Gender Studies: Girl Meets Boy

Even before Diane Keaton as Annie Hall launched a thousand baggy menswear looks, une femme was a fan of androgynous style. Growing up I loved watching old movies on TV, not the least for the clothes/costumes; I particularly loved the fluid trousers and crisp shirts worn by Katherine Hepburn, and the unfettered, intellectual style exemplified by Audrey Hepburn.

In the 80's the androgynous look found its heyday again, influenced by Annie Hall, Annie Lennox,and Laurie Anderson.Androgynous dressing has always appealed to me. I don't know if it's because girls' clothes were so uncomfortable when I was little with their tight collars and stiff petticoats, or because my mother tried to instill in us the stultifying femininity of the 1950's, or because my childhood passion (horseback riding) became associated with boots and jeans, but I've never felt at home in uber girly-girl garb. When I was thirteen, our middle school finally relented and allowed girls to wear pants. I showed up at school almost every day in my embroidered Mexican peasant blouse and corduroy trousers with my boys' desert boots and felt myself in my clothes for the first time. In my twenties I wore baggy oversized blazers, pleated trousers, ties. I enjoyed how wearing masculine garb felt subversive, powerful. Over time I also realized that a full-on Annie Hall/Annie Lennox/Laurie Anderson menswear look requires a boyish figure to pull off without looking like a Mack truck.

In the 90's, I graduated to tailored pantsuits for work, but lately that look has felt too structured and boxy for me. Though currently I'm feeling more comfortable (physically and emotionally) in moderately feminine styles that have some fluidity, softness and drape, or are more simple, clean and Audrey-inspired (see above), I still enjoy including a masculine element or two like a bigger watch or chunky boots to add some edge and satisfy my subversive streak. I also would probably not pass up an oversized "boyfriend" blazer if the right one were to cross my path. I've read and observed that mixing feminine and masculine styles is a hallmark of French chic, a way to keep one's look from becoming to staid and predictable.

Where on the femme-homme style continuum to you tend to reside?

~

Gender Studies: The Male Gaze

So Saturday night on our way to dinner, thinking of comments on my post here and Duchesse's follow-up post here, I asked mon mari, "what kinds of things do you wish I'd wear more of?"

"Besides whipped cream?"

Then, "Seriously? That's a loaded question and I'm not going to go there."

As I mentioned in comments at Duchesse's post, my husband's style preferences for me often collide with my own. He used to encourage me to wear colorful tailored skirted suits (which I mentally categorized as "Nancy Reagan suits" and made me feel like I was wearing someone else's clothes, most likely a real estate agent from Costa Mesa) or garments that are much tighter or show more skin than I'm generally comfortable with. In a way, he's as blind to my figure flaws as I am to my assets. After a few years of my brushing off his suggestions, he's stopped offering them.

So after repeated assurance on my part that I wasn't setting him up, he finally said, "here's what I think: you dress like someone who is comfortable and fashionable but not fashion-conscious. You stick to neutrals; everything in your closet is black, brown or a dark color. If you had to choose between two identical tee shirts, one in color and one in black or white, you'd choose the black or white every time. You dress like someone doesn't want to draw attention." What he didn't say but what I know he thinks is, "and it's boring." And in a way, he's right; with the exception of some of my accessories, I do dress to blend in.

On one hand, I think that the style of dressing I've evolved in recent years is very practical, and at times quietly chic. I can get dressed in a flash most mornings, and am not limited in what scarf or bag will work with my ensemble. In the workplace, an understated style comes across as more professional, less distracting. On the other hand, I'll admit that I dress to camouflage my body and deflect criticism. In addition to growing up with the sartorial rule that too much bright color is "garish" and to be avoided, being on the receiving end of The Gaze has rarely felt safe for me as my body was constantly (and sometimes publicly) critiqued by my parents. "Pull that shirt down, it's hiking up over your butt." "That dress makes your tummy look fatter." "Solid dark colors will make you look thinner." "You shouldn't wear something so tight, it looks slutty." And I unconsciously sought out those critical eyes in some of my early romantic relationships. Despite the fact that I was quite obviously short and curvy, I seemed to continually fall into relationships with men who were quite open about preferring slim, willowy women, and who insisted that I could be that if only I tried hard enough. And until my mid-30's, my women friends were also similarly weight-obsessed and critical.

