My coworker introduced me to this site this afternoon and it fit too well with what we were discussing in beauty parlor today. Oh the cultural anxiety! 

Attached is the outline of the Obama Girl presentation, from Friday November 16, 2007.

Here's a separate blog entry I found about Obama Girl that sums up her internet popularity. http://www.liquidgeneration.com/BlogPost/Suck_My_Blog/Obama_Girl_for_President/

Baby it's a new age, you're like my new craze
Let's get together maybe we can start a new phase
The smokes got the club all hazy, spotlights don't do you justice baby
Why don't you come over here, you got me saying

Aayoo

I'm tired of using technology, why don't you sit down on top of me?
Aayoo
I'm tired of using technology, I need you right in front of me

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Na4x2Uwflmg

And it just fits so nicely for what we've been talking about the past two weeks. Besides the fact that I don't understand what 'technology' has to do with a pole dancer, the video does play with virtual reality coming in between bodies... could it be this song is a refusal to accept internet pornography as satisfactory? I'm half-joking, half-serious in that question. And thinking about song lyrics made into a visual narrative, the lyrics just seem made for a music video.

Lyrics are as follows:

Something special,
Unforgetable,
50 Cent (cent),
Justin (tin),
Timbaland (land), god damn (damn)

She she, she want it, I want to give it to her
She know that, it's right here for her
I want to, see her break it down
I'm ballin', throw'n money around

Verse 1 (50 Cent & Justin Timberlake):

She work it girl, she work the pole
She break it down, she take it low
She fine as hell, she about the dough
She doing her thing out on the floor
Her money money, she makin' makin'
Look at the way she shakin' shakin'
Make you want to touch it, make you want to taste it
Have you lustin' for her, go crazy face it
Now don't stop, get it, get it
The way she shakin' make you want to hit it
Think she double jointed from the way she splitted
Got you're head f**ked up from the way she did it
She's so much more than you're used to
She know's just how to move to seduce you
She gone do the right thing and touch the right spot
Dance in you're lap till you're ready to pop

She always ready, when you want it she want it
Like a nympho, the info, I show you where to meet her
On the late night, till daylight the club jumpin'
If you want a good time, she gone give you what you want


Chorus (Justin Timberlake):

Let me talk to ya

Baby it's a new age, you're like my new craze
Let's get together maybe we can start a new phase
The smokes got the club all hazy, spotlights don't do you justice baby
Why don't you come over here, you got me saying

Aayoo
I'm tired of using technology, why don't you sit down on top of me?

Aayoo
I'm tired of using technology, I need you right in front of me
Ooh, she wants it, uh uh, she wants it
Ooh, she wants it (soo), I got to give it to her
Ooh, she wants it, uh uh, she wants it


Ooh, she wants it (soo), I got to give it to her

(Timbaland)
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you

Verse 2 (50 Cent & Justin Timberlake):

Got a thing for that thing she got
The way she make it tick, the way she make it pop
Make it rain for us so she don't stop
I ain't got to move, I can sit and watch
In her fantasy, there's plain to see
Just how it be, on me, backstrokin', sweat soaking
All into my set sheets
When she ready to ride, I'm ready to roll
I'll be in this bitch till the club close
What should I do, one thing on all fours
Now that that shit should be against the law
From side to side, let the ride, break it down (down down)
You know I like, when you hike and you throw it all around
Different style, different move, damn I like the way you move
Girl you got me thinking about, all the things I do to you
Let's get it poppin' shorty we can switch positions
From the couch to the counters in my kitchen

Chorus (Justin Timberlake):

Let me talk to ya

Baby it's a new age, you're like my new craze
Let's get together maybe we can start a new phase
The smokes got the club all hazy, spotlights don't do you justice baby
Why don't you come over here, you got me saying

Aayoo
I'm tired of using technology, why don't you sit down on top of me?
Aayoo
I'm tired of using technology, I need you right in front of me

Ooh, she wants it, uh uh, she wants it
Ooh, she wants it (soo), I got to give it to her
Ooh, she wants it, uh uh, she wants it
Ooh, she wants it (soo), I got to give it to her

(Timbaland)
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you

Someone in the class asked, why is a piece about race considered feminist art? My initial reaction was that feminism goes beyond ‘women’s issues’ into analyzing further ideologies regarding race, class, imperialism, consumerism (sometimes), and mass culture—especially advertisement. Rosler’s piece is still relevant as a women’s issue, with the multiple other –isms embedded in the marking of Orientalism to women.

