Altogether Independent: An Analysis of the Feminist Perspectives of Gilman, Cooper, Woolf, and de Beauvoir

From the late 18^th century to the mid 20^th century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna Julia Cooper, Virginia Woolf, and Simone de Beauvoir were all having a conversation with another without even knowing it. They were all chiming in on the existence of a phenomenon and concept that had they been in the same room together, they would have realized was the same thing: women’s liberation from a patriarchal society. Despite hailing from various time periods, places, classes, and races, their theories can all be observed as revolving around a single axis issue. For these women, it was evident that women were not free in the same way that men were free to choose what kind of life they wanted. It was clear for these women that they had very little choice and also very little resources to articulate their situations, much less try to find solutions to their problem. However, Gilman, Cooper, Woolf, and de Beauvoir all shed light on what they felt was the dilemma and how they thought it could best be solved. They knew that women must become independent of man, in many senses of the word, and they must also come together if they hope to effect any change in society. Coming together may seem difficult since women do not all share the same backgrounds or identities. That being said, no matter the race, class, or geographic location, due to “anatomy and physiology” (Lemert 2010:346), women all over the world have a shared experience that unites them. It is clear then that with independence comes consciousness, with consciousness comes unity, and with unity comes change.

The independence of women, according to de Beauvoir, is one that is unlike any other previous movement in which a group of humans have fight against a system of oppression. De Beauvoir argues that whereas racial groups or class groups have statuses that change due to singular historical events, the status of women has always existed in societies everywhere and cannot be blamed on a war or document. In her view, women are the absolute “other” because in no capacity are they ever the “one.” For instance, a foreign person in one country is considered a native in their country, so although they may have the experience of being seen as the “other” in one place, they still have the opportunity to be the “one” in their home community.  Using the language of “one” and “other,” women are always viewed and treated as the “other.” De Beauvoir states, “[Woman] is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other” (Lemert 345-346). Women do not have such a space where they can exist without men in the way that men can navigate their daily life focusing on only themselves. An example of men and men’s needs always being a constant, inevitable presence in women’s lives can be seen in Woolf’s fictional, yet very accurate, story of a woman walking and thinking. As the woman, who is supposed to be representative of Woolf herself, walks around pondering the relationship between women and fiction, she suddenly finds her path obstructed by a Beadle. A Beadle is an officer of the church, and in Woolf’s story he is a metaphor for the limitations and guidelines placed onto women by men. Woolf describes the scene: “Instinct rather than reason came to my help. He was a Beadle; I was a woman. Thus was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me” (Lemert 262). Both Woolf and de Beauvoir identify that a woman is supposed to understand her place in society as existing in relation to men. Gilman understands this relationship in economic terms as well by acknowledging that women are not economically independent from their husbands. Gilman claims that a marriage is supposed to be a partnership where both individuals work just as hard and earn according to the effort they put in, but it is clear that this is not the case. Not only are married women not allowed to work and make money, the work they do at home cleaning, cooking, and taking care of the children is seen as their duty. Supporting the family becomes a married women’s job, but yet, she is not paid for it, and she is also seen as inferior to her husband despite putting in just as much time and effort, if not more, into what she does. Clearly, there are discrepancies across the board between what men and women are allowed to do, but in order to tackle these differences, women must be able to be heard and understood independent of their relationship to men. Instead of talking about women as wives and mothers, we need to be able to comprehend them as women who are able to exist not just as a sexual beings or maternal figures, but rather as a human being with individual hopes, fears, and dreams that have nothing to do with pleasing the opposite sex.

Despite writing from different eras and locations, all four theorists describe the experience of women as if it is a singular, unified experience. Yes, there are nuanced differences amongst all women as they identify with different races, classes, religions, and nations, but one thing is the same that brings all women together. That is, women from all different walks of life at the end of the day share the same anatomical physiological structures that somehow impact the way they are treated at both a micro and macro level. For women of all cultures there is an expectation of their role as mothers and wives, no matter how the rituals of getting to that role differ for every woman. For Cooper, women of color are in a unique position in society. She states, “With all the wrongs and neglects of her past, with all the weakness, the debasement, the moral thralldom of her present, the black woman of to-day stands mute and wondering at the Herculean task devolving upon her” (Lemert 179). In much the same way that Gilman stares at the yellow paper symbolic of her imprisonment, so do women of color stare before the laws and history put before them that continue to keep them silent. At one point Cooper recounts an all too familiar experience in which a white man refers to her as a “girl” simple because of her sex and race. For Gilman, she is also treated like a child because she is literally placed in a nursery as well as ordered around by her husband as if he were the parent and she were the child. She comments on how he gives her medicine and doesn’t allow her to write, as if what she has is a disease when in reality that disease is only real insofar as it affects not only her body but her mind as well; and this disease is called patriarchy (Lemert 173-174). Patriarchy, a society in which men are at the dominant position and women in the subordinate, affects all women negatively. In addition, not only do women have a shared experience, they also have a shared enemy. Men are enemies in that they inhibit the freedoms and capabilities of women. This is not to say that men at their core are evil or that the divide between men and women is one that must be solved through war. Quite the contrary, all four women seek to harness the power that women have of being able to care and have love for others in order to achieve a status in which both men and women are equal.

In all of their contemporary societies, these theorists felt that women were not given a voice or space that was independent of men. The home space consisted of women serving men and boys as wives and mothers while men largely dominated both the work and intellectual spaces. Even though it was clear that there existed inequalities and discrepancies between men and women, for all of the theorists, they felt significant advancements were not being made to change this. Surely not all women wanted to be in such a subordinate and belittling position in society, but then why were they not doing more to disrupt the social stratification and patriarchal structures? De Beauvoir posits, “The reason for this is that women lack concrete means for organizing themselves into a unit which can stand face to face with the correlative unit…They live dispersed among the males through residence, housework, economic condition, and social standing to certain men – fathers or husbands – more firmly than they are to other women” (Lemert 347).  Cooper also makes note of this in her writings as she observes how white women treat women of color: without respect and as if they have nothing in common. However, at the end of the day, women must be able to put all those other differences aside if they hope to achieve liberation for women at large. Once all women acknowledge that they have a shared experience, they must use that to shed light on the issue and change it. The economic independence that Gilman dreams of, the social equality that Cooper demands, the academic recognition that Woolf aspires to, and the unified women’s movement towards progress and freedom that de Beauvoir imagines can only be possible if all women speak out against the injustice they have been dealt and altogether work to redress that. Cooper describes a nation as being “the aggregate of its homes” (Lemert 179), so a woman equal in the home also means equality for women at a national, even international level. For this kind of women’s liberation that all four theorists described in some capacity or another, it must be a three-step process. All four theorists so movingly identify the lack of autonomy and mutual respect that women receive from men in society and this acknowledgement of a need for independence is the first step. However, this kind of independence is only personal and so there must next be a shared consciousness that women must all recognize and accept that allows them to realize their affinity for one another. Lastly, once the need for independence and a shared experience is celebrated, women must then come together to actually gain independence for women and continue to honor and recognize all that women have suffered as well as achieved.

