Being Gorgeous

Feminism, Sexuality and the Pleasures of the Visual

Jacki Willson

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780857739995
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Being Gorgeous explores the ways in which extravagance, flamboyance and dressing up can open up possibilities for women to play around anarchically with familiar stereotypical tropes of femininity. This is protest through play - a pleasurable misbehaviour that reflects a feminism for the twenty first century. Willson discusses how, whether through pastiche, parody, or pure pleasure, artists, artistes and indeed the spectators themselves can operate in excess of the restrictive images which saturate our visual culture. By referring to a wide spectrum of examples, including Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, Matthew Barney, Dr Sketchy's, Audacity Chutzpah, Burly Q and Carnesky's Ghost Train, Being Gorgeous demonstrates how contemporary female performers embody, critique and thoroughly relish their own representation by inappropriately re-appropriating femininity.

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JACKI WILLSON is a Cultural Studies lecturer in Fashion, Textiles and Jewellery at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She is the author of The Happy Stripper: Pleasures and Politics of the New Burlesque (I.B.Tauris, 2008).

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‘Makes an important, timely and provocative intervention into debates about performance and objectification. […] Jacki Willson has a way of making hugely original statements that make sense of what have felt like intractably complex and polarised debates.’

DEBRA FERREDAY
author of Online Beginnings

First published in 2015 by
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
London • New York
www.ibtauris.com

Copyright © 2015 Jacki Willson

The right of Jacki Willson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

International Library of Cultural Studies: 27

ISBN: 978 1 78076 284 5 (PB)
978 1 78076 283 8 (HB)
eISBN: 978 0 85773 999 5

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typesetting and eBook by Tetragon, London

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Contents

• List of Illustrations
• Introduction: Being Gorgeous and Feminism
• Part I: Sexuality, Gender and the Art and Erotics of Visual Extravagance
• Chapter 1 · Drop Dead Gorgeous
• Chapter 2 · Skin Deep
• Part II: The Pleasure of the Visual
  (Being Gorgeous and the ‘Low’)
• Chapter 3 · Crinoline and Cupcakes: Dangerous Identities
• Chapter 4 · Powder Puffs and Beauty Spots: Spectacular Objecthood
• Part III: Bitter/Sweet Poetry
  (Being Gorgeous and the ‘High’)
• Chapter 5 · The Paradoxical Body
• Chapter 6 · The Sexual Body
• Part IV: A Rebellion of the Senses
• Chapter 7 · Pleasure, Violence and the Sensual Spectacle
• Chapter 8 · Creative Spectatorship and the Political Imagination
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography

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‌List of Illustrations

Audacity Chutzpah © Photograph by kind permission of Terry Mendoza, www.retrophotostudio.co.uk.

Jürgen Teller, Céline campaign, Vogue, Fall 2013 © Jürgen Teller and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Jürgen Teller, Céline campaign, Vogue, Fall 2013 © Jürgen Teller and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Sophia St. Villier, Naked Girls Reading © Tigz Rice Studios
www.tigzrice.com.

Sophia St. Villier, Naked Girls Reading © Steve Hart.

Dawn Woolley, The Substitute (Holiday) (2007–8), 1m × 1m, C-type print © the artist.

Dawn Woolley, Cut to the Measure of Desire (Vogelen performance), Tableau Vivant (20 minute duration) at City Road Conservative Club, Cardiff, 2010 © Melissa Jenkins.

Dawn Woolley, Cut to the Measure of Desire (full stage). Tableau Vivant installation at City Road Conservative Club, Cardiff, 2010 © the artist.

Gwendoline Lamour, The Swing, Belowzero, London, 2008 © the artist.

Audacity Chutzpah © Photograph by kind permission of Terry Mendoza, www.retrophotostudio.co.uk.

Dusty Limits, Dr. Sketchy’s London © James Millar.

Dusty Limits, Dr. Sketchy’s London © James Millar.

Bettsie Bon Bon, Dr. Sketchy’s London © James Millar.

Bettsie Bon Bon, Dr. Sketchy’s London © James Millar.

Tricity Vogue, Dusty Limits, Bettsie Bon Bon and Clare-Marie Willmer, Dr. Sketchy’s London © James Millar.

Sigalit Landau, Barbed Hula, 2000, Video, 1:52 © the artist.

Sigalit Landau, Barbed Hula, 2000, Video, 1:52 © the artist.

Sigalit Landau, Barbed Hula, 2000, Video, 1:52 © the artist.

Sigalit Landau, Barbed Hula, 2000, Video, 1:52 © the artist.

Penny Dreadful © Dave Glossop.

Mamzelle Dotty © Monika Marion.

Mamzelle Dotty © Riksh Upamaya.

Mister Joe Black © Scott Chalmers.

Leggy Pee and Charles M. Montgomery © Ian Sloan.

Mamzelle Dotty © Silvia Cruz.

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‌Introduction

Being Gorgeous and Feminism

Audacity Chutzpah
© Photograph by kind permission of Terry Mendoza, www.retrophotostudio.co.uk

In 2006 I first saw the film Marie Antoinette. It was full of enticing imagery: impossibly tall wigs as well as gorgeous colourful food which women gorged on with gusto. It was sensual and highly visual, like a performing painting or sculpture. There was a sense of fun, exuberance and anarchic play. It was a visual treat, and signposted something at play in culture at large. This film was set against a popular culture where bodies were being defined and controlled in a particular way; the women in Marie Antoinette, however, were acting indifferently and having a ball. This cinematic painting appeared at a similar time to other visual feasts such as new burlesque and, in the world of music, Lady Gaga. This was an indulgent display of revealing flesh, decadent dress and confident gestures.

There was something going on here that I needed to explore in more depth; something that I touched upon in my last book, The Happy Stripper: Pleasures and Politics of the New Burlesque, but did not fully elucidate. The main thrust of my argument in The Happy Stripper was that performers used flamboyant sexual display as an ironic means of challenging stereotypes, stereotypes that they hammed up and performed with a smile, a wink and a shimmy. This was a politicized display that was both pleasurable and ‘knowing’. The performances were signposting a different relationship to the audience, where ‘being-looked-at-ness’ was neither passive nor vacant, and ‘looking’ was neither hostile nor sexist. In fact, what was being created was a different kind of politics, which challenged assumptions about power hierarchies in terms of spectatorship and objectification. The power dynamic of the ‘male gaze’ identified in Laura Mulvey’s seminal essay, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’ (1975)1 is one where the spectator identifies with an active male posturing himself as ‘the bearer of the look’.2 The manner in which the camera frames the ‘woman as image’3 into passive ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’4 creates a ‘world ordered by sexual imbalance’5 that drives the narrative forward.

However, I would like to revise scholarly assu...

Table of contents

• List of Illustrations
• Introduction • Being Gorgeous and Feminism
• Part I • Sexuality, Gender and the Art and Erotics of Visual Extravagance
• 1 • Drop Dead Gorgeous
• 2 • Skin Deep
• Part II • The Pleasure of the Visual (Being Gorgeous and the ‘Low’)
• 3 • Crinoline and Cupcakes Dangerous Identities
• 4 • Powder Puffs and Beauty Spots Spectacular Objecthood
• Part III • Bitter/Sweet Poetry (Being Gorgeous and the ‘High’)
• 5 • The Paradoxical Body
• 6 • The Sexual Body
• Part IV • A Rebellion of the Senses
• 7 • Pleasure, Violence and the Sensual Spectacle
• 8 • Creative Spectatorship and the Political Imagination
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography