To Yoshie, and anyone interested

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Thu Feb 25 17:44:53 PST 1999


Catherine wrote:
>I don't think the examples you choose of 'gazing at', I presume that's what
>you're drawing attention to?, do much to alter the dominant genderings of
>adolescent bodies. Rather I think they emphasise as 'feminine/feminised'
>certain characteristics of adolescent bodies.

Maybe I was not making myself clear. I wanted to suggest that sometimes feminists' focus on the dominant gendering (necessary though it has been and still is in many ways) may end up taking what sexist culture wants us to see _at its face value_:

girls/women = eroticized objects = being looked at

boys/men = non-eroticized subjects = looking.

The sort of dichotomy that Laura Mulvey's influential theory highlighted. Nonetheless, just looking straight at this dichotomy replicates the ideology of (hetero)sexism and the closeting that comes with it, by helping it deny homoerotic and even homosexual possibilities in homosocial relationships in particular and male gendering in general. In other words, I'm calling attention to the sort of things that Eve Sedgwick, Peter Lehman, etc. want us to consider.


>These I don't know at all. I don't think my Japanese reading is up to
>commentary. I'll do author searches but any other suggestions as to where I
>might look for translations of Hashimoto?

Right now, I don't know if any exists. Let me look around, though, and see if I can find one.


>>OK, except that the term 'global girl culture' sounds strange, in that it
>>doesn't seem to have an objective reference in reality.
>Well you're right and yet it does have reality in effect -- not only
>descrbing but shaping products, distribution and consumption.

You haven't told us what you think about girl culture, where it's at, where it's going, etc. in Australia or elsewhere. Maybe you're busy now, but I'd like to hear from you about it when you have some time.


>Yes in Japan it's most American girls, but not entirely. _Muriel's Wedding_
>did fairly well there, for example, which is interesting considering the
>'wedding tour' thing between Japan and Australia.

I saw it here, but I'm sure it would have been popular over there. Come to think of it, lately (meaning since I left there) there have been a few from down under: _Crush_; _An Angel at My Table_; _Heavenly Bodies_.

Yoshie



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list