10.

Sex = Food

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40868763@N02/3761724457/

I am fascinated by the way in which Naomi Wolf  equates sex with food in The Beauty Myth. She argues that food indulgences are seen in a way that sexual indulgences have been seen in the past - shameful, pleasurable, emotionally tolling. She observes that "while sex for pleasure was a sin; women make the same distinction today between eating to sustain life and eating for pleasure" (98). 

I recently read an article in the New Yorker in which a journalist makes a distinction between a meal and a dessert. A meal is what you need to survive (in keeping with Wolf's parallel, the sort of sex used for procreational purposes), while dessert is superfluous (like sex for pleasure). We indulge in dessert, not because we need to, but because we can. The sugary properties of desserts make them impractical in the long run in terms of sustenance (all we get is a sugar high and then a crash). Instead, they are wild and impulsive, about living in the moment. 

With the woman as the"domestic goddess," cooking being a traditional task, must she balance the menu with food and dessert? Is this not symbolic of the age-old contradiction women are expected to embody - on one hand the stable, fertile mother but also the flirtatious, sexually arousing vixen.


This parallel between food and sexual desire is drawn in The Handmaid's Tale as well. In moments of sensory desolation, Margaret Atwood describes her protagonist as suddenly overwhelmed with hunger, the desire to taste, to consume. Offred's desire to feel alive is associated with her desire to eat.  Oral consumption satisfies the senses in a big way - smell, sight and taste are involved. It seems that exhilarating these senses is a crucial part of being "alive".

Wolf agrees, saying "To be alive is to want to satisfy hunger" (126)


----
By complete coincidence I walked into my sister's room this morning and found her browsing a new website--foodporndaily.com---where drool-worthy images of food are posted daily. Fascinating that such a website exists, but also a bit creepy!

http://foodporndaily.com/pictures/soft-gooey-cinnamon-rolls-drench-in-cream-cheese-icing

9.

The Power of Language II


In Topshop, the words "BUY IT NOW. YOU'LL REGRET IT LATER" are painted on the wall.

I remember wandering through the store sometime last year, glancing at the words, and feeling suddenly offended. I couldn't believe how shameless the advertising was, that a retailer would attempt so decidedly to sway a consumer's opinion with words on a wall. Offense dissolved into disgust when I contemplated how many people the neon motto must have successfully penetrated.

I think I consistently underestimate the power of words. In advertising and media, word choice is critical, a result of meticulous study. In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf lists common beauty company mottos:

"Isn't it obvious what you should do for your skin right now? (Terme di Saturnia)

In this slogan, the choice "obvious" brings a condescending tone to the message, as if it is spoken from an all-knowing, ageless voice. The "right now" adds a sense of urgency. The listener is made to feel belittled, and taking advantage of this self-conscious state, is rushed instantly to do something about it, to correct one's ignorance with a new product.

"Stop damaging your skin"(Elizabeth Arden)

This slogan is spoken in the imperative. The "stop" makes the advertisement a command, not an option. The direct mention of a "you" adds to the effectiveness of the slogan on the individual level.

"Since 1956, there's been no excuse for dry skin" (Revlon)

Here, "since 1956" references the age of the company, and by extension its authority. The "no excuse" is effective in assuming that the reader has been making excuses, or has cheated herself of proper treatment.

(All slogans found on page 96)

In addition to these slogans, magazines today are littered with simple "do's and don'ts" that "scold, insinuate and condescend" (84). They are a limited, yet resolute set of orders.

8.

In Defense of Fashion II

My mom just sent my sister and me this movie via email.  I love how these women - as quirky as they are -  use fashion to their own ends. They use it as a way to exercise creativity, to sustain a certain youthfulness, to communicate whatever they want to the world.

I think the right to dress one's self is powerful and a critical part of feeling "in control." In Margret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, cumbersome uniforms are used to oppress women. Physically heavy and with extensive coverage, the costumes leave the handmaid's deprived of the simple, yet important power of bodily freedom. Certain colors correspond with specific roles in society. A woman's role and rights are insinuated immediately with whatever she wears. Women are not given the right to control their own immediate reality, the initial, visual message sent out to whom ever they encounter.

In this light,  power resides in the right to choosing how you dress. In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf references a number of devastating trials in which the key right withheld from women was the right to dress. In these examples, workplace dress codes are manipulated to fit the needs of the employers and to render female employees helpless. Wolf cites Diaz v. Coleman, in which she says, "a dress code of short skirts was set by an employer who allegedly sexually harassed his female employees because they complied with it"(39). In M. Schmidt v. Austicks Bookshops Ltd., another case was lost by a female employee after the court "ruled that telling a woman how to dress was no more than trivial"(40).