            The wok in question is aimed for its target audience of women cooking. Even if the brochure Rosler read out loud did not necessarily say “for women,” the traditional use of kitchens, cooking, and food is women’s arena. The categorically female body has been relegated to the kitchen; a woman’s place is in the kitchen is a typical aphrorism that might be extended to the woman’s body’s place is in the kitchen. Although it may be questionable as to whether or not Rosler was actually inside of a kitchen, her props and set-up resembled one. As such, kitchenware marketing can be seen as a direct address to women.

            So what do global politics have to do with the kitchen? The marketing of the wok represented an essentialist, orientalist representation of “the Orient.” Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian cultures have been lumped together into one “type” of “Oriental.” The wok comes from China, but the language used in the brochure and the additional props surrounding the wok reflect Japanese culture and customs (geisha girl postcard, sake, dried seaweed, etc) without bothering to differentiate between the two cultures. This dismissive attitude of Asian cultures is indicative of a larger ruling ideology, one that has normalized white America and exotified other countries in relation to the norm. As a white American woman, Rosler’s performance of the wok brochure shows how the electric wok company ridiculously appropriates, dilutes, and mass-produces a cooking tool into a commodity that reflects a prejudiced mentality.

            Rosler’s body and what she puts on it mimics the orientalist assumptions. She wears a vaguely recognizable mandarin collared shirt with a recognizably “Asian” print and fabric. She occasionally puts the dome-lid on her head, mimicking the image of the conical straw hat used in several Asian countries. The image of this particular hat shape is a symbol of Asian people, appropriated and used often in demeaning ways. A simple wikipedia search informed me that this ‘icon’ is linked to the derogatory, race-based slur “coolie.” (The search also provided me with this link, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/04/18/MN109646.DTL, illustrating how this article of adornment/clothing was appropriated by teen-targeted clothing manufacturer Abercrombie and Fitch in 2002.)

            Another element in the racism towards Asia is linked to politics, to Communism. I’m less familiar with the American representation of Asia as “red” and Communist, and, by extension, “bad,” but the last few minutes of the video show Chairman Mao (at the very end, his body is partially obscured by the title card; yet even just the slivers of his shoulder and face [a political mugshot] is recognizable, loaded with communist affiliations.) Another wikipedia search tells me Chairman Mao died about a year before this video was made or released. The use of Chairman Mao as a symbol of how Americans are exposed to Asian culture feels significant. Linking Communism to Asian people is a way of keeping non-white races separate from white American ‘democracy’. Keeping white women feeling estranged from Asian women is a way to keep America the ‘norm,’ and, arguably, a way to keep women of all races from solidarity against such systems of oppression.

Through the Large Glass --Hannah Wilke

I found Wilke’s play with Duchamp’s art compelling. From my understanding, Duchamp in his time often ‘misused’ gallery spaces. One art piece he did involved wrapping miles of string around a gallery in which other artists displaying paintings or sculptures. The wrapping of the string was his art contribution, his play with the gallery. Wilke invokes this mentality but adds to it. According to Bridget Irish, Wilke was belittled as an artist because she was attractive. I got the feeling, in her deadpan strip tease, Wilke was saying something like, “This is what I am, isn’t it? A sex object? Isn’t this what you want to see? You don’t want to see my art, you only see my body. Well, here it is.” Her body was so out of place in the gallery, behind this artwork—and this is just it: her body should be out of place in the art world, her body should not be an issue as to whether or not her art is accepted. From what I know of Wilke’s photography, much of it is about women’s bodies, and in specific her own body, often naked depictions. So the fact that her art is about her body complicates matters, but the end result is still that her body as an extension of her self should not be equated into the art criticism. If she has been called exhibitionist, this is in the eye of the beholder. Has anyone ever called the nude female models used by innumerous (male) artists exhibitionists?

Vertical Roll –Joan Jonas

I found this piece the most engaging right off the bat. The other works of art I had to speculate on, find outside information, and interact through language to gleam depth from. With Jonas’ work, I immediately responded to it on a non-verbal level. To write about it feels to cheat it of its success, but I’ll try anyway.