Yet there have been times when I felt thin enough or nonchalant enough to dress to be attractive to men, and enjoyed the attention I received. I know some women who say that dressing in a more sexy way feels powerful, but I've rarely felt that way. At best, I've felt accepted, included. At worst, vulnerable; I've never enjoyed having to fend off unwanted advances. If I could have figured out a way to dress to only attract those I was attracted to, I suspect I'd be a millionaire several times over. If I were in my 30's still, I'd probably be trying to dress like Joan from Mad Men, though I probably couldn't tolerate the undergarments necessary to achieve that look for very long . Now, at my age, I'd be worry about appearing too "cougar-on-the-prowl" if I tried to emulate that femme fatale style, or like a woman desperately trying to cling to her youth. It was bit of a relief after decades of being looked up and down by random men (in that way that they do to quickly assess desirability), to begin mostly flying under that particular radar a few years ago. I really don't want to start attracting those random looks again, or dress in a way that feels wrong for me, but I do want to dress in a way that pleases the main man in my life.

Having read Duchesse's post again, perhaps I need to keep a more open mind to mon mari's preferences, at least to try to find a middle ground . Perhaps I'll arrange a shopping trip sometime in the next few months for just the two of us, and we can pick out a few items for each other. Oh, and today I'm wearing a bright green tee shirt.
~

Hommes et foulards

From the NYT:

The lightweight scarf, until lately an autumnal hallmark of European aristos and Upper East Side decorators, has been embraced by style-savvy downtownsters. Perfected by Etro, among others, such scarves are available from Gucci to Club Monaco, in linen, cotton, silk and so on. Like the fedora, the necktie and the suit vest, all of which have made astonishing comebacks in recent seasons, scarves are yet another token of grandfatherly elegance. They have been resurrected not as throat warmers but as something that can be added to a dressed-down look like a V-neck T-shirt and jeans to give it a dressed-up flash. You might even call the scarf the necktie of the T-shirt

I've been noticing this trend a bit here in LA since this summer. Twenty-something hipster guys have been adopting some of the same scarf looks as the women: lightweight, often ethnic print, wrapped casually around the neck, with the majority of fabric in the front. I like this look on les hommes jeunes. What about you?

~

Dial M for...

A few weeks ago, my doc confirmed my growing suspicion from the last several menarche-free months: I have crossed the hormonal Rubicon. The good news is that this milestone was reached without much gnashing of teeth or hot flashes. However, in what seems to be an attempt to assert who's really still running the show here, my body has suddenly decided to take on a few pounds of extra ballast, rendering about half of my closet's contents just a bit too tight, and turning up the flame a bit under my low-simmering weight preoccupation.

There's no going back to those days of diets and counting points and agonizing over every five ounces up or down. I know better than to get caught up in that downward spiral of body-hatred and yo-yo-ing weight. Been there, done that, had the t-shirt in three sizes. I don't know whether this gain is a temporary aberration, or whether my metabolism has permanently ratcheted down another notch, in which case I need to cull the now too-small items from my wardrobe.

I'm far more sanguine about the deepening lines on my face and the softening jawline than I am about my thickening waistline. It's not like I still held out hope that someday I'd be reed-slender and able to wear all those styles that make me sigh, but my weight and shape had been stable the past few years and I'd worked so hard to make peace with my body. And now, it's changing again. This "aging gracefully" thing isn't so easy, is it?

For Whom the Bell Sleeve Toils

In which Une femme ponders, "for whom do we dress, and what does it mean to look one's best?"

Those of us who regard style as self-expression like to think we dress for ourselves. Yet even so, we are dressing with the understanding that we will be seen and in being seen, convey a bit of who we are.