 It is incredible that over the span of 100 years, all four theorists were describing a very similar situation that is the subordination of women and the perpetuation of a patriarchal society. On the one hand de Beauvoir notes, “[Women] have no past, no history, no religion of their own; and they have no such solidarity of work and interest as that of the proletariat” (Lemert 347). On the other hand, women do have a past, a history, religious values, and most importantly, solidarity even if it is not in regards to race, class, etc. Women have existed just as long as men have and have experienced a long history of oppression by being made to feel as if the only reason women exist is to make men happy never taking in account what makes women happy, or at least not being able to do it because of social norms and in some extreme cases, laws. Despite new forms of feminism and social progress, the issues that these four theorists touch on still exist today. So then, one feels impelled to ask the question, “Why haven’t things changed yet?” And the response to that after having read Gilman, de Beauvoir, Cooper, and Woolf is that things are changing, but it is not change that matters so much as continuity. If women come together once and achieve one goal, the struggle is far from over. To use Woolf’s story, we cannot let that little fish, that revolutionary thought, die. At every turn, both men and women must look out for the gaps and divides, the privileges and limitations, the injustices and the inequalities and be willing to speak out against them. Cooper was right, “To be alive at such an epoch is a privilege, to be a woman then is sublime” (Lemert 184). Altogether independent, women have the power to change history for good.

 

 Reference

Lemert, Charles, Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, fourth edition, Boulder, Westview Press, 2010.

The Financial Crisis of 2008: Getting Away with White-Collar Crime

No one individual or even a specific group of individuals can really be blamed for the financial crisis that occurred in the United States in 2008. However, corporation, investors, banks, and other financial institutions as a whole are to blame. Due to the criminogenic environment immediately prior to the credit crisis, people were committing crimes that closely resemble white-collar crimes. It is important to note that no real arrests have been made since the financial crisis due to the fact that what members of financial institutions did at this time is not considered to be illegal according to a legalistic conception of crime. However, according to the moralistc and social harm conceptions, what many investors, bankers, and brokers did can be considered a crime; the crime they committed was taking advantage of homeowners in order to increase their own profits. In other words, “Main Street was exploited in order to benefit Wall Street.” Only under regulatory law is there a way to investigate these financial institutions and address the crimes they have gotten away with.

The financial crisis was a result of a vicious cycle of irresponsible spending and lending by banks and investors that eventually exploded and negatively affected homeowners and bank employees in America.  It can be said that the financial crisis began after September 11 when the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to 1% in order to protect the United States economy. Although this was unappealing to potential investors who had previously bought treasury bills for a better return, to banks in and out of the United States, this was incredibly attractive. So much so that banks began to borrow money from the Federal Reserve at enormous rates.  With all this money, banks could use leverage when doing business with investors and clients in order to maximize their profits. The cycle that led to the crisis began when banks start to sell mortgages to investors so that homeowners actually pay investors when they pay their mortgages. This results in mortgage brokers selling homes to unreliable buyers in order to give banks mortgages so that those banks can have mortgages to sell to investors. On top of all this, federal regulation and investigations were low to non-existent making it easier for this cycle to continue without being examined. Eventually when those unreliable homeowners default on their mortgages, the result is a domino effect: house prices plummet as there is more supply than demand, investors stop making money from those mortgages and so stop buying from banks, and banks turn to bankruptcy because they cannot pay make the money they borrowed. The result is the financial crisis of 2007 where homeowners have lost homes and bank employees have lost jobs. According to Felson and Boba’s routine activity theory, the combination of lack of federal regulations to serve as guardians, homeowners as suitable targets, and investors, bankers, and brokers looking to make money as likely offenders created a criminogenic environment (2009).

Clearly, the effects of the financial crisis have been devastating, but interestingly, no culprits have been identified as criminals per se. According to the legalistic conception of crime, anyone who is caught doing something illegal should be considered a criminal. Technically it was not illegal for banks to borrow money from the Federal Reserve. Nor was it illegal for brokers to sell houses to unreliable homeowners. In truth, at each phase of the financial crisis cycle, nothing illegal was being done. According to the legalistic conception, those who helped caused the financial crisis are not considered criminals. Knowing this has made it very difficult for arrests to be made and charges to be pressed. However, this does not mean that no wrongdoing occurred.

According to the moralistic conception anyone who violates the fundamental core values that our society has agreed upon is considered to be a criminal. What investors, bankers, and brokers did was make irresponsible deals that benefitted them at the expense of others. The set of core beliefs that can define what should and shouldn’t be defined as criminal is known by Emile Durkheim as the collective conscience (1893). We expect banks to be transparent and honest, so when they have ulterior motives that they hide from clients, according to our collective conscience, that is considered to be wrong. By being dishonest and reckless, banks committed a moral crime that goes against our collective conscience. In addition, according to the moralistc conception, we label people as criminals depending on how they look. Considering that most of the people involved in scamming homeowners were white and in white-collar jobs, no one would immediately tag them as a “criminal” and be more likely to believe they did no wrong. If banks were to be tried in accordance to the moralistic conception, they would be charged with fraudulent criminal activity and the victim would be taxpayers and homeowners who suffered due to their negligence. This claim could also be supported by the social harm conception of crime.

According to the social harm conception, anyone who brings about considerable social damage is considered to be a criminal. When you take into account that the purpose of laws should be to protect its citizens, meet the needs of the whole and protect the good of society, it is clear that financial institutions were not acting in the best interest of society when they were making risky deals using citizens’ mortgages. Instead they were only acting to benefit their own interests of maximizing profit. The reckless borrowing and uninformed spending done by bankers and investors resulted in the worst financial crisis this country has experienced since the Great Depression. The damage seems to be very clear, but as to the perpetrators, it is difficult to identify who should be punished. Criminal law does not do much to punish individuals since intent is very difficult to prove, but instead regulatory law can punish corporations.

Under Regulatory Law, corporations are considered to be “legal” persons, which gives unnecessary and potentially dangerous rights to corporations that already have so much power. Regulatory laws grant government agencies oversight over businesses. However, it was due to a lack of presence of these regulatory agencies that this crisis was able to occur in the first place. According to the New York Times, “regulators failed in their crucial duty to compile the information that traditionally has helped build criminal cases. In effect, the dynamic that helped enable the crisis – weak regulation – also made it harder to pursue fraud in its aftermath.” If regulatory agencies were to be a lot more aggressive in investigating the fraud that many banks committed, then those companies could be held accountable for the detrimental effects they helped to cause. At the same time, it is unfair to singularly blame banks for taking part of a system that itself was inherently wrong and criminal. If anything, new regulatory laws should be put in place to prevent this from every happening again.

Individuals or companies who have been investigated or charged have had charges drop because there was no proof that they knowingly or willingly scammed investors and buyers. It is important to keep in mind that because investigations have not resulted in arrests and because no regulations have been put in place to prevent a crisis like this from occurring again, this debacle is likely to occur again. If banks and other corporations were to be held accountable for their actions, and be made to understand that taking advantage of clients is wrong, then we can prevent another crisis from occurring again. Until then, banks are getting away with white-collar crimes without even knowing it, making our economy a ticking time bomb.