            The most compelling aspect of this was how conscious it is of its medium, its form. The vertical roll struck me as film frames; the illusion of the moving image was broken down. It’s comparable to Brechtian theories, alienating the form from the content and making the viewer aware that this is a video rather than another reality to get sucked into. At the same time, the homemade aesthetic evoked the reality of making this video, as Jonas moved her body slowly in an out of the frames.

            The use of the female body engaged the idea of the male gaze, the desiring gaze. The broken up imagery made it difficult to focus on the body, no matter how much the viewer may have wanted to. I know I wanted to focus on it, to see it clearly, and I recognized its female form. The addition of grating, repetitive noise also alienated the viewer from getting sucked into the illusion of film. When the noise started, I was flinching and uncomfortable. However, after a while, I found the noise rhythmic and eerily beautiful; violent but intentional and innocent.  The disconnect between the noise and what was visually happening also reminded me that this is a video, not an illusion, not necessarily reality as I know it.

First of all: hearing and saying are one and the same. My ears are my mouth, my mouth can hear. You with your ears on the sides of your head away from your mouth--that is just so self-centered. Like what you have to say is different from everyone else's voice. My voice is your voice is my voice is our voice.

Second: "Push To Talk" means my voice is your voice. You are external to me, you speak my words through me, so someone else can hear. (Like they haven't already heard it or said it before.)

Third: Your words are not yours. You did not make them up, so don't start getting all high and mighty believing you an individual, a unique being with cute little original thoughts. You were taught to speak, to say, in the ABC's. You think morse code is artificial? No, it's symbolic of public language. What you say is not yours, not some pure private language you made up on the spot.

Fourth: You are not alone. I am not alone. I am here, having a) started with a partner b) made for you c)made for you AND someone else whose ears are not his or her mouth. I, alone, sit quietly, this is my true voice. I need not speak for I have heard it all before; I need not speak for you have heard it all before. You can turn me on, clip me to your belt, and wait to get off on the voice of another trying to communicate with you, but really. You are already in a social world. 

Fifth: You, like me, have a series of numbers and serial codes, legal advice, and a "Made In ..." sticker on your back. You think mine is so contrived and mysterious--but you, you wear yours everyday. Your place of birth your nationality your age your surname your image IS your identity.

----

Prosthesis: the romance and the terror, a process and an action, and maybe a lack of action.

The first prosthesis that came to mind was horseback riding. As a pre-adolescent, I fell in love with the movement of horseback riding. I learned English Dressage, an exacting practice that requires constant awareness of the horse's body in relation to yours. The horse's body is trained to recognize very specific, subtle movements on the rider's behalf. A slight pressure with my thighs and a push with my hips means canter. Two backwards twitches with my hands on the reins reaching the metal bit in the horse's gums means slow down and curve your neck (three times in a row, aided with pressing downwards with my hips means slow, down, and, ho/halt.) I knew these horses so well, and they knew me and knew the steps, knew how to do these complicated movements with these tiny presses from my legs and hands. By the end of my training, I was learning to walk the horse sideways, criss-crossing steps, with directions from my body. 

I learned to snowboard soon after I stopped horseback riding. Here, gone was the warmth and intuition of the horse. Now was the sense of pure motion, controlled by my body's movement on a board strapped to boots on my feet. I learned the board as a new way to move, to walk, to ride, my body learned to carve to bend my knees at the right time to switch from heel toe weight distribution. Motion, flying I couldn't do by myself.

Longboard. I learned to longboard, snowboarding on wheels without the snow. My shoes or barefeet grip the sandpaper surface of the board. Again, my body learns to compensate for the new feet, learns to shift its weight apply pressure here to turn. Extend the range of your body. Motion my body could not make without the board, the wheels. 

Driving. I drive wheat trucks during the summers. I learned to drive this huge truck, to hear its sounds, to know when to shift, to brake, to ease it into gear or that 3rd gear ALWAYS grates or you have to use your left foot sometimes to brake while simultaneously giving it gas so that the RPMs jump up so you can downshift. I would be physically drained after just a few trips back and forth, dehydrated and ravenous after half a day. My body extended into the brakes. In the older, shittier trucks, there were a few times when the brakes went out for whatever reason and my feet would stop the brakes with no resistance and I rolled backwards down a hill more than once; terrified that this machine was going to swallow me whole. The disconnect after the connection, the extension of my legs and hands to stop and slow this machine; the fear of the machine out of my body's control. I would wake up during the night with visceral, physical, adrenalin-punched nightmares, my legs seizing up with fear of no brakes.  

umbrella. parasol--stop the sun from damaging that pale soft skin on her thighs. Reveal skin (to burn skin) and hide skin fromthe sun with that useless tool, parasol.