A couple of recent posts over at The Sartorialist (and some of the follow up comments) really highlighted some of the divergent ways people approach this issue. On his post from Friday, 11/23/07, "A Less Narrow View", Sart says, Often I read comments on this blog like "Shouldn't clothing enhance a woman's form and femininity? " or something of that nature. I think this is a very narrow view of what clothing should/could do for a person. Clothing only needs to keep you protected from the elements, past that what you do with them is your option. This young lady is a great example of self-expression and intellectual dressing.Nothing she is wearing really speaks to WHAT she is physically ( fat or skinny, tall or short, male or female) but her look speaks volumes about WHO she is mentally.

I love this distinction he's making. Do we dress for our bodies, or do we dress for our heads? It's the whole philosophical body/mind duality issue writ in fabric. It's often assumed that women's primary motivation with regard to style and appearance should be to "enhance their form and femininity"* and strive to achieve an appearance that conforms as closely as possible to cultural standards of attractiveness, and many women have subscribed to this concept. (And going to extremes, there are actually people who espouse the notion that it's a woman's obligation to look as attractive as possible.) Watch any daytime talk show or "makeover" shows, or read through most style books and the predominant view is that style is all about the body. Accentuate the positive and eliminate (or camouflage) the negative. The result often is a closet full of clothing devoid of any expression of the personality of the wearer.

At times I think we women (and I include myself in this) can get so hung up on what is "flattering," or that which most closely conforms to the thinner/taller/younger cultural ideal that we inhibit the self-expressionistic component of style**. We all want to look our "best" but that isn't always about what clothing accentuate our waists and makes our legs look two miles long. I grew up believing that the Clothing Prime Directive was One Must Wear Only What Makes One Look Thinner. I still have a tough time letting go of that, even when it means passing on something that otherwise really speaks to me.

I don't think the answer lies totally abandoning those cuts and styles that fit and flatter, but rather that we look at style as serving who we are not just physically but creatively, emotionally and mentally, and that we don't subjugate all sartorial self expression to Pretty Über Alles. Finding that balance is where style becomes art and inspiration. What makes us look "our best" often means incorporating both elements that enhance our physical selves and those which express our personality, even if it would make Tim Gunn cringe.

*Walk around Newport Beach and you see a multitude of women who have subscribed to this viewpoint, a bland cookie-cutter army of extremely slender, mostly blonde, designer-jean-clad trophy-wife-bots. It's a look almost devoid of any individuality.

**Of course, I did get into dog-with-a-bone mode in comments on one of his subsequent posts about why curvy, petite women don't want to wear double-breasted jackets, but I'm nothing if not conflicted.

Identity, Style and Inspiration

While une femme's sense of self and style these days is not quite as all over the map as I intimated in the Dolly Parton post, I have done my share of floundering. But style and identity have always been linked in my mind, and I've never been quite able to totally separate "who am I?" from "how do I appear?" *

The floundering part I partially blame the era in which I grew up, and some of the monumental shifts that occurred during my formative years. By the time I was twenty, I'd seen style shifts from the Jackie-Kennedy-suits-pearls-and-white-gloves or movie-stars-in-leopard-coats, to Beatle-boots-Beatle-everything, to Mod-GoGo-Boots-mini-skirts (think Laugh-In) to dirty-hippies-in-jeans-beads-and-huaraches, to granny-dresses-and-earth-shoes to satin disco pants.

And real life women whose styles I admired and wanted to emulate spanned just about as great a range. There was the fashion designer friend of my parents in the early 60's who I can't picture now but remember that she seemed very glamorous to my five-year-old eyes, and who taught me how to design dresses for my paper dolls. There was the Swedish photographer my parents hired when I was ten to take our portraits, who dressed very simply in turtlenecks and hand woven ponchos and took our pictures with a Hasseblad and inspired me to become a photographer. There was the neighbor's daughter hired to babysit us, who was an honest-to-god San Francisco hippie, wore real Mexican serapes and silver jewelry, went barefoot and smoked cigars and introduced me to FM radio, (which at the time totally changed my life). There was my college roommate who had lovely silk/satin pants and Chinese jackets that she loaned me. I wanted to copy the style of each of those women. I wanted to be most of those women. I tried on persona's and then cast them off so many costumes in a stuffy dressing room.

