Never mind.
--- Liza Featherstone <lfeather32 at erols.com> wrote:
> Agree with this. Because something is culturally
> constructed, or perhaps a
> feature of class society, does not necessarily mean
> we want to, or can, give
> it up. The whole concept of having privacy when you
> take a shit, and of
> distancing shit from our everyday lives through
> toilets, etc, for example,
> has been created, refined and shaped by bourgeois
> notions of individualism
> (as noted in The History of Shit, by some French
> theoryhead whose name
> escapes me), but I think most of us are happy with
> it, or at the very least
> regard it neutrally.
>
> And of course standards of beauty have changed over
> time, and are different
> across cultures and classes, but the point is every
> culture and subculture
> has them. So while of course it's good to question
> where they come from, and
> to step outside them and look for the less obvious
> forms of human beauty,
> it's unlikely we'd be rid of them ever, class
> society, patriarchy or no. And
> who doesn't enjoy beauty, whatever it is? I think
> most of us really like
> looking at the beautiful or well-turned out (however
> we define that), of any
> gender, class or race, and, once out of high school,
> we are also of course
> capable of seeing beyond physical appearance.
>
> Something further about class and beauty: while
> fashion can be very
> class-exclusive - brand name stuff does cost a lot
> more -- beauty products
> and manicures/pedicures are not. the latter are seen
> as something that the
> woman who isn't rich can do to make herself feel a
> lot prettier. you'll
> notice that women's magazines targetting the working
> class (like Cosmo) or
> the young (Jane, the former Mademoiselle) have very
> little fashion advice,
> but lots of stuff on makeup, nail care etc. Editors
> of these magazines say,
> our readers aren't really interested in high fashion
> because they can't
> afford it, but they can and will buy a new lipstick.
> In fact, lipstick is
> sometimes seen as an economic indicator: in bad
> times, sales of lipstick go
> up, because if you can't afford a new outfit, a
> lipstick is something quite
> cheap that can be equally satisfying. Poor
> neighborhoods have more nail
> salons than rich ones - partly because it's an
> inexpensive business to run
> and to start, but also because poor women who can't
> go to restaurants, buy
> fancy clothes, etc, can still get their nails done.
> Agree with those posters
> who have suggested that for (white) men, fussing
> with nails and products is
> associated with yuppie prosperity, but I think for
> women it's another story
> altogether.
>
> Liza
>
> > From: Kelley <the-squeeze at pulpculture.org>
> > Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> > Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 08:57:52 -0400
> > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org, lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Queen for a Day: My Gay
> Makeover
> >
> >
> >> At 10:00 AM 7/15/03 -0700, Miles Jackson wrote:
> >> Again, it's not just because people naturally
> desire
> >> pedicures: it's because there is a beauty
> industry that generates
> >> and enforces this standard of how toes should
> look and obviously
> >> profits from the reinforcement of this standard.
> >
> > it doesn't prove that we _should_ not care about
> appearance or that "not
> > caring" would be a consequence of eliminating
> class society. i don't think
> > you're saying this, but too often people seem to
> think that, by resisting
> > hegemonic norms of beauty, etc., then they are
> somehow participating in the
> > elimination of class society or, at least, that
> there's a great deal at
> > stake if we don't try.
> >
> > i agree that these are socially, historically
> constituted standards. what
> > i'm not comfortable with is the implication that
> over those 1000s of years
> > of which you speak there were no attempts to adorn
> oneself and that those
> > attempts were simply about class society. i'm
> pretty sure you don't mean
> > this, though, do you?
> >
> > all we really know is that hegemonic norms of
> beauty and attractiveness
> > have accompanied class society and that those
> norms have often been defined
> > by an elite.
> > we don't really know if the desire to adorn
> oneself or to make one's
> > surrounding and self as nice looking as possible
> is caused by class society.
> >
> > and, even if it is, do we want to give it up? is
> it necessary to give it
> > up, as long as those norms don't have any
> meaning--in the way some of us
> > tried to argue it ought to be with sexual
> difference? "Yes, that's nice,
> > you have a bigger penis than I do and you liked to
> be called a man. Next."
> >
> > we can probably say that inequalities of income,
> welath, well-being,
> > status, etc. have been reproduced, aided and
> abetted by hegemonic norms of
> > beauty. those who fail to meet them have been
> sanctioned, particularly if
> > those norms appear to be something one can
> actually _change_, an idea that
> > becomes very powerful in the context of a society
> that assumes that status
> > position is one's personal responsibility.
> >
> > (My students from well-to-do NE backgrounds could
> tell me the difference
> > between white trash and hick, identifying them by
> clothes, music, cars,
> > food. they also marked differences between the
> morally superior hick who
> > works hard and has proper moral values as opposed
> to the white trash who is
> > a failure because s/he wants to remain poor. As
> others have pointed out,
> > working class whiteness has been racialized, at
> first in attempts to show
> > that they had different body types (bow legs, sway
> back, etc) and facial
> > features (buck teeth, crooked teeth), as well as
> by defining what they
> > wear, their comportment, hairstyles, complexions,
> posture, and diction as
> > disposable attributes. Those who didn't shed them
> or try to shed them as
> > best as possible are seen as responsible for their
> poverty.
> >
> > we can also observe, perhaps arguably, that
> hegemonic beauty norms become
> > detached from more stable, more monolithic
> religio-political systems with
> > the rise of mass communication. today, hegemonic
> standards of beauty
> > operate in a cultural-political terrain that is
> more fluid and dynamic,
> > less under direct control of elites. this opens up
> fissures where people
> > can carve out spaces for defining alternative
> standards by which to measure
> > oneself--to resist dominant hegemonic beauty
> norms. that doesn't make the
> > resistant norms any less normative or any less
> about the socio-historical
> > constitution of style, taste, beauty.
> >
> > as Hilary (IIRC) points out, these "rebellious"
> rejections of hegemonic
> > standards of beauty become another aesthetic where
> "the natural look"
> > becomes beautiful and the "make up look" becomes
> ugly and sometimes it
> > signifies a certain cultural-political
> orientation.
> >
> >
> > Kelley
> >
> > ___________________________________
> >
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
> ___________________________________
>
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