An absurdly large eye--childlike, feminized--watches. Is it human? It's a photographic collage of a human, how can it be human? There's this gear, a lever to wind with intricate parts. What happens when it turns? Do all the BMW icons spin?

My face and head--that which identifies me--is a lightbulb. The ideal of Good Hair, Nice Hair, Soft Manicured Human Hair lurks behind me, faceless. I cannot have this hair but artificially. 

The soft pale hand elegant dangles a pocket watch. Is it time yet? This is a man's tool, the pocket watch. The pocket watch has become part of Man of men of Men who live by those soft pale hands that carefully, gracefully move all day.

Whose hands made the pocket watch? Can a pocket watch become an additional body part of the man who wears it like a second skin, like a scar on his left side where those soft pale hands keep moving?

Here the pocket watch has been taken from his side. The pocket watch is placed in a new context, in a feminized space, in a space where the ideal of femininity explodes into the artifice it is--where yes women cannot attain this ideal but by artificial means so here the artificial means is the new ideal. Ideal curvy figure, Woman with a lightbulb for a head; pretty hair with no face or brain; soft pale hand with no body holds ticktocking soft pale hands--

The tire? The fire? Aren't cars and (re)inventing the wheel Man's work? Don't Men make sexy cars, make ideal cars, make this machine really perfect, good, nice, pretty? Don't men make the icon the idol? 

Don't men make the icon the idol?

Here the icons I've said before:

soft pale hands

good nice hair

curvy soft pale skin

(bathing suit)

parasol

watchful child/feminie face

Don't men make the icon an idol?

----

 After writing this, I remembered an event from the summer. My best friend got married, and I was one of her bridesmaids. At the rehearsal dinner, as is tradition (apparently?), she and the groom gave gifts to the bridesmaids and the groom's men. The men received a pocket watch, the women received a compact mirror. 

I would have loved a pocket watch. You would never give a compact mirror to men.  

Fashioning the Body

November 6, 2007

Galton’s Little Black Book: The Visual Deployment of Bourgeois Sexuality

Science extends itself as a neutral helping hand, as the voice of reason. Science, society tells us, is not affected by social, cultural, or political motivations. The numbers don’t lie, so we think. But what if the numbers are put on our bodies? What if science is measuring our noses, our foreheads, our ears, and our eye-width to determine what sort of person we are? What if science takes our picture and uses it to declare our degree of humanity, and furthermore declares our responsibility to not reproduce for the betterment of the species? Science is not neutral. The will to knowledge cannot wash its hands of cultural and social influences, nor of power relations implicit in those influences. Francis Galton’s scientific composite portraits during the latter half of the 19^th century serves as a telling technology of eugenics, specifically linked to the proliferation of the bourgeoisie in accordance to Michel Foucault’s analysis of the history of sexuality.

The science of phrenology and physiognomy, popular in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, was not neutral. Allan Sekula, in his essay entitled “The Body and the Archive” provides a detailed history of the two sciences, placing them in a critical survey. The data collected and presented about the body was not unbiased, although it certainly presented itself as objective truths. Phrenology and physiognomy stem from the belief that a person’s value could be determined from his or her face and head. Both sciences examined, measured, observed, and documented the human body in this light. In particular, the two sciences studied groups of peoples, dividing society up into races, genders, intelligence levels, morality, and class. Gathering information about groups of people based on social status, ethnicity, class, and or gender is not a practice free of power relationships. Yet this was a validated science of statistics. By the end of the 19^th century, cameras aided in the proliferation of phrenology and physiognomy as scientific studies (Sekula 347).

Before cameras, detailed hand-drawn or engraved images provided a visual to supplement phrenology and physiognomy. The visual image portraying conclusions regarding character was crucial to the studies of the body. The focus on the face and head gave way to images of persons’ facial traits placed within a value scale. An individual’s characteristics were forced into prescribed groups. Physiognomy, the study of the face, easily translated into photographic examination.

