I'm reading Robin Givhan in the Washington Post. The post title is the headline. There are lots of photographs of glamorous clothes with an edge of trashiness. I clipped out part of one photograph. Not randomly selected. It's what caught my eye as I scanned the page with the idea of "female empowerment" foremost in my mind. I've left out what Givhan calls the "teeny-tiny shorts" (which are what we used to call "hot pants").
Let's see how Givhan answers the question posed in the headline:
Yes, the female form is beautiful, but is it made more beautiful by borrowing clothes from the boys, by wrapping it in a cloud of debauchery, by having parts exposed in a way that makes a woman “all legs” instead of full human?I guess I'm not going to get an answer to the question, only more questions. Questions good. Why not a column full of questions? Maybe we women writers should be all questions, just like the runway models are "all legs."
This is not to say that the collection was bad or offensive or improper, only that it raised questions. And raising questions is good, particularly in this moment when the culture, both here and in the United States, is considering its male and feminine norms....
[Male designers at Saint Laurent] have told women that it is empowering and satisfying to wear teeny-tiny snakeskin shorts with towering heels, to splash through shallow waters with breasts bared on a night chilly enough that guests were swaddled under blankets. They have told them that the ideal female form has the spindly legs of a filly — so immature and scrawny that one half expects the model to collapse in a heap from the sheer exhaustion of having to walk upright....So, yeah, we do end with more questions. I was going to say it's the same old questions I've always seen about fashion designers, but really the questions have evolved. What I used to see (half a century ago) was the question whether the designers hated women. This idea was typically tied to the observation that they didn't sexually desire women at all: The designers are gay and that's why the clothes are hostile to women. What we see in this new column is the idea that male sexual desire for women is driving the designs. Are the designers not gay anymore? Why would expensive clothes be designed to "satisfy" men? The women are the clients. What's the logic here?
Yes, the female form is beautiful. It’s inspirational. But what has it inspired? And has that been empowering to women or simply satisfying to men?
Oh, I see I'm doing questions, even as I want Givhan not to proceed in the form of question-asking. All right. I'll posit some answers to her questions. Why shouldn't I take the power to say what's what? I will! The clothing is designed to call out to women. It looks the way it does because that has been working to sell clothes. The women who buy those clothes think those clothes will benefit them, and the perception that this is what heterosexual men desire in a woman is a perception that needs to take place in the mind of the woman, and that is the perception the designer is trying to stimulate. If the woman buys clothes that she perceives as satisfying male desire, she is seeking sexual power over men.
And I suspect that one reason Robin Givhan doesn't say that is because it criticizes the woman. The question "has that been empowering to women or simply satisfying to men?" leaves women in the down position, where we can muse MeTooishly. That's a politically advantageous place to stop. And how much of the advertising in The Washington Post comes from the fashion industry? That's another reason to end with musing questions and not rough critique — economic interest.
Raising questions is good, particularly in this moment....
