Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

<!-- ...fix end //-->What or who defines a lesbian photograph? The photographer? The subject? The viewer? The context in which it is shown? Or something totally different? It can be any or all of these, and the diversity of lesbian photography seems to defy a clear-cut definition.
However, there are photographers whose work clearly deals with lesbian issues. By making lesbians visible, their images both reveal and construct a lesbian cultural identity.
It is this self-representation that is the focus of this website. Looking at the work of lesbian photographers, their way of depicting lesbians will be discussed and examples of their images will be given.
The overview of lesbian photographers is divided into five sections, all of which contain subsections about individual artists. The subsections roughly follow a timeline: becoming visible shows the beginnings of lesbian photography, private faces will try to present images made before the Women’s Liberation Movement, new women contains work of the 1970s, deconstruction concentrates on art made in the 1980s, and this is me focuses on photography in the 1990s.

This is from a site I found while looking for more work by Catherine Opie. I found this blurb particularly interesting in that it states "By making lesbians visible, their images both reveal and construct a lesbian cultural identity." That made me think of what we've been talking about with the construction of gender/identity and the double edged sword of claiming an identitiy. The site I found this on looks like it's great, i haven't had time to search through it in depth, but I thought I'd share it with you all. Hope you enjoy!

This came up in clinic today, so I tracked down an article about it. If it's easier to read as a webpage *click* 

Forever Pregnant
Guidelines: Treat Nearly All Women as Pre-Pregnant

By January W. Payne
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 16, 2006; HE01

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.

Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.

While most of these recommendations are well known to women who are pregnant or seeking to get pregnant, experts say it's important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed.

The recommendations aim to "increase public awareness of the importance of preconception health" and emphasize the "importance of managing risk factors prior to pregnancy," said Samuel Posner, co-author of the guidelines and associate director for science in the division of reproductive health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which issued the report.

Other groups involved include the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the March of Dimes, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention's Division of Reproductive Health and the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.

*this is slightly more fleshed out than what I had written in class*

I sit with my friends, laughing and talking as usual. Enjoying our drinks, and each other's company. I finish mine and stride over to the bartender to get another. As I wait for my bright pink cosmopolitain I notice a man eyeing me curiously, and turn away slightly. I continue to look around the bar which is filled with a wonderful assortment of people. There are women who are 6' and over wearing enormous heels, skirts tight over there nonexistant hips, faces made up brightly with wigs perched atop their heads. There are men sitting together, hands on one another's knees and women with short hair playing pool and flirting with one another.

As I walk back to return to my friends I notice other people looking at me in a slightly confused, apraising manner. Then it hits me as to why exactly they're looking at me in this way.

I'm in a gay bar, there's a drag show going on. I'm 6'2" and wearing platform boots and my friend's vinyl dress. They're trying to figure out what I am.

I slide back into the booth with my friends, smiling at this revalation- this could be fun. "Hey you guys, guess what?" I say, and they wait for more. I explain to them what I think is going on, they laugh.

Raine (the six foot goth chick who dressed me up in vinyl for this evenings festivities) inquires, "Does it bother you that they think you may actually be a man in drag?"

I consider this for a moment, "Kind of, but at the same time, I think it's interesting. And besides, in the long run it doesn't really matter."

Throughout the night I keep tabs on what is going on around me, who is looking at me, who seems to have decided that they've "figured out" my sex/sexuality/gender. I play with the situation, depending on who's looking I'll modify my behavior. Sometimes I make sure to wiggle my hips a little more when sauntering up to the bartender and purr "may I have another cosmo, please?" with a wink.

How much is ones sex visible? or invisible?

How mch is ones gender visible? or invisible?

How much is ones body visible? or invisible?

How much are ones feelings visible? or invisible?

The idea of visible/invisible makes me think of something that I learned in my beginning photography class long long ago that blew my mind. Technically we don't see any thing. What we see is light reflecting off in different lengths (different waves for different colors) and our eyes take in this light, our brain filters it and makes sense of it, and we "see" something.

Learning this made me feel like nothing exists.

Kind of like female and male don't really exist. (or feminine and masculine then either)

They're labels that we've made up to quantify things.

Kind of like sex, and gender.

So if light exists (where nothing does  visibly without it), and sex/gender/race exist as we know them only because we've defined and named them... does anything really exist?

I saw this bumper sticker driving home last night, just after reading the Gender Workbook excerpt yesterday (how perfect!)

"Think outside of gender binaries"

Question One:

How does Foucault's "deployment of sexuality" relate specifically to de Lauretis' "ideology of gender"? (see pg. 6 of de Lauretis)

 Maybe better phrased as "How can we relate the two?"

Question Two:

If "ideology" is defined as a "science of ideas" (OED) what is the difference in it's use, or how does that definition fit into, the "ideology of gender" that occurs in de Lauretis' writing?

(My brain hurts. I hope this means it's growing...)

I noticed while perusing through my copy of Foucault for Beginners that there are several illustrations using Aubrey Beardsley's work. He is one of my favorite artists, and does some very interesting work- most of which deals with bodies. By that I mean- not just portraiture, but sex and sexuality.

Wikipedia says "Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (August 21, 1872 – March 16, 1898) was an influential English illustrator, and author, best known for his erotic illustrations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Beardsley

I would be interested to hear other's thoughts on his work and how this could relate to what Foucault has said about the abundance of discourses on sex and sexuality. Does art count as a discourse? I would say that it does.

http://www.loyno.edu/history/journal/1992-3/smith-e.htm

another interesting site about Aubrey Beardsley.

My group decided to venture to A Dorm- the freshman dorm of on-campus housing. None of us had even inhabited this space, so it was a new experience for all of us to evaluate.

We paused in front of the building for some observation as well as to sketch the building. As it was around 11am there was very little activity happening while we were there. We entered (on the second floor) and took note of our immediate surroundings.

There were three bulletin boards covered in public postings for bodies to read, benches for bodies to sit on and elevators to move bodies between floors. There is an Academic Learning center there, a water fountain and a trash can. Obviously not an area that bodies spend much time in but rather a transition area. We observed that the floor was set up in a square layout with the center being dedicated to a stairwell to venture to the first floor.

Looking down this area was not very welcoming, what we could see of it, seemed to be dedicated to maintenance rather than the student body at large. We decided to travel to the third floor and put the elevators to use. Before we did so we observed a sign on the elevator which was dedicated to instructions of behavior in case of fire. There were three circles enclosed in representative flames. Within these three circles were illustrations, one of a hand pushing elevator buttons with a slash through it on the left. In the center a person (seemingly male) walking down stairs and on the right a person (again male) in an elevator with a slash through it.