A light skinned boy with a particular nose shape or eye shape no longer owned his face; science usurped his very facial structure with the will to knowledge at its heels. French scientist Francis Galton in the late 1880s took this boy’s image, collecting his face by means of the camera. Multiple, formulaic mugshots of boys ‘like’ this one were compiled together to create one average face. The composite mugshot cannot be seen as an objective experiment; text accompanied the photos with titles that assigned a label, such as “the Jewish type.” Galton’s composite portrait of the “Jewish type” is one example of many cases he examined; he considered this ethnic portrait to be the most compelling (Sekula 371).

Documenting racial groups and other ‘types’ purported to be a rational scientific discursive practice. However, Galton’s eugenicist agenda revealed the tautology of his studies. “Galton sought to intervene in human reproduction by means of a public policy, encouraging the propagation of the ‘fit’ and discouraging or preventing outright that of the ‘unfit’” (Sekula 353). By photographing the so-called degenerates of society, Galton participated in the building sense of ruling and entitlement in the bourgeoisie. In addition to defining the abnormal, the immoral, the ‘unfit’ in relation to the ‘fit’ (the bourgeoisie, the white, the wealthy, the educated), Galton pushed a political bias that desired a utopian future, weeding out the weak links of society. One telling example of this was Galton’s study of the ‘criminal type.’ “His interest in heredity and racial ‘betterment’ led him to join the search for a biologically determined ‘criminal’ type. Through one of his several applications of composite portraiture, Galton attempted to construct a purely optical apparition of the criminal type” (Sekula 353). The use of composite photography was Galton’s essential addition to science, creating a visual reference for the subjects in question and those who were asking the questions.

This photographic examination was symptomatic of the will to knowledge in the modern age, and is representative of the period’s scientific practices and social relations. It must be noted that Galton was part of the bourgeoisie, the dominant class revolving around the commonality of wealth, whiteness, education, and power—the creators and perpetuators of modern science. To Galton and his colleagues, the ‘other’ or the abject person was a mystery to be solved, a scientific secret to be created and then discovered. The bourgeois scientists plagued themselves with questions like the following: What is it about criminals that make them commit crimes repeatedly? Don’t persons afflicted by tuberculosis look alike; can we avoid disease by recognizing a type? Aren’t people with dark skin of a lower intelligence? Surely all of these questions can be answered through the process of scientific data gathering: Measure the noses. Count the inches across the cheeks. Study the ratios. Observe how they all look alike when their images are layered in a composite portrait. The experiments represented the hegemonic ideologies of the time, emphasizing the superiority of the ruling white, male, wealthy class. Notably, phrenology and physiognomy created a hierarchy of races, placing ‘Athenian’ facial structures as the highest of intelligences and African faces far below (Sekula 367).

A photograph is a record, a document, an archive. It is a material presence that can outlive us all. A photographic portrait is an archive of the body, usually of the face and head. The face represents the self, the individual; but the face can also signify a “type”. If science says that the closer we are to Greek gods and their facial structures the more intelligent we are, all the better to be an Anglo-Saxon. If scientists say that one can tell what sort of character one is dealing with by studying his or her face, a face can betray. The face does not belong to the individual, particularly if the individual is placed in a category as “inferior.” It is important to know who is categorically inferior; society should be able to stop in the street and recognize the degenerates. This mentality established the motives behind photographing a variety of faces and grouping them into labels.

To say that the general will to knowledge and the age of modern science exuded from every pore of the social body and thus photographing classes of people was a natural next step does not adequately express the power relations in action. There are more layers to be discovered in looking at the photographers and the science behind phrenology and physiognomy in terms of sexuality. Concurrent with the photographic will to knowledge was the deployment of sexuality. The bourgeoisie invented and perpetuated “sexuality” as a mysterious secret of the body. Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality: Volume I, an Introduction provides an innovative analysis of the time period. The proliferation of science and the medicalization of the body is symptomatic of the will to knowledge, but the medicalization of sex reveals class-based agendas. That is, Foucault compellingly argues that the stringent attention paid to the body and its health and sexual activities reflects the bourgeoisie’s value placed on its own class body. This means both the physical bodies of those within the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois as a whole were placed under medical surveillance (Foucault 118-120).

