Gender and the Fashion Industry

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that many media sources, have targeted, not commercial or cultural pressures that encourage women to tailor their bodies to fit the image of the moment--whether that be fat or thin, voluptuous or skinny--but instead have cited gay men's dominance in the fashion industry as the reason that so many thin models dominate the catwalks. The writer discusses whether this supposed cause of female emaciation is endemic to the popular media's homophobia, or whether it has its roots in academic discourse. Further, the writer discusses how academic discourse can help us escape this polarization of gay and feminist liberation ideals, or whether these two movements are really opposed in their larger cultural and epistemological aims. The writer concludes that women must reject the objectifying gaze that forces them to 'see' one another as heterosexual men provided by the industry, and offer new ways of seeing, thinking, and conceptualizing sexuality beyond the idea of beauty at all.

Outline:
Position Paper
Works Cited

From the Paper:

"The desires of an individual designer can hardly explain the validation of a certain body type for an entire media industry that spills over into advertising and other forms of representational culture, not simply fashion. The aesthetic discourse privileges images of masculinity transposed upon women's bodies, according to Bordo, not femininity, and masculinity is associated with wealth, intelligence, hard work, and restraint. That is why women strive to embody slenderness, not because fashion advertisements 'tell' them to do so, or because designers are consciously communicating explicitly anti-female messages.
"Writing around the same time as Bordo, Robert Radford noted in the Journal of Design History, that the blame for negative or desexualized female images being laid at the feet of gay men is long-standing within the academic discourse of psychoanalysis and cultural criticism. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bordo, Susan. The Body Betrayed. Berkley: University of California Press, 1995.
• Fuss, Diana. "Fashion and the Homospectatorial Look." Critical Inquiry. 18. 4. Summer 1992. Identities. pp. 713-737. Accessed on 17 Nov 2007 through JSTOR http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0093-1896%28199222%2918%3A4%3C713%3AFATHL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B
• Holland, Erik. "Possible solutions to some problems that this site is trying to solve." Feminine Beauty. 2007. 18 Nov 2007. http://femininebeauty.info/solutions.htm
• Radford, Robert. "'Women's Bitterest Enemy': The Uses of the Psychology of Fashion Journal of Design History. 6.2. 1993. pp. 115-120. Accessed on 17 Nov 2007 through JSTOR at http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0952-4649%281993%296%3A2%3C115%3A%27BETUO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S
• Roof, Judith. "Hypothalamic Criticism: Gay Male Studies and Male Feminist Criticism." American Literary History. 4.2. Summer, 1992. pp. 355-364. Accessed on 17 Nov 2007 through JSTOR athttp://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0896-7148%28199222%294%3A2%3C355%3AHCGMSA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E

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