References

1. Morgenson, Gretchen and Story, Louise. 2011. “In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Figures” The New York Times, April 18, 2013 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/business/14prosecute.html?_r=4&pagewanted=print&)

2. Felson, Marcus and Boba, Rachel. 2009. Crime and Everyday Life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.

3. Durkheim, Emile. 1893. The Division of Labour in Society.

4. “The Crisis of Credit Visualized.” The Crisis of Credit Visualized. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2013.

Today’s Rape Culture Codified in Steubenville Rape Case (*trigger warning: discussion of rape and sexual assault)

On the night of August 11, 2012, an intoxicated high school girl was picked up, undressed, and sexually assaulted by two young men who recorded and shared what happened, including an image of the girl being carried unconsciously, across various social media. The perpetrators were named Ma’lik Richmond and Trent Mays, two high school students who also happened to be well liked, popular high school football players. The Steubenville rape case and the public response to the case brought to light America’s modern day rape culture as news coverage and general attitudes sympathized with the rapists rather than the victim. The kind of rape that was committed by the perpetrators cannot really be pinned down to anger, power, or sadistic rape nor is it clear that the individuals were seeking sexual satisfaction. Instead, because Richmond and Mays were bragging about what they had done, it is clear that they were buying in to American society’s rape culture that promotes the idea that men should feel entitled to sex if a woman is promiscuous or drunk. The nature of rape has changed drastically in the last couple of years, and from this case one can see how men may not be inherently rapists, but rather it is our society’s rape culture that promotes and maintains men’s violence against women.

In the past, the evoked image of rape has been that of a stranger (usually male) jumping out of the bushes and assaulting an unsuspecting passerby (usually female). This kind of violent rape was encapsulated in the original FBI Uniform Crime Report’s definition of rape, which was “rape is the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” Today the definition has come to reflect the complexities of rape and is defined as “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” This new definition includes people of all genders and takes into account how one can still rape another person without necessarily inserting their body part into another’s. Under this definition, the victim of the Steubenville case constitutes as rape because the perpetrators had violated her with their fingers. So although according to the legalistic conception, Richmond and Mays are considered to have committed a wrong, there are many who argued that according to the moralistic conception, it was the victim’s fault for a variety of reasons.

The legalistic conception states that an act is illegal if it is labeled as a crime according to the laws that we as a society have agreed upon. In contrast, the moralistic conception states that an act is a crime only if it goes against society’s shared values. Some times these values are not reflected in our laws. In regards to the Steubenville rape case, the backlash that the victim received through the media proved that there were people who did not believe the two young men had committed a crime. In their eyes, the girl was at fault for having gotten so drunk and/or for wearing such provocative clothes. This kind of victim blaming is a key component of rape culture, and is the reason why many victims of rape stay silent about the matter. Victim blaming attempts to displace the blame from the perpetrators and instead look to the victim for the fault. Most often, even the offender will make excuses. According to the Matza technique of neutralization, individuals have the ability to neutralize against acknowledging a rape by creating and adhering to scripts. For example, one might say, “I raped her because she was dressed provocatively” or  “Drinking allows me to do what I want” or “She didn’t say no.” One explanation for why victim blaming occurs is that a fair number of people, usually men, feel uncomfortable with the increasing independence and success that women have been experiencing since the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) in the 1960’s and 1970’s. According to several feminist theories, since women have been liberated, men have been trying to find ways to dominate them. In today’s society, we see a similar trend to the WLM where it is now okay for a woman to be sexually liberal. Rape is an effective tool that can be used by men to reinforce gender stratification, and it can be done through three different kinds of rape.

According to Nicholas Groth there are three kinds of rape: anger rape, power rape, and sadistic rape (class notes). Anger rape is motivated by, as the title suggests, motivated by anger, and it can be motivated towards a particular person you are mad at or it can be towards women in general. Power rape is motivated by needs or desires to exert power and dominance over somebody else. Sadistic rape is motivated by sexual satisfaction; the perpetrator has a sexual association with power and rage, eroticizing infliction of pain onto someone else. Although most rape cases can be explained using those three motivational theories, there are also rape cases where the perpetrator may not have intended to harm the victim. Although there is no way to ever really know, one could postulate that the perpetrators of the Steubenville rape case did not necessarily commit rape in order to express anger, exert dominance or even satisfy their sexual needs, but rather, they did so because as males they are so embedded in the rape culture of America where it is seen as okay for a man to take advantage of a woman if she is intoxicated or dressed in a certain way. This is a unique kind of rape where the rapists may not even know that what they are doing constitutes as such. Increasingly among youths, especially on college campuses, acquaintance rape is the most prevalent kind of rape.

Acquaintance rape is an assault involving sexual relations without consent of either individual and is committed by a person that the victim just met. The current party culture in America has it set up so that young adults can find themselves intoxicated in an unknown space where hooking up and having one night stands with strangers is considered to be “cool.” Although this can be a very exhilarating experience, it can turn sour if one individual does not know where he or she is and is too intoxicated to consent while the other individual is expecting to have sexual relations without intending to ask for consent. This scenario is almost exactly what happened that night in Steubenville, Ohio. The victim was intoxicated to the point where she was blacked out while the two young men seized the opportunity to have what they thought of as “fun.” Felson and Boba’s Routine Activity Theory can best explain why acquaintance rape at these kinds of environments occurs. According to the routine activity theory, if there is an absent guardian, a suitable target, and a likely offender, then crime will occur. At many high school parties such as the one in Steubenville, there is usually a lack of a guardian as well as many intoxicated individuals that can be easily manipulated. The two young men in this situation were likely offenders because as popular males in their school’s social hierarchy, they already felt a sense of entitlement. It is the American rape culture that gave these young men a sense of entitlement, and the public response to the case only validated that.

Sympathizing with the perpetrators because they were two promising athletes, was not only an insulting response for the victim, but it also contributed to the continuation of rape culture in our society. As it exists today, the concept of rape culture describes the process by which society looks to blame victims for the sexual violence that they suffered. Although this process is largely ideological, the societal implications are all too real. As we have seen in cases like the Duke Lacrosse case of 2006 where a girl claimed to have been gang raped but the gentlemen were not incarcerated due to insufficient evidence or recently with the case of Audrie Potts where she committed suicide after not being able to handle the backlash she received from reporting a rape incident, it is the victim that is dealt the harshest blow when charges are being pressed. In a society where sex is everywhere – in our movies, in our music, in advertising images – adolescents, specifically young females, are expected to juggle the impossible task of being virginal as well as promiscuous. In contrast, men are expected to be sexual creatures; due to our patriarchal society, it is understandable when a man acts on those urges. This is clear from Malamuth’s study conducted on young males where over 30% admitted they would commit rape if they could get away with it (class notes). Men are not born to rape, but rather the rape culture in our society as manifested through the media, teaches men how to rape and shows them that they can get away with it. It takes a village, or in this case a town, to rape a woman because by maintaining that the victim is at fault, we are helping the perpetrator get away with rape. Nothing can be done to take back the act, but it would mean everything if society were to help bring justice.

