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)

Day 5: 2-Ethylhexyl Palmitate, 2-Carnauba Wax, 96-Sex

In discussing how I felt on two of the days I concurrently scratched on the surface of two important subjects which I now would like to take time to explore. The first of these would be as Entwistle noted: the feminine body as a sexual body and how red lipstick contributes to that association, if it does at all.
I have consistently been afraid of the associations people would make with the red lipstick, but is it in fact that I would be considered a sex symbol regardless of the red lipstick? Is the red lipstick the sex symbol?


As we have already discovered lipstick was a cosmetic reserved for prostitutes for more than one century, but it became acceptable in the 1900s and yet we still make immediate associations with red lipstick, in particular, to sex.


“…the opening of sex as a subject which could be talked about and drawn attention to in public had the effect, too, of turning female desire into something which could be sold to both men and women. On the one hand, advertising for many products became increasingly associated with sex, in particular, the desirability of the female body.” (Howson, 2004:108)


It should have been obvious that we could accredit the sex association to the media, but it is never safe to make assumptions. So I looked around for lipstick ads and wow, did they make it seem as though red lipstick meant without doubt you were wearing it because you wanted ass! And if you wore red lipstick it is inevitable that you are a sex symbol:

Ad 1: this ad may not scream sex however it does reiterate what the expectation is of the women who may wear this lipstick. Williamson's book on decoding advertisements (as cited in Howson, 2004) confirms that “Advertisements have to translate statements about objects (material) into statements about people – about how people might use the object and about what kinds of people might use the object.”

Ad 2: this ad can be analyzed on more than one level. Firstly the name of the shade, ‘crushed rose.’ My immediate association to this name would be destroying the beauty or innocence of something, but on a more literal level, to be deflowered. This is a common term used to imply that a women’s virginity has been lost. However I do not think this ad is implying that. I do think it likening the women to a rose-beautiful and innocent and by using the verb crushed; it suggests that the man is going to ravage her as a result of wearing the red lipstick. Sexual-I think yes! Secondly the copy, which suggests that the women wanted a man’s sexual attention and therefore is wearing this red lipstick.

Ad 3: “Make-up can also be used as an instrument of power in relation to men, allowing women to assert their sexual attractiveness as power over men.” (O’Shaughnessy, Stadler, 2007: 335)
At the core of me I know what I want, as annoyingly indecisive as I can be, if you put a pair of jeans and a dress in front of me, I will eventually, always, walk away with the dress. Perhaps it is more accurate to say I know exactly what I do not want. I believe if a woman wears make-up, she knows it is because it will accentuate her features and her femininity, giving her confidence and self-worth. The woman in this ad knows what she wants and her choice of lipstick communicates that.




“Furthermore, the products themselves and the images through which they are represented come to define and reinforce a sense not only of self but also of gender.” (Howson, 2004: 106)

Day 4: Could I have some food with the red lipstick please?

It’s Saturday so I decided to keep it literal and simple. Below is a visual representation of brunch:

Water to drink.

Omelete to eat.

A side of red lipstick.

As I have mentioned on day 1, I struggle to not get the red lipstick on everything. This has only become MORE annoying! These 10 days would not be a good time to be hiding as I am leaving a fairly distinct trail. This is the part of the wearing the red lipstick which has been obviously uncomfortable and constantly reminds me that it is something I could not embrace. Simultaneously it makes me marvel at the countless women who DO dress their faces with this cosmetic every day, and for some, it is something they cannot go without.

Something good did come of it though… In the small café at the table across from me sat an elderly, neatly poised woman. I noticed her because of her lips, which were perfectly lined with lip pencil and filled with an equally daring shade. When we eventually made eye contact it was not awkward, instead rewarding. The tone of her expression was that of a proud mother, for at that moment she had acknowledged my statement as one of femininity and power. Lipstick bridged an age gap, and somehow we could relate.

I wore the red lipstick smugly for the remainder of brunch, as if I had just received a merit or gold star from a teacher.

Day 3: He said...

"Self-promotion is not Ramona’s strongest trait. While my viewpoint could well be criticized as being subjective, I feel that on pure talent, intellectual ability and strength of spirit, she is the match of anyone. She possesses a wide spectrum of often concealed capabilities that will doubtless make her successful at whatever she chooses to devote her energy to. She also happens to be beautiful (that’s not subjective) and I know that she hates being categorized on only this single element of what makes her who she is. If she could change one thing about how she is viewed by others she would eradicate the mistaken assumption that good looks cancel out a good brain. Ramona would have her abilities walk into a room before she did." Matthew Cooke

“People talk about my image, like I come in two dimensions, like lipstick is a sign of my declining mind, like what I happen to be wearing the day that someone takes my picture is my new statement for all womankind”  Ani DiFranco

On a lighter note, have a look at this Mercedes Benz Ad which tries to capture that beauty is nothing without brains.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHX2mvFVQMs

Frank?

At the end of today, when I could finally put the siren to rest.

What I find increasingly hard about writing a blog entry everyday is how to be absolutely frank with what I felt and thought. I guess the reoccurring theme of being concerned by what other people are thinking is taking centre stage and this blog is proving to make me as uncomfortable as the red lipstick.

In a discussion with my best friend about my blog, red lips,and me, I realised that perhaps it may take someone else to truly capture how I felt today. And if I am going to try to be frank, I am not big on "feelings." I am guarded and the red lipstick forces introspection and openness. Today I posed a question to myself: why am I this colossal contradiction who feels completely emancipated from the judgement of strangers yet bound by the opinions of those close to me?

R18

“The feminine body, is always, potentially at least, a sexual body and women have not been able to escape this association entirely, despite their challenge to tradition and acquisition, in part, of sexual inequality.” (Entwistle, 2000: 38)

Day 2: Read my lips!

He who does not want to be named: “Looks like you would give a cracking blowjob.”

This was the first comment I received today, which was made without realizing how it supported a stereotype which had been produced ages before. Research showed that lipstick had been around for approximately 5000 years, and during most of this time it was a cosmetic reserved only for prostitutes. In medieval Europe it was banned completely. It was only in the early 1900s that it became acceptable. So my immediate reaction to this statement then was: have we not evolved since a time when men wearing armour, would wake up and plan their conquest of a country? Perhaps not, but once this person knew I wanted to blog about the comment, they immediately protested against being mentioned. So perhaps they have?

There is no harm in our minds making immediate associations with colours, textures, shapes and sizes… but what I became conscious about today was that these associations and generalizations we are prone to, can take our imaginations, creativity, and individuality captive. It is far easier to blend in than to stand out, because we are afraid of what people may think.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show's iconic red lips.

This movie is an epitome of what the medieval society was against... A “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transsylvania." There is no irony in these lips being painted red. It is daunting knowing what connotations are attached to red lipstick and I am glad that today I was surrounded by people, who mostly knew me, and were not thinking: Is she trying to attract potential clients?

In the nude.

From a glamorous night, to a casual day and even a romantic date with a hot man.

When I left the house this morning.

Day 1: They’re thinking it.

This morning I eagerly painted my lips with a rich red paste, but the excitement quickly faded as I struggled to not get it on everything. It seems there is a certain art in wearing lipstick, besides colouring inside the lines perfectly you have to try keep it there. It wasn’t long before I had this gunk smeared across my hand, cellphone cover, teeth and just about anything else I handled today.

I had to borrow a lip compact from my sister:

Merleau-Ponty's study (as cited in Entwistle, 2000) states that "Far from being merely an instrument or object in the world our bodies are what give us our expression in the world, the visible form of our intentions."

Merleau-Ponty has said that our bodies are 'the visible form of our intentions,' and Victoria Jackson decided that a suitable name for this lip shade is 'show-off.' Go figure!

The critical stares were less frustrating than I thought they would be, probably because I had anticipated it, but it wasn’t the stare as much as the thought that accompanied it, which concerned me. I have voluntarily dressed my face with a siren, no doubt provoking the minds of on-lookers with questions like: during the day, really?

It is important that I point out on day 1 - I do not appreciate attracting attention as much as I do not appreciate lipstick, hence my overriding feeling today - irritated.

WTF… Why the face?

"A clown's makeup and character, that's all he has to sell. He loves and believes in that character." Emmett Kelly

For the following ten days this blog will be used to chronicle a Critical Studies assignment in which we have been asked to make a radical, very visible body intervention-to our own body. The purpose of the intervention is to remove ourselves from our comfort zone.

I have decided that for the following ten days I will wear red lipstick. I mean over-the-top, for those who are not afraid to stand out of the crowd, red. I will have to wear this red lipstick at all times, everywhere.

While I can appreciate the aesthetic value of lipstick for those stars who want to be flattered by the red carpet or performers who are adorned with stage make-up, I do not appreciate it on my face, so this should be interesting.