In reality, Wolf observes, "the area of appearance seems to be the one where women feel they can most easily exert some control over how they will be responded to" (43).

I often forget it, but with the process of getting dressed everyday comes the power to communicate.

7.

In Defense of Fashion


I find myself defending fashion all the time. As an Ecology student, well-versed in the crises of consumer culture, and as an teenager exposed to many intelligent people who believe that fashion is a hollow, superficial and materialistic industry, I am constantly attempting to rationalize my love of dress. 


I'm so sick of feeling guilty!


I have to admit, I was unsettled by Mary Wollstonecraft's repeated criticisms of dress in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In one passage on fashion, she remarks, "...calling attention continually to the body, cramps the activity of the mind" (81). 


I've been raised to think the opposite. My mother was a professional buyer for nine years. Working for both Macy's and Cost Plus, she traveled throughout Europe and Asia in search of goods (clothing, furniture, textiles) to sell in the States.  She continually brought Elie and me costumes, embedding in both of us a fervent love of dress. In our attic in the States, we've kept a stash of Indian saris, Scottish kilts, Russian skirts, Thai jackets,  and Chinese silk suits among other items. 


Recently shaken by dramatic documentaries about the perils of consumer-culture in my Ecology class, I asked my mother what she would say if someone were to tell her that her profession depended upon the evils of selfish materialism.  She responded by saying that, as seen throughout history, humans have adorned themselves with material objects for centuries, and that if produced ethically and sustainably, these objects can provide incredibly valuable commentary about what it means to be an individual in this world. Luxury items can be expressive and creative. They are a narrative of the individual human condition as well as a reflection of vast societal trends.


When considered in this light, fashion is unbelievably powerful. Take Yves Saint Laurent for instance, whose work, for me, visually narrates our era's trend towards worldly awareness, a positive effect of globalization. Throughout his career, YSL traveled the world and created collections inspired by African(1967), Russian (1976), and Moroccan (1968) dress. In a world quickly westernizing in every other way, fashion provides an outlet where cultural differences/diversities are celebrated and sustained. What some may consider a superfluous, luxury industry, may be the only place where this kind of cultural celebration is ensured to continue!

1.   2 3. 

1. Africa, http://deyoung.famsf.org/

2. Russia, http://picasaweb.google.com/FAMSF1/YvesSaintLaurent

3. Morocco, http://deyoung.famsf.org/

Fashion can also be scientific, in reference to the natural world. Alexander Mcqueen's Spring/Summer 2011 Plato’s Atlantis collection was the product of an intense study of the environment. Inspired by ecology and the theory of evolution, Mcqueen studied insects, reptiles, and sea creatures, arranging them in mathematical tesselation-like patterns across shift dresses. His unbelievable work no doubt inspires an appreciation of the natural world and its beauty - a crucial message in a time where humans are struggling to empathize with the environment.

1. 

1. http://igossip.com/gossip/alexander_mcqueen_spring_summer_2010_show/980228


Also significant to me, is the revived 1950s femininity of Louis Vuitton's recent fall 2010 collection. This "lady-like" trend has caught hold across the board. Even lower-end retailers are selling stock with defined high waist lines, synching belts, silk scarfs and the like. It is fascinating to me that something like this has come out of the belly-bearing-spice-girls-inspired 90s era.  Our trends are retrospective and I think this says something about our social values. Perhaps we are nostalgic for an era of respectful, dignified womanhood. 

1. 

1. http://www.fashionfame.com/2010/06/louis-vuitton-fall-winter-2010-ad-campaign/

Fashion is not a foolish enterprise, but an art form with the ability to embody crucial themes.  Wollstonecraft believes a concern for dress is a frivolous employment, used solely out of a "savage desire for attention," to occupy one's self "When the mind is not sufficiently opened to take pleasure in reflection" (80 & 120). In contrast, I think that fashion (as seen in the preceding examples) is highly reflective, inquisitive, and intellectual. It is a visual exercise to the greatest extent - visual art, architecture and design all rolled into one. It is not always a means of entrapment for women as Wollstonecraft says, but a critical mode of communication and expression. 

6.

Visualizing Emotion

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Brown and Grey) 1969

In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the protagonist frequently uses visual elements (i.e. pattern, color, and perspective) to define her experience as a women with an emotional state of mind. Atwood recognizes that, as seen particularly in most of modern art, what we see has an unbelievable impression on what we feel.  She uses this to her advantage by incorporating visual elements into Offred's narrative.