The Violence of Shaving

I shaved my legs and armpits for the first time when I was twelve years old. It happened when I was away from home for the first time at Space Camp. One night, my three other roommates and I gathered around, as pre-teenagers are want to do, and we began to comment on each other’s bodies when one of the girls looked at my legs and gasped at how hairy they were. To be honest, I had never stopped to notice the hair on my legs, so I was taken aback when she said they looked ugly. Later that day, she lent me her razor, and I remember standing in the shower clumsily wielding a sharp object against my skin as blood dripped down my leg. It burned at first and there were cuts all along my legs and armpits, but once I finished I felt what I thought it meant to be beautiful. Little did I know, but that day I had initiated the female grooming ritual that I would continue to partake in until I came to Whitman and realized that the act of shaving is a violent act.

Most women in today’s society shave, and most started shaving as soon as they hit puberty. For me, I never felt as if I had an option when it came to shaving. When I returned home from Space Camp and told my mother that I had shaved, she said I started earlier than usual, but that every other woman in my family shaved too. My mother then taught me the proper technique to ensure that I would not hurt myself again, and soon I became a professional. It wasn’t until I arrived at Whitman and saw a female friend my age that did not shave, that I reflected on the practice of shaving. At first I could not believe the young woman did not shave, and I felt repulsed in much the same way that my body hair disgusted the girl at Space Camp. But I then looked back at my legs, and this time instead of wondering why I had hair, I started to wonder why I kept removing the hair. I started to question why it was that women spend so much time, money, and effort removing as much hair from their bodies as they possibly can, when removal of the hair is unnatural and serves no purpose other than aesthetics. This prompted more investigation into the Western cultural practice of hair removal until I eventually reached the conclusion that the everyday act of shaving, for women in particular, is an act of violence.

For women in today’s Western societies where the act of hair removal is most conventional, shaving has become a ritual practiced everyday or at least weekly. The act is physically violent by causing pain at times as well as ideologically violent by perpetuating and maintaining the oppression of women through the stigmatization of women who choose not to conform. Women are in turn kept blinded by their bad faith in a taken-for-granted world as Nancy Scheper-Hughes suggests in her book Death Without Weeping. Lastly, because of the way that stigma works according to Erving Goffman, by being denied the pleasure of going au naturel, women are forced to alter their bodies in order to appeal to the male-comprised dominant culture. In this way the subordination of women is maintained. In first unpacking this phenomenon, it is important to recognize how shaving is traditionally violent in the sense that it causes bodily harm.

Hair removal is physically violent whether it causes pain through shaving or waxing or is chemically harmful due to chemical depilatories that dissolve hair. Not only is shaving the most violent method of hair removal because it often leaves behind razor bumps or painful cuts that can turn into scars if not careful, but it is also the most inexpensive and commonly used method of choice for women.  According to a study conducted by Glamour Razor Gator, 58% of women in America admit to choosing shaving as their hair removal method of choice. Most women are expected to have hairless legs and armpits, but increasingly bikini lines and pubic hair have become targets as well. The most dangerous place for a woman to shave on her body is the vulva. There has been a recent trend due to the mass distribution and availability of pornography, to shave the entire pubic area. Shaving the bikini line first became popular with the de-stigmatization of women in bikinis. While requiring a blade to go near the genital area, it was still not as dangerous as shaving the pubic hair is now. At the surface, it is chemically harmful to put shaving cream by the genital area that is prone to infections. In addition, a razor blade in such a sensitive area leaves behind microscopic cuts that can further the risk of exposure to STD’s and STI’s. On an individual basis, shaving of the pubic area is painful and dangerous. On a societal level, the removal of hair from the vulva can promote men’s violence against women, especially young girls.

The removal of pubic hair gives a grown woman a prepubescent look, and so when the vast majority of female pornography actors adopt that trend in videos where women are objectified and even abused, the normalization of sexual violence occurs. Not only that, but by defining a hairless vulva as being sexy, it increases the likelihood of child abuse as viewers, most often men, will associate sexual satisfaction with the body of a girl. Clearly, hair removal as practiced by women today can lead to individual pain and discomfort as well as encourage societal violence against women at large. Yet, although this may be true, most women are unaware and will stand by shaving as a choice they make, when in reality the decision is made for them by societal norms before they even hit puberty.

Shaving continues to be practiced by millions of American women because they have come to accept it as a natural part of everyday life. Whenever a woman says she shaves because it is indecent to not do so, that is a sign of bad faith. According to Nancy Scheper-Hughes in her ethnographic book, bad faith refers to “the ways that people pretend to themselves and to others that they are not really involved in or responsible for what they are doing or for the consequences of their actions” (1997:209). In others words, bad faith is the tendency to accept passively what others have imposed as a reality. Whenever I have asked other women why they shave, they unknowingly made many excuses to justify the practice. Women would claim that they shave because it is more hygienic, though there are no recent studies that prove this. If anything, shaving can be unhygienic if done with a rusty razor or in a sensitive area that should not have any sharp objects near it, let alone chemical shaving creams placed there. Another justification for shaving is that having a hairless body looks attractive. When providing this response, women will automatically follow up with, “It looks nice to me. I shave for me, not for anyone else.” Unless a woman grew up isolated from society and decided on her own that a hairless body looked more aesthetically pleasing, chances are women shave because society tells them it looks “nice.” In all advertisements of beautiful American women, the body is pristinely hairless. Any woman that claims she chooses to shave out of her own free will refuses to acknowledge or simply does not understand the fact that due to a stigma placed onto women who do not shave, women do not actually have a choice in the matter.

As Scheper-Hughes alludes to in her book, stigmas are used to keep individuals or groups of people silent and in a state of oppression (1992). In “The Stigmatized Self,” Erving Goffman defines stigma as a label that is negatively powerful and varies from situation to situation. Goffman distinguishes between three different kinds of stigma: abominations of the body, blemishes of individual character, and tribal stigmas (1997). Abominations of the body are stigmas that pertain to having a physical deformity. For example, someone with an extra finger will find that many people do not want to shake their hand because most people are shocked and even repulsed when they see someone with a physical abnormality. Blemishes of individual character are stigmas dealt by those who possess undesirable personality traits. For instance, an ex-convict is considered to have a blemish of individual character due to his criminal past, and so society members place a stigma on that individual and ostracize him or her. Lastly, tribal stigmas pertain to race, religion, and creed. Concerning race, one may be stigmatized for being multiracial because not fitting into one category goes against our society’s instincts to neatly categorize everything.

As it concerns body hair, there is a blemish of individual character stigma associated with women who do not practice hair removal as well as a stigma associated with men who do remove hair from certain parts of their bodies. Women who do not remove the hair from the parts of the body that society expects to be hairless are considered to be ugly or weird. The removal of body hair on women has been normalized in accordance to the desires of men. Women began to shave as their hemlines began to creep up. At first, those women wearing less clothing were seen as radicals and inappropriate for defying the norm that women should be modest and covered. These women were liberating themselves and going against the status quo. By that point men had already been shaving their faces, but since women did not have much hair to shave, product companies decided to target the areas of women’s bodies that did have hair and that were being exposed. It was at this time that the idea of “unsightly” armpit hair became a trend and the rebel women whose attire offered that risk, flocked to get a hold of products that would remove that hair. Keeping in mind that men have owned these companies, it is men that have been dictating the standards of beauty for women.  The women who were once going against the grain by challenging social norms somehow ended up capitulating to a new social standard of beauty set by men, and now women in the United States have become bound to this ritual that they did not choose for themselves and that only serves to keep women inferior to men.

The violence of shaving is heavily gendered and affects women differently than it does men. It is important to note that according to the Glamour Razor Gator study, only 11% of women shave every day as compared to 75% of men. However, the implications of shaving vary from gender to gender because gender is a social construction that carries with it a set of standards and norms. For instance, according to modern gender roles, men are only expected to shave their face if they so choose. In this instance it is a choice for men because if a man decides to not shave his face, he is viewed as intellectual, wise, or erotically rugged. In contrast, today women are often expected to keep their legs, armpits, pubic area, upper lip, arms, stomach, or any other surface area that naturally contains hair hairless. When a woman does not remove hair from the aforementioned areas she is found unattractive and may be considered a radical feminist or a “dyke,” which are wrongly considered to be negative attributes and examples of stigma. One would argue that women should shave the body parts that are exposed because it is inappropriate to do otherwise. However, if hair removal were not gendered, then the same standard would be given to men. Men would shave their legs because they wear shorts and/or their armpits because they wear tank tops. Obviously, this is not the case. In fact, if a man were to shave any body part other than his face, he would be called feminine, unmanly, and/or weird. Furthermore, stigmas placed on individuals for breaking social norms in regards to hair interrupt the “we-relationship” that Schutz describes as the product of when one individual respects another’s humanity (1970). Through the process of stigmatization, the “we-relationship” is violated and in that violation there is violence.

Although I focused on shaving as the most physically harmful method for hair removal, there are plenty of painless, non-toxic ways to remove hair such as sugaring or laser removal. However, it is important to keep in mind that even without shaving, the act of hair removal will be violent so long as women are not given a choice in the matter. For hair removal to not be violent, men and women should not be stigmatized for any level of hair on their bodies. The day that we see just as many hairless men and hairy women as we currently see hairy men and hairless women portrayed as being attractive in mainstream media, then the removal of hair cannot be violent. Until then, by choosing to stay hairy, I have personally decided that beauty should not be painful nor should it be commodified. By not shaving I am reclaiming my body in a patriarchal society. I am making a choice in a matter I was once blinded into believing I couldn’t. I am reclaiming what it means to be beautiful, what it means to love myself as I was meant to be, and I am letting myself heal. 

References

1. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA/United States of America: University of California Press.

2. Lemert, Charles and Branaman, Ann, eds. 1997. The Goffman Reader. Malden, MA/United States of America: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

3. Schutz, Alfred. Wagner, Helmut, eds. 1970. On Phenomenology and Social Relations. Chicago, IL/United States of America: The University of Chicago Press.

The National Women’s Party Militant Identity

Imagine being part of an organization that wants to achieve the same goals as you, but wants to achieve them in a manner that you feel is not as effective or conducive to the way that you work and feel. This kind of frustration is what motivated Alice Paul to severe her relationship with the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and to instead form the National Women’s Party (NWP) in 1916. Alice Paul wanted the NWP to be more active and aggressive in getting the 19^th Amendment ratified than NAWSA had been. By framing the struggle for women’s suffrage as being comparable to that of a war in which the women participating are soldiers, she created a militant identity for her new organization. This militant identity in turn fostered solidarity and inspired collective action within the NWP. By looking at the NWP’s networking, framing, and mobilization strategy we can better understand how the NWP was able to mobilize the Silent Sentinels (also known as the members of the NWP who volunteered to go out and protest), construct a militant identity, and facilitate collective action.

In order to recruit members for her new group, Alice Paul utilized micro-mobilization strategies, focusing on networking with individuals. As writers on networks have asserted, “individuals often become involved in collective action through their personal connections to people already involved.”[1] These kinds of relationships can be referred to as ties, and there are two kinds of ties: strong and weak ties. Strong ties can be intense, emotional, and time consuming, whereas weak ties are much more loose and useful for connections between many people. When Alice Paul decided to leave NAWSA, there were women already in her immediate network, such as Lucy Burns, who not only felt as she had, but were also willing to join her in her endeavor. The kind of tie that Paul and Burns had can be referred to as a bridge. A bridge is a tie between two people and their various contacts from different social circles. The two people, in this case Burns and Paul, in turn each have weak ties, or ties with others that connects otherwise unconnected groups of people. Through weak ties information can move to people who may not have heard or have had access otherwise. While gaining members was definitely important, it is important to keep in mind, however, that Paul was not interested in “recruiting a large membership or building long lasting organizations.” [2] The reason for this was that Paul feared that in a large organization there is too much room for disagreement as there had been in NAWSA, and so Paul preferred to have less people so long as they agreed with her agenda because that would allow them to be more effective. And so when they set out to recruit members, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns had access to a contact list of potential members “but since many on the list had died or moved away, the two women turned to their own friends and acquaintances for assistance.”[3] Here we can see how strong and weak ties can make reaching individuals that share similar interests a lot easier. Networks of communication facilitate participation, and Alice Paul’s journals on suffrage ideology generated a discourse the provided members in the eventual NWP delegations that opened throughout the country. The networks people belong to give them meaning and inspire them to act. Through networking a collective identity can be formed.

Although having group members certainly lends validity to an organization, the group also needs to have a strong and clear identity in order for people on the outside to see it as legitimate. In the case of the National Women’s Party, Alice Paul codified this militant identity utilizing structural framing techniques. Framing is the very deliberate process of converting grievances into meaningful motivations. Through framing the objective comes to be subjective and interpreted as advantageous to collective action. Southard argues that the NWP had to confront “nationalist, citizenship-based, and gendered ideological forces.”[4] While this may be true, Paul also needed a more concrete “enemy” in order to make the members feel like they are fighting against something very real. President Wilson was a good target for Paul’s purposed plan of action because if they could get him to listen, then they could get that much closer to ensuring political rights for women. Protesting the president was a response to Wilson’s own rhetorical presidency that promoted him as an “advocate for the American people” and willing to “create a more unified American polity.”[5] While NAWSA tried to make him seem democratic and as having an open ear to the grievances of women, Paul recognized that this was not entirely true. And so by framing Wilson’s presidency as not living up to his promises, she was able to make members of the NWP feel like there was a shared enemy. Another framing technique that Alice Paul employed was to keep her members feeling useful and energized by “focus[ing] on positive plans and signs of success, so crucial to keeping people involved and confident of victory.” [6] This idea of “victory” goes well with the militant identity, and it was easy for Paul to inspire members of the NWP to act because in doing so they would be fighting Wilson and the American federal government in order to achieve the victory of the ratification of the 19^th Amendment, which is the ultimate goal. So, by focusing attention onto certain issues and amplifying events and situations, Alice Paul was able to mobilize her constituents.

Once the NWP gained enough members who internalized the militant identity, they were able to set out achieving their aims. The nature of the NWP’s identity was said to have “evolved from petitions, to pickets, to prison.” [7] It is clear from this that the militant identity was able to inspire a kind of collective action that was much more literal than that of NAWSA’s. Keeping this in mind, “[She was] also less concerned about lobbying state legislatures since [she] believed in the necessity of a federal amendment.”[8] It was important to attack the President because he is at the center of the federal government. For Paul, the fight for women’s suffrage had become a political one rather than an educational one – it was time to just focus on getting the 19^th Amendment ratified than to educate others on women’s issues. By honing on one specific goal, it was easier to decide who to target and how. When Alice Paul turns to protesting as a form of collective action, she is drawing from the repertoires of protests used by other movements such as the French Revolution. Repertoires are toolkits of action forms that movements are familiar with and that they employ; examples include: petitions, marches, strikes, boycotts, etc. In the case of the NWP, they sent groups of women, who would later be referred to as the ‘Iron Jawed Angels’ for their resilient resistance, to go out and protest. But these women were not just protesting male and female inequality, but rather they made it very clear who their target was: President Wilson and what he represents, which is the federal government’s inability to take action on the behalf of women’s suffrage. On January 10th, 1917, the day after members of the NWP had had an unfruitful meeting with the President, “a dozen women planted themselves before the White House gates, stood silently, and held up banners asking, ‘Mr. President, what will you do for woman suffrage?’ and ‘Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?’”[9] For women to protest the President’s leadership was unthinkable at the time. For this reason, the NWP received backlash from both men and women who believed that what they were doing was rash and inappropriate. As mentioned earlier, the militant identity was at first meant to rally women together, but as time went on and as members of the NWP felt that the federal government really wasn’t paying attention, drastic action had to be taken. Because Alice Paul was successful in creating an organization that was strong and united, dangerous collective action such as protesting was able to take place.

According to Southard, “the Silent Sentinels’ sense of militancy empowered the protesters by providing a strong, shared identity,”[10] which is exactly how the NWP inspired the silent sentinels in the first place. Framing of events did not just pertain to the formation of the militant identity for group members, but it also extended into he public sphere. After a year of protesting and getting arrested and, as the Silent Sentinels would argue, abused, the public had come to feel that “in dealing with them the government had moved from protection to persecution.”[11] The NWP was able to be effective in its gaining recognition because it had a visible identity and a clear objective. Alice Paul was not only successful in creating an organization that was willing to literally fight for women’s suffrage; she also redefined the women’s movement for years to come. So in the end, because the public and the government listened, the Silent Sentinels were not so silent after all.

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[1] Della Porta, Donatella and Mario Dianni. “Individuals, Networks, and Participation,” p. 134 in Social Movements

[2] Banaszak, Lee A. Why Movements Succeed or Fail: Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1996. Print. 140.

[3] Ford, Linda G. Iron-Jawed Angels: The Suffrage Militancy of the National Woman’s Party, 1912-1920. Lanham, MD: University Press of America: 1991. 49.

[4] Stillion Southard, Belinda A. Militant Citizenship. Ed. Vanessa B. Beasley. College Station, TX: Texas A&M UP, 2011. Print. 3.

[5] Stillion Southard, Belinda A. Militant Citizenship. Ed. Vanessa B. Beasley. College Station, TX: Texas A&M UP, 2011. Print. 3.

[6] Adams, Katherine H., and Michael L. Keene. Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2008. Print. 44.

[7] Ford, Linda G. Iron-Jawed Angels: The Suffrage Militancy of the National Woman’s Party, 1912-1920. Lanham, MD: University Press of America: 1991. 1.

[8] Banaszak, Lee A. Why Movements Succeed or Fail: Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1996. Print. 140.

[9] Stillion Southard, Belinda A. “Militancy, Power, and Identity: The Silent Sentinels as Women Fighting for Political Voice.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10.3 (2008): 399-417. Print.

[10] Stillion Southard, Belinda A. “Militancy, Power, and Identity: The Silent Sentinels as Women Fighting for Political Voice.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10.3 (2008): 399-417. Print.

[11] Adams, Katherine H., and Michael L. Keene. Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2008. Print. 45.

The Cyberspace Avatar Identity

By definition, an avatar is an incarnation, embodiment, or manifestation of a person or idea.  This definition, as archaic as it may be, still rings true in today’s newfound application of the avatar. Today the avatar describes a computer-generated identity of a person. Servers such as Second Life give people the opportunity to move beyond the analog and navigate cyberspace independent of who they are in the real world. In Second Life you can create an avatar and have that avatar navigate the Second Life world, which is just that: a life second to your real one. While avatars seem like a waste of time or just a means of entertainment, they can in fact have larger implications and impact “real-world” culture in a positive, meaningful way.

Second Life has been described as a utopian society because the avatars that exist in that world interact respectfully. In a blog post for the CMU Cox School of Business, Jennifer Warren writes, “For some the avatar represents a part of them…for others, their avatar reflects their aspirations – themselves but more confident and assertive.”[1] Here Warren alludes to the transformation people undergo when they channel the best of themselves through an avatar. There is something about the anonymity that an avatar provides that allows the person controlling the avatar to be uninhibited. Warren continues, “Others view their avatar as their truer self, that is, the person that would emerge if the social stigma associated with weight, race or physical disabilities were removed.”[2] This assertion is vastly intriguing since it implies racial or any other physical discrimination that takes place in the real world actually disappears in the cyber world.

This phenomenon occurs due to the fact that avatars are already assumed to be fictitious representations of people’s personalities, not people’s actual physical appearance. With this in mind, people create a second identity through their avatar that is grounded in personality and not appearance. Second Life and RPG (role play games) are so successful because all social pressures or stigmas are lifted and people interact with one another purely and honestly. On the other hand, Jennifer Gonzalez would argue that social detriments such as racism are not solved but rather subdued since people still design avatars based on racial assumptions.[3] This is certainly valid considering most of the users are Caucasian males who can afford to pay for their avatar, meaning there isn’t significant representation from women or other races to prove discrimination vanishes entirely in the cyber world. Yet, what’s important here is the fact that avatars are aspirational creations, and once you’re a part of Second Life or play an RPG you are accepted for who you are, not what you are.