But the style upheavals of those years were indicative of greater shifts in culture, values, and roles and expectations for women. A book I read a few years ago, Appetites: Why Women Want by Caroline Knapp, though it was primarily about anorexia and eating disorders, also touched on the idea of the overwhelming number of choices that young women have today as opposed to a couple of generations ago, and how it can make them turn back in on themselves and develop eating disorders or other self-destructive behaviors. Women of my age and socio-economic status were right on the cusp of this change. Most of our mothers were housewives and and assumed that we, their daughters, would be as well. But the women's movement of the 60's and 70's changed all that, and while the prior lack of choices had felt stultifying, the sudden broad scope of possibilities felt a bit like being on the open sea with no maps or navigational abilities. Not that I'd ever want to go back, mind you. Watch a few episodes of Mad Men if you need reminding.

That's why I envy people who seem to have the kind of blinding clarity and a certain integrity about who they are and how they want to look, whereas I seem to sort of stumble on it by accident. When I wrote about dressing-from-the-inside-out, it was one of those days where I felt I had hit the right note of alignment between self and style. I'm getting a better sense of what that means for me, in this body, at my age. But it doesn't mean that I still don't vacillate and question and let myself be influenced (sometimes too much) by something I see on someone else. That balance between consistency and currency requires a balance between trusting one's own judgement about what works, and staying open to new possibilities. Still negotiating a broad and changeable ocean, I may not have a map, but do have a compass.

(*While I realize that "identity" is far deeper than how we appear, I'm referring to the "how we present ourselves to the world" aspect. )

116 Pounds is the New Fat!

Crap like this is why I started dieting at 14 years old and 103 pounds.

Plumcake and Glinda over in Manololand shred this horseshit quite amusingly, but it just makes me feel sad and angry.

Sad because it brings back all of the years I wasted being obsessed with getting thin, with hating myself, with eating disorders, with putting my life on hold until I achieved a certain size, and with believing that gateway to happiness would open at x pounds.

Angry because some 15 or 13 or 8 year old girl is going to read this magazine, and it's going to reinforce our media/cultural designation of what "fat" is, and she's going to waste years of her life fighting against a normal woman's body, or worse, develop a serious eating disorder. Angry because purveyors of weight loss plans that don't work (and just make us fatter in the long run) are going to get richer. Angry because it validates the sense of entitlement some men have to a) have a wife who always looks like a taut 20-year-old, and b) to try to control what she eats or use her imagined fatness to maintain power over her. (Maybe that's not what's going on in their relationship but when someone decribes a husband who scolds her--"uh, uh, uh"-- for what she eats as "supportive," red flags go up all over the place for me, having been in those kind of relationships myself.) Angry because the normal changes that a woman's body goes through during and after pregnancy are considered ugly and something to hide.

And before anyone goes into "she just wants to be healthy!" territory, weighing 116 and wanting to lose 10 pounds has fuck-all to do with "health".

As Harriet Brown at Feed Me! put this so well a few months ago, writing about Rachel Hunter's comment, "Who doesn't want to lose 20 pounds?":

This kind of fat trash talk is my least favorite. It's the equivalent of the air kiss, the baring of the throat by the subordinate animal. It's a social custom denoting (supposedly) good taste and submissive femininity. The words themselves aren't the point; it's the intention behind them. And the intension is to erase the self, to make yourself as small and thin and weak as possible.

Une femme Weighs In...

...on the Sex and the City Wedding Dress Brouhaha


Yesterday several blogs including the Esteemed Manolo featured pictures of Sarah Jessica Parker in a wedding dress from the filming of the "Sex and the City" movie.

Comments included the words "dessicated", "veiny", "haggard", "needs a sandwich", etc. I'll admit that while I joined a bit in the pile-on (remarking that often we older broads look better with a few extra pounds).

