Fashioning the female body

Over the past few weeks, a regular feature of the Lawrentian has become a fashion "conversation" that ultimately involves two women critiquing the corporeal styles and practices that they see on the Lawrence campus (normally as these styles and practices manifest on female bodies). This week's installment involves dressing for the body you have, not the body that you want and includes suggestions like this one:

Let's talk about pants as another important basic, both in the jean and non-jean form. I just can't handle seeing any more ill-fitting pants. It's just not okay to buy pants that are too small unless you are going to wait to wear them until you've lost some weight -- nice jeans can be a good incentive to do just that. No matter how skinny you are (or think you are), pants that are too small will make any skin you have on your hips bulge over your waistline. Do not look at the size of the pants -- just look in the mirror when you try things on. Women with more meat around the lower abdomen should opt for higher rises and wide waistbands. This is especially great for dress pants, because then the love handles are ***in*** the jeans instead of hanging over them. Shaping undergarments are also a great secret weapon, especially if you're wearing something dressy and fitted. Spanx brand is incredible for the purpose of smoothing otherwise un-smooth tummies.

The fact that, in 2008, spandex and "shaping undergarments" are described as secret weapons should seem anachronistic (corsets, anyone?!), but this article suggests two disentanglable issues: first, that the female body should be controlled and made legible according to fixed standards of beauty and (more nefariously) that when bodies don't adhere to these standards, other women will examine them and judge them according to their failure to conform.

Responding to an article like this one is complicated because as a feminist I think that clothing, make-up, and the other micropractices by which we all perform our gender/sex and inscribe our bodies with a complex bricolage are important. From high theory (like Judith Butler) to more popular understandings of fashion and clothing espoused in Bust and Bitch magazines, the relationship between fashion and the elaboration of the body is treated as being of paramount importance. Yet when these signs and sites of legibility are made into the object of the misogynistic gaze, some of that power of performance seems to be defused in ways that are worth discussing...