Artists such as Cao Fei use Second Life or the idea of avatars to bring people together and foster communication. Cao Fei has created a city of her own that is both idealized and realistic – it is a fantastically constructed world but in it people interact meaningfully. Avatars by their nature give people the chance to reinvent themselves. With the creation of an avatar, one can exist in both worlds and either let the two lives merge or exist independent of one another. Either way, the use of an avatar can influence the way people see themselves, others, and the real world at large, and maybe even inspire us to bring the best of ourselves out of the digital world and into the real world, to make a change for the better.

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[1] Warren, Jennifer. “What It Means to Be an Avatar: A Study of Second Life – Faculty Research @ SMU Cox.” MBA, BBA and Executive Education from Dallas’ Premier Business School @ SMU Cox. SMU Cox School of Business, 16 Mar. 2010. Web. 07 Dec. 2011.<http://www.cox.smu.edu/web/guest/faculty-research/-/blogs/what-it-means-to-be-an-avatar:-a-study-of-second-life?_33_redirect=/web/guest/faculty-research&gt;.

[2] Same as footnote 1.

[3] Gonzalez, Jennifer. “The Face and the Public: Race Secrecy, and Digital Art Practice.” Camera Obscura 70, Volume 24, Number 1. Duke University Press: 2009. P. 37

Knowledge and the Shame That Comes With It

Have you ever had that mortifying nightmare where you are standing in front of a classroom stark naked and everyone is pointing and laughing? Well imagine if everyone else was naked too and instead of sneering, they paid no heed, acting as if being naked was completely fine. Well in Genesis three, Adam and Eve, God’s first human creations, experience just that. They are created without the concept of good or evil so they feel no embarrassment in their nudity. Yet, God gives them one rule that is to not eat from the tree knowledge or else they will “die”. Beyond that, Adam and Eve walk around the Garden innocently and freely until a devious serpent tricks them into eating from the seemingly desirable tree of knowledge. What seems to be a desirable source of wisdom, turns out instead to introduce the concept of fear and shame, proving that from the knowledge of good and evil comes the awareness of the capacity to do right or wrong.

Prior to eating from the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve are “innocent” and free in the Garden of Eden. “The two of them [are] naked, the man and his wife, yet they [feel] no shame” (Gen. 2:25). Adam and Eve are naked, but they are innocent because they do not associate one another’s nakedness with any moral wrongness. They also feel no shame because they have no concept of what it means to be self-aware. It is this awareness of self that gives shame an emotional depth because shame is an emotion rather than a state of being. Still further, to feel shame implies one has done something wrong or inappropriate. Shame is not internal but external because the feeling of shame is derived from societal expectations. Before the incident, Adam and Eve’s simple nakedness was an expression of their purity. They had no consciousness to know that being naked was socially unacceptable. This doesn’t mean Adam and Eve were incapable of doing wrong because clearly Eve violates the one rule she was given, but it does mean Eve could do wrong without realizing the implications of her actions. This dichotomy is seen in Eve’s interaction with the serpent.

The serpent plays on Eve’s inability to see right from wrong. The serpent knows she is both trusting and gullible: Eve is not wise enough to know the serpent’s ulterior motives because up to that point she has not had any experiences with tricky serpents. In addition, Eve does not know evil can even exist, she only knows there is good. We see this when she looks at the tree of knowledge and sees that “it is good for eating and a delight to the eyes” (Genesis 3:6). Eve’s independent desire makes her look at the fruit and see the potential to obtain wisdom, which she sees as an innocent desire, but a desire nonetheless. In this instance Eve has completely disregarded God’s one rule. So what makes Adam and Eve’s actions so bad is that for the first time they disobey God, taking the word of a creature that is not their God. Eve outrages God by trusting and believing in someone other than Him. Eve also corrupts Adam when he eats the fruit she gives him even though he knew it was an act of disobedience; at that moment Adam proved his allegiance was to his wife and not God. Together, they break the one rule He gives them without even a second thought because Eve saw no wrong in that action. Ironically, if they had known the difference between good and evil, Eve would have been more wary of the serpent’s schemes. Eve hoped that by eating from the tree, she’d be rewarded with wisdom, but instead she is burdened by shame and guilt and her relationship with Adam and God are changed forever.

After eating from the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve now notice that they are naked and that being naked in front of one another is shameful. “They perceive that they are naked; and they sew together fig leaves and make themselves loincloths” (Genesis 3:7). Notice that Adam and Eve perceive they are naked which means that on a basic level Adam and Eve realize that the other is exposed. Intrinsically, Adam and Eve are aware of their individual self, capable of making decisions to satisfy their own flesh instead of God. By covering their nudity, Adam and Eve attempt to hide their bodies from one another and from God. There is now shame in knowing that Adam and Eve were walking around in the Garden acting like animals by being nude. Adam and Eve are aware of their superiority over animals since animals are naked because they lack the awareness of self that makes humans moral beings rather than existing beings. The contrast is that now Adam and Eve are aware of their inferiority to God, which instills fear in them. Adam and Eve fear God not because they are afraid of his wrath but because the experience of shame is a punishment in itself. In this context, fear is not the punishment given by God, but given to them along with knowledge.

Later on God “moves about in the garden at the breezy time of day…the man and his wife [hide] from the Lord…” and when he asks them where they are Adam replies, “’I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid’”(Genesis 3:8-10). In this passage, Adam and Eve are clearly terrified of God because they understand the gravity of their transgression. Prior to eating from the tree, all Adam and Eve had to know was to obey what God said, but they did not need to know why. Now after eating from the tree of knowledge, they know that punishing consequences follow wrongful actions. It is the fear of God’s wrath and disappointment that drives Adam and Eve to hide from him. But hiding from God only angers him further because it is perceived as if Adam and Eve are trying to evade God and avoid being punished.  We know this because Eve attempts to put the blame on the serpent by claiming he “duped” her. Only now does she know what it means to be tricked, but it is too late. God delivers a heavy punishment that validates Adam and Eve’s fear and shame, yet he also proves that he still cares about them by clothing them. This simple gesture captures God’s ability to be compassionate and loving even after he banishes man from the Garden.

The relationship between man and man and man and God is changed permanently when Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge. On the one hand, Adam and Eve now have the ability to do right or wrong. They see they are naked and quickly try to cover themselves up because they know that is the proper thing to do. Now there are customs and measures that must be taken between man and man to ensure that no bad action is committed lest they incur God’s wrath. It is this fear of God, on the other hand, that alienates man from God. In the Garden, God was completely loving to Adam and Eve because they were still his pure creations, but now that man can decide whether to do right or wrong, God can now either reward or punish those who do accordingly. This new God is capable of violence and terror as he is now forced to look upon man objectively, knowing they are responsible for their own actions. Instead of gaining divinity, as the serpent promised, man becomes less than divine, and is sentenced to a life of struggle and pain “until [man] return[s] to the ground—for from it [he was] taken. For dust [he] is, and to dust [he] shall return” (Gen. 3:19). Man is reduced to nothing more than molded dust capable of fleeting divinity, being so knowledgeable and at the same time so powerless before God.

Work Cited: Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985. Print.