I'll also admit all of this has been bothering me a bit, so here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

I think a lot of the initial shock of these pictures is that we're not used to seeing images of women (especially women past their 20's) that haven't been airbrushed or photoshopped or filmed throught a gauze lens. She probably looks like most women of her age and weight would look. How refreshing that she hasn't Botoxed or plastic-surgeried herself into looking like an alien! How many of us past the age of 35 don't have a bit more sag in the bosom or droop in the undercarriage?

People who might take umbrage when someone refers to Kate Winslett as a "porker," are using words like "shrivelled"; how is this any different? Maybe SJP has overexercised herself into this state, or maybe this is just her natural weight. The thing is, we don't know and making that judgment is just as incorrect as assuming that every woman over a size 8 sits in front of the TV eating Cheetos all day.

I will concur that the design of the gown is probably not the most flattering choice. It's definitely in character with Carrie Bradshaw's style sense, and that's probably what they were going for. (Not liking the red lipstick either.) But like the Fug Girls, if we're going to pile on, let's have it be about the fashion choices and not about the body that's wearing them.

/rant

Pretty

Thanks to Rioriri at She Dances in the Sand, just found this post from almost a year ago from A Dress A Day: You Don't Have To Be Pretty. I absolutely love this line, 'Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked "female". '

Go read the whole thing, and start off your day on a high note.

Edited to add: Also this one, Tiers of Joy. 'And do you know what? If you're going to leave a comment that all those tiers would make you look OMG FAT!!!!, please don't bother. There is more to life than the bogus imperative to minimize your apparent body weight at all times. Just for a minute, put down that burden, okay? Think about how that gorgeous fabric would FEEL. Think about how it would SOUND. Think about how you would MOVE in it, where you would GO in it, what you would put in the POCKETS, even, and not on some imagined optical illusion of a few more inches here or there. Now imagine feeling like that all the time -- imagine the question "Does this make me look fat?" didn't exist. How would that change your life? What would you do differently? Would it get you to wear this beautiful dress?'

Nostalgia and the Bad Old Days

Maya's Granny posted last week about the TV show Mad Men, and some of her experiences as a woman in a man's world during that time.

As much as we tend to think that "the 60's changed everything," some of the attitudes toward women so well illustrated by the writers of Mad Men persisted well into the 80's. In my mind, it was Anita Hill's testimony at the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in the early 1990's that really crystallized what so many women faced on a daily basis, and what the consequences too often were for speaking up about it. That was the point where it seemed that businesses started taking discrimination and sexual harassment seriously.

It's amazing now to look back at some of the attitudes and behaviors that we used to be told were "just the way things are." We were supposed to suck it up and "go along to get along," and for the most part, une femme did too.

At one of my first radio station jobs, the General Manager used to come in every morning and greet me with, "Hello, Miss Boobsley, and how are the both of you today?" while looking at my chest. Back then, you were expected to be a good sport about this kind of thing, or risk being branded a bitch. But at some point, it just bothered me so much that I walked into his office one day and said, "I know you don't mean any harm by it and to you it's all in good fun, but when you address me that way I find it very demeaning." To his credit, he got it right away and stopped, and didn't get pissy or let it negatively affect our working relationship (which otherwise was a good one).

When I worked for a TV Ad Sales rep firm in New York in 1981-82, in my position as Assistant to the Group Sales Manager, I was responsible to oversee the work of the six Sales Assistants to the Account Executives who reported to my boss. Five were women, one was a man (all were in their early 20's, just out of college). Of the six, the guy was lowest performer, always late getting his orders processed, having more errors in his work than the others, spending lots of time with his feet up on his desk talking to friends on the phone, and generally being a jerk. One day, my boss' boss says to me, "It's a shame we can only pay P---- as much as we pay the girls; he'll have a family to support someday!"

I've had my appearance critiqued in business meetings by male co-workers and supervisors ("you've lost weight/you've gained weight/that shirt makes your boobs look bigger/you should show more cleavage/wear shorter skirts/wear more makeup"), I've been hit on by married supervisors and told that it's OK to pay women less because they just quit when they get married and start having babies anyway.

Nowadays some people laugh off sexual harassment training and lambast "political correctness run amok." But those of us who lived through and worked during those times know just how bad things could get, and women were at the mercy of their (almost always male) bosses. Not that all bosses or men in the workplace were abusive or disrespectful, but there were few consequences if any if they were, and a kind of "boys will be boys" mentality was common. Une femme wouldn't return to those times for all of the champagne in France.

More Rules to Live By

I seem to have come late to the party, but Icing's got it covered pretty well, I think.

h/t (bien sur!) to Miss Janey at HATtastic.

Carnivore Gals Won't You Come Out Tonight

This article in the NYT Style section has been making the rounds.

[sarcasm] Ladies, apparently it's now OK for you to eat meat in public, and even on a first date. Guys will think it's HAWT, seriously! As long as you're thin, that is. [/sarcasm]

'In an earlier era, conventional dating wisdom for women was to eat something at home alone before a date, and then in company order a light dinner to portray oneself as dainty and ladylike. For some women, that is still the practice. “It’s better not to have a jalapeño fajita plate, especially on the first date,” said Andrea Bey, 28, who sells video surveillance equipment in Irving, Tex., and describes herself as “curvy.” “You don’t want to be labeled as ‘princess gassy’ on the first date.”

But others, especially those who are thin, say ordering a salad displays an unappealing mousiness.' (emphasis mine)

I used the think the practice of eating small, light meals in order to appear dainty was a quaint anachronism out of Gone With The Wind. You remember the scene, where: To no avail, Mammy vigorously lectures Scarlett: "If you don't care what folks says about this family, I does. I has told you and told you that you can always tell a lady by the way that she eats in front of folks like a bird, and I ain't aimin' for you to go to Mr. John Wilkes's and eat like a fieldhand and gobble like a hog." Hard-headed Scarlett's response is: "Fiddle-dee-dee."

During my formative years while the etiquette of the day still dictated that if the "gentleman" was paying (and in those days they were almost always expected to), the "lady" should always order the second least expensive item on the menu whether or not it might send her into anaphylactic shock, the consideration was primarily one of economics. Then, when the first of my friends to get asked out on a date (early 70's, sophmore year in high school) spent two days agonizing about what to eat so as not to "look like a pig" I realized in some respects we were still living in the 19th century. (Her dinner date was to Bob's Big Boy, where she ended up ordering a dinner salad and iced tea.). For many years I took her example to heart, and ate very little in front of boys, especially those I was interested in. My first high school boyfriend used to bug me about my weight so while he ate a burger, I'd have a cup of coffee. My second boyfriend, who had a much saner attitude in this area, thought this was nonsense and often encouraged me to eat. In fact, on our first date he invited me to his house where made me crepes.


In the years since, I've encountered a vast range of men's attitudes toward women's eating*. On the one end of the spectrum are the guys who really do feel more comfortable with women who "eat like birds" even though they might do that faux-complaining-but-actually-bragging thing about it, "I never see her eat anything but celery sticks!" God forbid she order a sub sandwich or they start oinking at her. (Meanwhile she's probably raiding the pantry after he's gone to sleep. But not like I'd know anything about that.) Moving down the line are the men who say they like to see a woman eat, on the unspoken condition that she remain thin. Then there are the guys like the ones in my former folk dance group. Their motto was, "The secret to happiness is to keep the women fed." My kind of men. By the time I met my husband, I was secure enough to warn him early on that I get bitchy when I'm hungy.


Anyhow, this article makes me really glad I'm not out there still navigating the shoals of the dating world. Zuzu **distills the article down to its essence quite nicely:

Be yourselves, girls: order what you think he'd approve of you eating in front of him.

*My own personal theory is that there is an inverse relationship between a man's level of security with himself and his concern about what his date/girlfriend/wife is or isn't eating.

**One of Zuzu's commenters mentioned that they wouldn't be surprised if the NYT article is a "placement piece" from the Beef Council. Wouldn't surprise me either, and I say that as une femme who enjoys a nice ribeye or filet mignon on occasion.