Scientific and medical surveillance primarily served to guide the bourgeois body into successful survival. The individual bourgeois body belonged not to the individual, rather to the bourgeoisie as a whole group with a future. Here grew the hereditary-perversion-degenerescence system (Foucault 118). The threat of ruining one’s lineage for future generations emanated from not only scientists and the medical profession; the concupiscent preoccupation plagued society until a plethora of social fields now understood the importance of sexuality. “Psychiatry, to be sure, but also jurisprudence, legal medicine, agencies of social control, the surveillance of dangerous or endangered children, all functioned for a long time on the basis of ‘degenerescence’ and the heredity-perversion system” (Foucault 119). Not only a doctor would inform the individual to avoid perverse sexual activity, but so too would the law and other social institutions. The reason behind the controls on sexuality was not to purposely restrict pleasure of the individual, but to ensure the procreation and proliferation of the bourgeois class body as a dominant class (Foucault 125).

The great emphasis on heredity and sexual practices was born to protect the bourgeoisie’s future. Perverse sexual acts lead to the decline of a family line and were categorized as abnormal and immoral. Concern for spreading disease through one’s bloodline burgeoned from the fear of losing bodies in the dominant class (Foucault 118). Hand in hand with sexuality was the control of matrimonial alliances. Marriage should be procreative in the best way for the future of the class; here endogamy entered the picture. While Foucault mentions “endogamy” infrequently, the concept bears further examination and sums up his connection of sexuality and matrimonial alliances within the bourgeoisie. Endogamy is “the custom of marrying only within the limits of a clan or a tribe” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Foucault references this in the following quote:

“[The bourgeoisie] must be seen rather as being occupied, from the mid- eighteenth century on, with creating its own sexuality and forming a specific body based on it, a ‘class’ body with its health, hygiene, descent, and race; the autosexualization of its body, the incarnation of sex in its body, the endogamy of sex and the body” (Foucault 124).

Marriage was the socially condoned vehicle for procreative sex. To ensure the bourgeois class’s existence, the class members were expected to marry within and reproduce with their equals and no one less. Endogamic practices were thus a form of eugenics, a racial, classist and moral cleansing of the bourgeois heredity.

The advent of the bourgeois class as an exclusive ruling group is directly related to the medicalization of the body with the purpose of, as Foucault describes it, “maximizing life” as such and controlling reproduction (123). The photographic practices of Galton and his contemporaries served this idealist bloodline cleansing, providing visual images of who not to reproduce with. The formation of the visual “unworthy” persons in the name of objective science can be argued to act as a guideline, a little black book of eugenics written for and by the dominant class.

To further explain how photography acted as a visual aid in the deployment of sexuality, the use of semiotics can be enlisted. The photograph—Galton’s composite faces of the ‘unfit’ as well as the ‘fit’—acted as a sign. The signifier was the physical representation of the individual (the photograph as an object), signifying the assigned value of human life. That is, a face of a criminal was both a paper photograph of a criminal, and a photograph that connoted immorality as a threat to the individual and the bourgeois class’s future.
The medium of photography in science, as previously discussed, was celebrated as the objective eye, the absolute rational truth. A camera cannot lie, just as science is based on facts, numbers, and promises to explain the world. While a camera still does not lie, it is only too evident that the scientific photographers made use of photographs in power-drenched technology of sexuality to service the continued existence of the bourgeoisie.

Works Cited

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume I. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1978.

Sekula, Allan. “The Body and the Archive.” The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. Ed. Richard Bolton. Cambridge: MIT, 1989. 343-389.

Little girl: Where do boys come from?

Mom (2-sex): When you're inside mommy, you start out as either a boy or a girl. Even your twin brother lived in a totally separate sac than you!

Dad (1-sex): That's not exactly true. Actually, everyone starts out as female, with the penis inside the body as a fetus. Boys happen because they produce enough heat to push their genitalia outside their bodies. You, little girl, were just too cool and so you stayed female.

Little girl: So I have a penis too?

Mom (2-sex): No! You do not have a penis. You are a girl and you have ovaries which are inside of you, you are not like boys. Boys have testicles and they are external to the body.

Dad (1-sex): Yes you do! You have an inverted penis inside of you. If you had produced enough heat, it would have turned inside out and grown externally.

Little girl: Can I become a boy?

Mom: Well, it's not impossible for you to become a boy. It's not very likely, though. It's definitely impossible for a boy to become a girl, that I know.

Dad: Ehh... there are a few recorded cases of females turning into males, but the sources aren't credible.

Little girl: So can I do everything brother does?

Mom: No, because you are completely different. You are distinct from a man and you do different things. Men and women have different virtues and vices.

