Bibliography

The Independent Institute of Education. 2010. Critical Studies 2B Reader: The Body. South Africa: Vega. (Course notes)

·         Berger, J. (1972). Chapter 3. In: Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin. 46-47.

·         Entwistle, J. 2000. Addressing the Body. In: The Fashioned Body. Cambridge: Polity Press. 29-39.

·         Howson, A. (2004). The Body in Consumer Culture. In: The Body in Society. Cambridge: Blackwell Press. 106-110.

·         O'Shaughnessy, M & Stadler, J. (2007). Feminism, Postfeminism and Ideologies of Femininity.. In: Media and Society. Australia: Oxford University Press. 335-336.

Cooke, M. 2010. (Personal communication). October 8.

DiFranco, A. (1999). Little Plastic Castle Lyrics. Available: http://www.mp3lyrics.org/a/ani-difranco/little-plastic-castle/. Last accessed 7th October 2010.

Emmett Kelly. (1999). Emmett Kelly quotes. Available: http://thinkexist.com/quotes/emmett_kelly/. Last accessed 6th October

The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 1975. United Kingdom: 20^th Century Fox. (Movie)

All images were taken from Google Images.

In conlusion!

I will be frank, as this is my last blog entry for this assignment; I have grown incredibly fond of the red lipstick. I know I should probably be so relieved at the thought of wiping it off for good, but I am not. I still find it rather unbearable to maintain and not get on everything, but through my red lips I have learnt a great deal. Who knew, what started as just a body intervention, and in the eyes of most a rather insignificant one, I could find a contrastingly big statement of sex, feminism, power and freedom. Fear can imprison us, and I am afraid of what people may think, from decisions I make on my choice of outfit to academic work - my red lips forced me to face this. I doubt I have shaken my fear completely but I have recognized it on many new levels than before. And for the first time in a long time, I put my thoughts into words, and in doing so I felt like I was taking my fear captive oppose to my fear taking me captive.

You may have noticed that I speak about the red lipstick as if it were an item of clothing. Over the course of this body intervention, that is what they have become... as important as my favourite pair of shoes. I noticed that I could not just wear pajamas with my red lipstick, I had to go the whole nine yards and rise to the occasion, and by the occasion I mean the red lipstick of course.

I am however relieved to not have to do reflection, retrospection, or introspection for a while... it has been draining. I am sapped of insight and would like to end my blog by simply saying: the red lipstick was epic.

Thank-you for following.

XOXO

The pin-up...

These were women who were largly considered to be sex symbols, and look... they are all wearing red lipstick!

Day 8: Who am I... That's one secret I'll never tell!

In discussing how I felt on two of the days I concurrently scratched on the surface of two important subjects, I have already explored the first and now would like to take time to explore the second, which my best friend noted: the assumption that beauty cancels out a brain.


I despise the assumption that a beautiful woman is more likely to be a model, than a mathematician. As if to say, the less attractive you are, the larger your brain is. I despise that woman are satisfied with being beautiful as an occupation. As if to say, being beautiful will enable me to find someone who will have an occupation that can support me. I despise the men that marry those women because they are threatened by a counterpart or dare I say a woman more intelligent, more capable, and has a bigger bank account.


That was my rant, but I do recognize how tough it is for women to not be stereotyped or prejudged on appearance. It plays a key part in my continuous concern of what people think. 

In Berger’s work Ways of Seeing, he brilliantly analyses how a woman continually has to watch herself. “She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others and ultimately how she appears to men is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another.” (Berger, 1972: 46)


I must quickly add that I feel I have discovered so much through reading the work of Berger. Unfortunately on topics unrelated, so I will have to put my distracted mind back on track.


“Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated… Every one of her actions – whatever its indirect purpose or motivation – is also read as an indication of how she would like to be treated.” (Berger, 1972: 46)


So if I was going to an interview at an accounting firm I would go in a suit pants and jacket with a buttoned up shirt, I would keep an excellent posture and be assertive in both the way I presented myself and how I answered a question. I would not become over-confident or emotional. I would remain approachable and open-minded. All of this would be in the hope that I would appear capable of doing the job before my CV had been read. How I have acted in this interview will also indicate how I want future employees or colleagues to treat me.  Something I would not do is wear my shirt buttoned down to reveal cleavage; it may appear that I would like to get ahead by using my assets opposed to the company's. And as tempting as it may be, especially since doing this body intervention, I would not wear striking red lipstick; I would not want women to think I am more concerned with vanity than equity and would not want men to think… “Those lips could give a cracking blowjob.”


The sad thing is, sometimes we do need to quite simply appear attractive or appealing. Wolf's study (as cited in Howson, 2004) states that “To do otherwise has the very real potential to restrict employment opportunities in a labour market that favours work for women on the basis of appearance.”


I am caught at a cross road. I do not think there is one solution or outcome to the debate of beauty or brains, and it is of course subjective to each individual woman’s perspective or opinion. Personally I want to have it all: beauty and brains, sometimes I would like to not be taken too seriously and other times I want to be taken very seriously, I want to wear red lipstick, and heels and a figure hugging dress because it is so wonderful to be a woman, but some mornings I want to set my make-up bag, bras, and hair dryer alight because it is just so much admin and then I wish I was a guy. Colossal contradiction-I think yes!


I have a daily battle between the person I am, and the person I want to be. I find myself every now and then wondering in the middle, but that is ok.

Vintage Maybelline Ad!

Have a look at this - One of the many Maybelline Moisture Whip Lipstick commercials Lynda Carter made in the 1980s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84PpvU0sFvE

Day 7: Bitch please!

“First, constant monitoring and repairing required by the pursuit of beauty diverts women’s energy and saps their confidence. Though women are told by L’Oreal ‘you’re worth it!’ this promotes a ‘changing room culture’ in which women are constantly measuring their self worth in terms of how they compare to other women.” (Howson, 2004: 105)


I think it is important to recognize how true this analysis is, the bulk of comments I have received have come from women, and by women I mean any female above the age of 18, and on the whole they have been positive, but always with an undercurrent or silent subtext: They first comment on how great the red lipstick looks then swiftly precede to ask why I am wearing it, with what seems like a hint of resentment because they had not thought of doing the same. Perhaps I have read too far into it but that is the point Howson makes, we have become exceedingly concerned by what our fellow sex thinks about the choices we make or actions we have taken. I am noticeably more concerned by being judged by my girlfriends than by the guys. I do not measure the success of my outfit by the attention I attract from the males in the room but rather by comparing myself to how the other women in the room look.



Fashion faux pas 101 – wearing the same outfit to an important function as someone else, and by someone else I mean someone who could be wearing the outfit better than you. It is almost certain that these two women would not be nearly as concerned by what the males were thinking, as by what the female critics were thinking, saying or writing.



Day 6: Vulgar?

When sifting through lipstick ads I came across this one. It instantly drew my attention, and in general I would find this ad appealing, I’m not entirely sure why, but I would. I clicked on the image and it diverted me to a web page where they dubbed it as ‘offensive to women.’ Before, I had not taken note of the copy on this print ad, but it reads: “New! Dior Addict Lipstick to Die For… in 30 killer shades… Get Hooked. Now.” Dior unashamedly uses themes of death and addiction to sell this product. After noting this I saw this ad in a completely dissimilar light. It now looked like an action shot of a woman who had been struck across the face, perhaps in a club or bathroom of a club. I wonder how I could not notice this before. Or did I subconsciously, but because of immunization of violent and aggressive images constantly used in media, I did not even think it was a negative thing or “that bad.” Should I feel terrible for liking it to start with?

(As cited in  Howson, 2004) Advertising provides “both information and misinformation (Barthel, 1989) that constructs symbolic worlds and, in turn, associates them with particular products. Advertisements shape and reflect society and the pursuit for distinction through the purchase of products.”(Wernick, 1991)