma smiled. Her bloody mouth made the smile grotesque, twisted. “As Jezebel fell from the tower, let it be with you,” she said. “And the dogs came and licked up the blood. It’s in the Bible! It’s—”

“Her feet began to slip along the floor and she looked down at them, bewildered. The wood might have turned to ice.

“Stop that!” she screamed.

She was in the hall now. She caught the doorjamb and held on for a moment; then her fin­gers were torn loose, seemingly by nothing.

“I love you, Momma,” Carrie said steadily. “I’m sorry.”

She envisioned the door swinging shut, and the door did just that, as if moved by a light breeze. Carefully, so as not to hurt her, she disengaged the mental hands she had pushed her mother with.

A moment later, Margaret was pounding on the door. Carrie held it shut, her lips trembling.

“There’s going to be a judgment!” Margaret White raved. “I wash my hands of it! I tried!”

“Pilate said that,” Carrie said.

Her mother went away. A minute later Carrie saw her go down the walk and cross the street on her way to work.

“Momma,” she said softly, and put her forehead on the glass.