Pattern
While in procession, Offred reflects, "We must look good from a distance: picturesque, like Dutch milkmaids on a wallpaper frieze...anything that repeats itself with the least minimum grace and without variation "(224). This image, of repeating, identical figures crossing a frame, visually expresses physical and emotional monotony experienced by the handmaids. The pattern represents the ordered aesthetic valued by Gilead's society. One can imagine that the image is predictable and appealing, but also oppressive in its strictness, a mold Offred hopes to break.


Color
When Offred senses herself growing appreciative of her environment, as opposed to maintaining resistance, she reflects "I'm only having an attack of sentimentality, my brain going pastel Technicolor...The danger is greyout"(210). I think in this case bright colors may represent rebellion, emotion, or individuality. Gilead is turning Offred's conscience monochrome, numbing her emotional experience. I feel like Mark Rothko's brown and grey composition above similarly embodies this emotional state.


Perspective
While alone in her room, Offred reflects,"What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bedsheet, the molecules of the face...Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be" (153). In art, the mastery of perspective is about the accurate portrayal of relative space - the rational division of foreground, mid ground, and background. I think this sense of relativity in space is much like the sense of relativity in time. Offred wants to establish her past, present and future so that she can be an active observer with a memory of the past and with the ability to plan for the future. It is crucial that she evaluate her life, not as a collection of immediate details, but from a distance, with a comprehensive idea of the "big picture." I think a sense of perspective, or relative time, is empowering. It is crucial to  see beyond one's immediate existence. 


I believe Offred's visualizations are an extremely powerful literary tool. A reader, I can physically "see," and thus understand, the abstract emotions experienced by the protagonist.  I wonder if this characteristic, the targeting of senses (particularly sight), is a common occurrence in literature written by women...?


Also, this sort of manipulated "synesthesia" reminds me of the scenes in the Disney film Ratatouille, where animators  translate tastes described by the mouse with color and shape. The animations allow the audience (who are watching the film on television) to experience taste, something that would have otherwise been quite distant. (Link below)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXoJjgxMj9M&feature=related

5.

Flowers

Red Canna, Georgia O’Keefe, 1923

http://www.humanflowerproject.com/index.php/weblog/comments/okeefe_and_warhol/

In The Handmaid's Tale, Mary Atwood is constantly integrating floral images into the narrative of her protagonist. Collectively, these references seem to link flowers with sexuality, freedom, superfluity, fertility. 

At the start of the novel, Offred describes the objects in her room and notes a floral picture, assuring readers that "flowers are still allowed" (17).  I wonder why Offred was sure to make this clear in her description -- what it is about flowers that could make them potentially criminal? 

While in procession amongst other handmaids, Offred yearns for something disorderly and irrational: a dandelion. She notices, "Not a dandelion in sight here, the lawns are picked clean. I long for one, just one, rubbishy and insolently random and hard to get rid of and perennially yellow as the sun. Cheerful and plebeian, shining for all alike" (224). Offred is desperate for any sign of rebellion against strict, sterile Gilsead society. A dandelion, a weed, would satisfy this urge. 

The floral iconography in the novel is often sexual. Offred is aware that flowers are "the genital organs of plants" (91). She, recalling some interpretations of Georgia O'Keefe's work, recognizes the flowers as utterly feminine in anatomy. Offred wonders as to why the irises have not been banned in her society, as they are "so female in shape"(153).

 Atwood later references flowers in images of feminine resiliency (91). She describes Serena Joy's gardening as “some blitzkrieg, some kamikaze, committed on the swelling genitalia of the flowers…the fruiting body. To cut off the seed pods is supposed to make the bulb store energy" (153).  In the novel, flowers are sexual, described as "swelling" and "fruiting." While the narrator describes Serena's activity as "penance," the act seems subversive -- the damage actually makes the "bulb store more energy." Flowers (representative of female sexuality?), no matter the circumstance, will thrive come spring. They will "clamor to be heard, though silently" ( 153). 

When describing herself, Offred says, "I am like a room where things once happened and not nothing does, except the pollen of the weeds that grow up outside the window, blowing in as dust across the floor" (114). Here,  she employs botanical references to communicate her sexual activity as indirect, impersonal,  fertilization transmitted through a "window".

4.

Offred as a Nude in Literature


"The English language, with its elaborate generosity, distinguishes between the naked and the nude. To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word 'nude', on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. The vague image it projects into the mind is not of a huddled and defenseless body, but of a balanced, prosperous and confident body: the body re-formed."

-- Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form

1.2.

3.4.

1.(Picasso)http://dbeveridge.web.wesleyan.edu/wescourses/2001f/chem160/01/Photo_Gallery_Humanities/picasso/images/Les_Demoiselle

2.(Michelangelo)http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:David_von_Michelangelo.jpg

3.(Philip Wilson Steer)http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/the-naked-and-the-nude-middlesbrough

4.(Jan van Eyck)http://www.wga.hu/tours/flemish/eyck/1open1/u7eve1.html

Art Historian Kenneth Clark suggests that when describing figures in art there is a difference between the nude and the naked. Naked figures possess a certain awareness of their indecency. They look shameful, sensual, individual and personal. In contrast, nude figures are idealized. They are depicted with intense calculation. Their perfected, confident proportions are crafted to create an impersonal, universal form. While nakedness suggests that something intimate resides within, nudity is purely corporal. I would argue that Picasso's and Michelangelo's figures are nude, while Steer's and Van Eyck's figures are nude (pictured above). 

If we think of literature as an art, I think this distinction can definitely be applied to descriptions and language concerning the body. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale she describes a world where women are perpetually "nude," in that they are defined only by their corporal existence. Their sole purpose is to facilitate reproduction -- they  are a "national resource," merely "two-legged wombs" (146). In a period of reflection, Offred tries to remember herself, "Time to take stock./ I am thirty-three years old. I have brown hair. I stand five seven without shoes. I have trouble remembering what I used to look like. I have viable ovaries "(153). She is incapable of defining herself without  resorting to physical attributes (her hair, her height, her ovaries). The uniform robes worn by females in Gilead ironically contribute to "nudity" in the sense that they inhibit any sense of individuality, and by extension, intimacy.  

When found in deeply personal experiences, like a bath in which she confronts her bare body, Offred is unsettled.  She reflects, "My nakedness is strange to me already. My body seems outdated...I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it's shameful or immodest but because I don't want to see it. I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely" (73). In this world, Offred's body is synonymous with her identity and her life purpose. When she sees herself exposed, she sees herself "determined completely."  She doesn't feel the shame that a true naked individual would. Instead, in an eerie way, she feels completely defined by her corporal existence. 

I think the state of nakedness depends on an internal conscience. In my opinion, nakedness is fully related to an individual's will, whether he or she is or isn't willing to be unclothed. The existence of a conscience -- a personality behind a form -- suddenly makes what was neutral flesh and bones exposed, inappropriate, courageous, violated, erotic or whatever. Something has to be given a personality, a protection, a restriction, a complication to become valuable in the sense of intimate possibility. When thinking of women in the past, women who I'd call "naked," Offred reflects, "They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word undone. These women could be undone; or not"(35). Buttons and the capacity they hold for concealing and revealing, restraint and exposure, contribute to a body's state of nakedness. I think a person's willingness or resistance to becoming naked is much like these buttons -- full of potential. 

Offred lacks the potential for intimacy that comes with a free will. Instead, she is dictated, driven by the capacities of her body. When describing the past, Offred says, "There were limits but my body was nevertheless lithe, single solid, one with me. Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I'm a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping"(83). Offred recognizes that her body is more real, more reliable and more definitive than she is. She used to use her body as an instrument to her own needs but now she is "...like a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except the pollen of the weeds that grow up outside the window, blowing in as dust across the floor"(114). This image insinuates that she is physically hollow, her body a container, dictated or  by a force ("weeds") that invade (perhaps "fertilize" ?) her indirectly -- through a window, notably not directly through the "front door". Her will is completely irrelevant in Gilead. 

I also feel like Offred is nude in that she is lost, or separate from her own body. A naked person is one with the shape or limits of the body, whereas Offred looks to it as an outside entity. She reflects, "I sink into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing. Treacherous ground, my own territory. I become the earth I set my ear against, for rumours of the future"(83). In many "out-of-body" observations, she looks curiously, unknowingly towards her own body for direction, orientation. She imagines herself as how she would appear to an "electron", "A cradle of life, made of bones; and within, hazards, warped proteins, bad crystals jagged as glass" (122). When she associates her physical existence with "hazards" she gives it a treacherous, frightening connotation. She observes another woman, Serena Joy, who is also a victim of her own body. With age, "her face is sinking in upon itself"(56). Maybe Atwood is suggesting a conflict between females and their bodies, entertaining the idea that one may control the other. Perhaps the nature of this dynamic relationship (between the corporal body and the internal self) is what separates "nakedness" from "nudity".