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Hannah Frith, Kate Gleeson, Yvette Morey, Mary Haslum
University of the West of England, Bristol, UK.
Bodily Impositions: Three Connected Papers.
Women's attempts to manipulate their bodies, often by harmful and expensive means, in pursuit of a socially and culturally defined 'ideal' has been taken as evidence of women's oppression and subjugation. But, it is not as if women can choose not to appear; and looks can never be 'natural' but have to be created, moulded and manufactured in relation to a set of cultural discourses which are written on to the body and position women in particular ways. This symposium explores the ways in which young women use and manipulate their appearance within a complex web of discourses that position them in particular ways. They engage in the construction of identities before audiences that variously appraise, discipline, and sanction clothing and appearance practices. As subjects, they exercise self-appraisal and self discipline, internalising the gaze of the audience in the managing of visual subjectivity. Although under-researched, investigating clothing practices is a useful way of exploring how women seek to position themselves in relation to disciplinary discourses around appearance, identity, and accountability. These papers demonstrate that women use clothing to negotiate constantly shifting positions within changing locations and competing discursive frameworks. These embodied practices are produced by, and reproduce, the cultural imperative to be always-visible and accountable for appearance.
Kate Gleeson and Hannah Frith
' “Are you calling me a tart?” Women Policing Each Others Appearance in Everyday Contexts.'
Foucault (1977) suggests that people internalise socially agreed standards of behaviour, engaging in routine self-surveillance practices in order to maintain the social order. Such routine self-discipline impacts upon appearance and behaviour in both private and public spaces. Drawing on interview data with young women aged 11-18 we explore how social standards of respectability and aesthetic value are internalized. Young women engage in frequent interaction in order to police each other's appearance, paying particular attention to bodily display and clothing practices which suggest overt sexuality and sexual intention. This policing is both an activity of social control and a mechanism for negotiating about what is acceptable in terms of bodily display, in realtion to which young women have to address a number of competing and at times contradictory tasks. They need to learn and display the rules of respectability (Skeggs, 1977), to position themselves as desirable in a social hierarchy amongst their peers, and to display their sexual intentions. They also need to develop their identity projects and to achieve validation for their identity displays. This paper will address the exercise of social power in such routine feedback situations as well as the way in which cultural capital is accrued in learning how to 'do femininity' in a culturally acceptable and apparently non-agentic fashion.
Yvette Morey, Hannah Frith and Mary Haslum.
'Negotiating Embodied Spaces: Young Women, Visibility and Clothed Display.'
This paper stems from a wider research question concerned with exploring how clothes operate as a discursive tool for the construction of young identities. Skeggs (1999) points to the ways in which certain identities and communities are legitimised by their access to or exclusion from certain spaces (such as 'homosexualised' leisure spaces in cities). Following from this and other theories exploring the links between identity, embodiment and space, this research further explores how clothing choices are affected by and effect young people's occupation of, and transitions between spaces. Discourses surrounding clothing and space were identified using a Clothing Diary study in which participants kept a diary of their clothing decisions - including the different kinds of clothing chosen for different spaces/locations and the audiences they encountered. This paper discusses several extracts from the diaries in order to explore how young women's embodied clothed displays function to gain access to, and negotiate passing in different spaces. These clothed displays are both performative (in that they draw on certain discourses governing the wearing of clothing on specific bodies, in certain spaces, at certain times) and uncertain. Clothed displays that allow access to spaces by rendering young women's bodies both visible and invisible at different times are contingent upon the different audiences encountered. Ultimately then, this paper seeks to bring together the intersections between notions of visibility, audience, and performativity, in the positioning of young subjectivities across different spaces.
Hannah Frith and Kate Gleeson
'Spectacular Bodies?'
The study of young peoples' visual display has been dominated by the study of spectacular youth subcultures. Such research has tended to focus on groups of young men who are made visibly distinct by their clothing style (Muggleton, 2000; Hebdige, 1988). Little attention has been paid to young women's everyday use of clothing in visual presentation. In this paper we draw on interviews with young women (aged 11-18) about their appearance, in order to explore both the perceived 'risk' in being noticed, and the desire to stand out and be noticeable. The process of dressing and appearing in public takes place in relation to discourses that position young women as powerless. For young women who are, in many ways, relatively invisible, choosing to be visible and challenging others to take notice of them can be a more powerful position. These young women talk about trying to be different, standing out from the crowd, showing off, and drawing attention to themselves. However, these are not the spectacular displays typically associated with youth subcultures which have been seen as subversive and resistant. Rather, they are based on what seem to be minimal differences that are clearly positioned within the bounds of normative femininity and the male gaze. Even these almost imperceptible differences are experienced by these young women as difficult, tightly policed and 'risky'. This research explores the experience of the everyday production of individuality in the context of the policing of young bodies.
Bio: Hannah Frith is a social psychologist and qualitative researcher in the Centre for Appearance Research at the University of the West of England, Bristol (UK). Her research interests include the construction and negotiation of visible subjectivities, and fashion and dress as a tool for 'doing' identity. Kate Gleeson is a critical social psychologist and qualitative researcher in the Centre for Appearance Research at the University of the West of England, Bristol (UK). Her research interests are representations and discourses of identity, appearance and consumption. Mary Haslum is a Reader in Psychology at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Her research interests are pedagogical research and dyslexia. Yvette Morey is undertaking PhD research at the University of the West of England, Bristol. She is interested in the links between youth identities and clothing, and the ways in which we are subjectively positioned as always-visible subjects through aspects of appearance.
<Hannah.Frith@uwe.ac.uk>