Gerome’s Hyper Idealized Orient

The depiction of the Orient in 19^th century Europe reflected a colonial and Neo-Classical gaze. In other words, painters of the Orient were usually white males who looked at the Orient with amazement as well as condescension. Their interest piqued, artists such as Jean-Leon Gerome sought to capture Oriental scenes using techniques reminiscent of the Neo-Classical period. This is because artists who portrayed the Orient were trained by the infamous Academy of Fine Arts in France. With the establishment of the Académie Des Beaux-Arts in 1795, art became institutionalized. The Academy transformed art into more than a mere knack that only royalty could appreciate: art became a profession the product of which was accessible to the emerging middle class. However, the Academy did not endorse just any kind of art. The art that the Academy promoted and supported was rooted in the Hellenistic aesthetic.[1] Gerome himself was a professor at the Academy, so his depiction of the Orient reflects the European egotistical paradigm of the time. Collectively, these three paintings I have curated into an archive reflect Gerome’s expression of the relationship between Orientalist culture and the application of significant developments occurring in 19^th century European art.[2]

The first painting in this archive is The Slave Market (c. 1867, oil on canvas). Here Gerome captures what he imagined to be an actual occurrence. There is a man draped in brightly embellished robes pressing his finger sensuously on a naked woman’s lips. He has her head tilted as she gazes back with soulful eyes. There are two distinct onlookers, in similar costume, pressed on either side of the woman eagerly looking on. Everyone else is going about his or her day as if oblivious to the sexualized occurrence. This conspicuous sensuality as representative of the Orient permeated throughout European society at the time. The idea of the Orient as being exotic and erotic, delighted artists, such as Gerome, because it gave them the opportunity to explicitly portray lascivious scenes. At the same time, artists’ technique remained proper and detached. For instance, in this painting the slave woman has fair colored skin, although she is not Caucasian. This is because the practice at the time was to depict naked women’s bodies in a way that wasn’t vulgar: instead of fleshy, exuberant curves, Gerome paints smooth and firm marble-esque contours. The architecture in the background also contributes to the Hellenistic aesthetic because it is geometric and has many details such as the red shingles and the plants growing on the ledge. Likewise, the positioning of the people is intentional because the woman in the middle directs our gaze to her first and then outward. In an attempt to evoke a salacious, enchanting world and depict the unfamiliar, Gerome will continue to employ and perfect the techniques of the Academy in his future work.

Gerome’s The Snake Charmer (c. 1870, oil on canvas) was and still is one of Gerome’s most famous paintings. It has become iconic of the European depiction of the Orient because it captures the paradoxical approach to the Orient characteristic of the 19^th century European mindset. That is, Gerome’s attention to detail is extremely precise and accurate — you can even see the cracks on the tile walls if you look closely enough — yet, his exquisite execution of realism gets lost in the inaccuracy of the scene. Clearly Gerome worked from his imagination because otherwise he would have known naked boys with snakes did not casually entertain old men in mosques. This faulty information being presented is not uncommon. At the time, many Europeans had read and heard fantastical tales about the Orient influencing them to view the Orient as being sexually deviant and mystical. This ideal is represented in this painting by the use of color, form, and content: the palette consists of shades of blue, gold, and brown; the men sitting down look lackadaisical; the snake is eerie as it coils around the boy’s nude body; the piper seems emaciated; and the boy is positioned so that our immediate gaze is on him. But besides these obvious details, the long sticks men are holding and the fact that they are staring at a naked boy perpetuate the idea of the Orient as being sexually deviant. In turn, the gaze of the audience on the naked boy’s butt makes one feel as if they are outsiders looking into the scene. In this way Gerome invokes us to empathize with his sentiments which is the people of the Orient are barbaric in their activities and at the same time entertaining. As much as Gerome felt negatively towards people of the Orient, he also found the Orient incredibly interesting to imagine and depict.

La Grande Piscine de Brousse (1885, oil on canvas) fully encapsulates the aforementioned techniques and approaches European artists took when depicting the Orient. From the content itself one knows this is one of Gerome’s fantastical ideas fabricated from stories and “universal” knowledge. He took the stories he knew about harems and bathhouses in the Orient and put it down on canvas for people’s enjoyment. Again the viewer is made to feel like an outsider looking into a strange world. Most of the women are naked while still retaining the marble-like textured skin. There are symbols of the Orient such as a large detailed rug, a hookah, women walking on platform sandals, and large arches. The light shining in from the upper left hand corner guides our eyes to the white woman walking alongside a black woman whose arm is around the white woman’s waist. The black woman, dark corners, and naked women allude to sexual deviancy. Likewise, the contrapposto stance of the white woman walking and the lounging women give us the sense that people of the Orient are lazy. Overall, Gerome makes two assertions in this painting: the first is that people of the Orient are unnaturally sexual, and secondly that people of the Orient are inherently lethargic. Yet these claims are juxtaposed by Gerome’s blatant European standards he imposes on his subjects. His attention to detail and accuracy are the result of his strivings towards perfection. Here it is seen by the reflections in the water, the movement of the water itself, the lines on the tiled floor and walls, the anatomically proportional bodies and faces on even the subjects furthest away. In this painting, Gerome has reached a certain level of excellence in which he has immaculately brought together the Orient image with the European ideal. But while his artistry must be praised, his representation of the Orient is undoubtedly flawed and should be questioned. As Nochlin states, “One absence [in Gerome’s work] is the absence of history. Time stands still in Gerome’s painting…”[3] And Nochlin is right because to Gerome his subjects were nothing more than figments of his imagination; he did not think of them as breathing, living people with actual problems and feelings.

The fact that Gerome never bothered to check his facts when portraying the Orient proves that inaccurate ideas of the Orient had become so widespread in France that not a second thought went into perpetuating stereotypes. In turn, this alludes to the sentiment of European superiority shared by many at the time. Gerome’s painting, while sexual, was not deemed inappropriate because it was Oriental women being portrayed as deviant, not European women. It was okay for foreign women to be exposed participating in sexual activities because they were not European women who were expected to be modest and composed. The Orient as represented in this time period is a construct of the European man. Gerome took what he thought he knew to be true about the Orient and painted it so that that image perpetuated itself more efficiently via visual means. In short, Gerome’s paintings of the Orient are paradoxical representations: he employs hyperrealism to accurately portray inaccurate images of the Orient.

Archival Pieces:

The Snake Charmer
Jean-Léon Gérôme
c. 1870
oil on canvas

La Grande Piscine de Brousse
Jean-Léon Gérôme
1885
oil on canvas

The Slave Market
Jean-Léon Gérôme
c. 1867
oil on canvas

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[1] Paul Duro, “Paris” (VI Institutions: Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Académie des Beaux-Arts) Grove Art Online [August 2006].  Edited, illustrated & notated by dc.

[2] Taboroff, June. “The Orientalists.” Saudi Aramco World : November/December 2011. Aramco Services Company, Nov.-Dec. 1984. Web. 17 Nov. 2011. <http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/198406/the.orientalists.htm&gt;.

[3] Nochlin, Linda. The Imaginary Orient.