pantryslut: (Default)
pantryslut ([personal profile] pantryslut) wrote2006-08-15 08:30 am

(no subject)

Post-Femme Con thought for the day:

"However, the success of early female punk performers' attempts to desexualize the clothes they wore in such a parodic fashion is debatable. Whereas punk women intended to present these garments in such a way as to discredit their effect as fetishistic, sexually titillating items, the overriding cultural view of women as sex objects may have worked at cross-purposes with their intent. Thus, Laing argues that "an attempt to parody 'sexiness' may simply miss its mark and be read by the omnivorous male gaze as the 'real thing'." Their attempt at resistance, when contained within the subculture's private code, could be, and was, often read by the mainstream press and by observers more in terms of its accomodation, rather than resistance, to feminine sexual stereotypes. While striving to counter stereotypes of women in rock, punk women were repeatedly described as sluts, perverts, whores, and junkies by those outside the subculture."

-- Lauraine Leblanc, Pretty in Punk

[identity profile] postmaudlin.livejournal.com 2006-08-18 06:12 pm (UTC)(link)
It was my understanding that Blove identified sort of interstitially -- hence the pronouns "shim", etc. But I will come up with a couple other examples -- it's difficult in part because I think media commodification/fetishization/iconization reifies the subject in ways similar to but not identical to the sexualized male gaze. So trying to find a subject who is well-known enough to use here of queer femininity is problematic.

So, regardless of actual preference... Cindy Sherman queers the gaze. Cathy Opie denies it. And I think Camille Paglia inverts it -- or at least threatens to.