Dad: No, you can't really. Men and women live different lives and that's how society works.

Both: Goodnight.

Feminist theory

Film theory

Feminist film theory!

Gender!

Philosophy of art

Photography

Black and white photography

Silkscreening.

I see myself watching films and making a visual, critical response. I want to study feminist theory more, and find a way to apply those ideas to a visual format. In particular, I imagine reading de Lauretis and her contemporaries, or those who came before her. So, read theory, make a visual response: rearticulate, educate, refute, respond. I'm considering making critically-informed movie posters as a visual response.

I want to work with people whose interests would inform mine. I am a pretty serious student who needs reliable, responsible, critically-engaged, excited people to work with. Let's talk and look at our work and read cool essays that make us view things differently! And watch films and look at photographs. Gender as a representation, gendered images, alternative performances of gender, all these great things need to be looked at through visual media and then some!

Her first partner was Laura Lee Robinson Holmes, a housewife and artist in the small town of Walla Walla, WA. Laura Lee often spent time with gold leaf pin, taking her to parties with the finest echelon of society. Gold leaf pin made many elegant and sophisticated acquaintances, never straying far from Laura Lee's shoulder. It wasn't until the early 1990s that Laura Lee passed away, leaving gold leaf pin in the guardianship of her son, John Holmes. John never wore the pin himself, nor did his wife, Patricia Clark Holmes. Gold leaf spent several years resting in Laura Lee's old wooden jewelery box, among friends and memories. Sadly, the 1990s were hardly accommodating to a gold leaf pin. Occasionally, John and Patricia's daughter, Emily, took out gold leaf pin to play with Laura Lee's old silk dresses. It wasn't until June 22nd, 2007, that gold leaf pin went out into the outside air. Gold leaf pin accompanied Emily to Karianna Ball and Brandon Allum's wedding in Pioneer Park, Walla Walla, WA. Emily was wearing an unfortunate taupe-colored, mass-produced bridesmaid gown; gold leaf pin added a much needed sense of personality, history, and vitality to the event. This would be the last time gold leaf pin graced the world with her presence. She lived in Emily's Olympia home for her last days, laying quietly on the blue shelf.

http://union-bulletin.com/articles/2007/10/18/local_news/local01.txt

Home once more
DeSales alumnus Tyler Baffney lives on in the bodies of strangers, who will gather with his family on Friday.

Setting is a minimalist stage, I imagined the Recital Hall on campus...

Lighting focuses on slightly left of center stage.

Character is me.

Props include a vanity with a mirror that doubles as a TV screen; the vanity has drawers with very specific items of clothing inside.

There is a projection of the images that are shown on the mirror-tv behind me, so that the audience can clearly see. The images shown will be a compilation--almost a composite image but the images are not superimposed upon each other, just a fast moving repetitive slide show--of women's faces, a bust-up portrait that shows each woman to be wearing very specific items of clothing that I will be dressing up in as I look into the mirror-tv. The women are, like the audience, representational of a pluralistic society and hopefully inclusive of many different types of women. (By the end of the workshop, I'd decided that the images may not even be limited to classically categorized female bodies, but all persons need to be reflecting an idea or image of Woman.) The performance is me getting dressed with an item of clothing from each of these women, all the while staring into the mirror-tv--which obviously reflects more than my face.

There is no dialogue, I think. But here's what is running through my head when I envision this:

Gender is a representation. I cite Woman in my image and appearance. I'm getting dressed each morning and I'm citing Woman. I'm citing the idea of what a woman looks like. Because there is no one Ideal Woman Capital-Dubya Body (this is not to insinuate I'm merely trying to look pretty or hot), because there is no composite image of what Woman is. (Sign signifier signed.) Why do we act like there is? Like there is some Woman, some idea I need to be? What makes me a woman? What makes my body "woman"? Is it, more or less, clothes and physique and behaviors--boiled down to image, to appearance, to my material visual presence in social realms? "Passing" for a woman? Why do I dress like a Woman?

And it is a performance, getting dressed. Do I like to wear "feminine" things? Or does that feel natural because I've been told how to dress for my Body, my Womanity, and I've been encouraged by everyone to try for Pretty? How do my clothes and my appearance give an audience (real, theatrical, social, all) the authority to perceive me as part of a group categorized as Woman? Why should I ever know how to dress like a woman?