la_vie_noire | (no subject)

This was such a bad day that I actually cried my eyes out, and I should be on hiatus because I have my week full again.

But have this awesome post, Silvana goes on femininity and performance in Welcome to the Institute for Beyonce-related Cultural Studies.

This song is about the bait-and-switch that women are presented with by the femininity imperative. Because femininity is a lot of work. It is, to be frank, a real pain in the ass. If we weren’t so used to it, we’d realize that the things we are expected to do in service of perfect femininity are basically humiliating. That’s what interesting about this video–Beyonce looks extremely hot and sexually appealing, and she also seems pathetic. She is a caricature of femininity, prancing around the house dusting in an ass-showing french maid outfit and bending and sighing and fanning herself over a car engine. It’s ridiculous. She heightens femininity to an absurd level, showing us how bizarre it is. Of course, we don’t do all of the things she doing at once, thus avoiding the kind of absurd hyper-femininity on display in this video. But by going so far over the top that we smile and kind of pity her, she demonstrates how absurd all femininity is, at its core. Is the femininity performance that average women engage in before a night out at the club really so different from what she’s doing here?

And THEN. The fun part is that, after all that, after all that effort and humiliation, it doesn’t work? After all that? That’s why Beyonce’s indignation and anger in this video is perfect. She’s throwing a tantrum, almost, throwing things around and flouncing on the floor, as if to say, WHAT THE FUCK?? YOU DON’T WANT THIS? I did everything I was supposed to do, I cleaned and cooked and pranced and paraded around in bustiers and wore extremely sexy makeup! And still! Nothing? I played by the rules and the rules were A BIG LIE.

[...]

I was thinking earlier this week about the psychological effect that performing femininity must have of women, because in its purest form, it is not only humiliating, but kind of disturbing. I am thinking specifically of two videos that are getting a lot of attention, which present performances of femininity by people that are not adult women. One is deemed to be hilarious, the other disturbing.

The first is the Army Telephone video, where a bunch of military guys serving in Afghanistan do a video interpretation of Lady Gaga’s Telephone video.[...] You smile and laugh, and you think, man, those men are kind of awesome, because they are so funny! Would you ever think this about women doing these exact same things? You wouldn’t even notice. It’s of a piece with how women move through the world every day and how they are constantly presenting themselves as over-sexed sex objects in pop culture. It’s not even close to noteworthy.

The second is a dance performance by a bunch of 7-year-old girls in the style of Beyonce’s Single Ladies video. [...] The discomfort isn’t because what the outfits reveal, but what they allude to. The lace, the stockings, the corset lacing on the “bodice” are, it seems, too much like what adult women wear when they are trying to evoke maximum sexiness. Doing this dance and wearing these clothes is, in our cultural estimation, firmly in the territory of not appropriate.

I think it’s pretty telling that when femininity is performed by non-standard actors, we either get really uncomfortable or laugh our asses off. It’s not just a bait-and-switch, as the Beyonce video so effectively argues. It’s a bait and kick-you-in-the-face. It’s toxic.

And don't forget the comments since Silvana starts her post talking about her experience with a dancer in a strip club, which unintentionally says a lot about power dynamics between sex-workers and their clients/people outside that line of work (specifically: the crying for another woman's body from people who have no experience working in the sex-industry):

Anodyne Lite writes:

I’m with you on the problematic nature of gender performativity, and your analysis of Beyonce’s song/video is spot on…but sometimes sex workers get really sick of everyone’s “pity” and sympathy. It often comes off as condescending- as if we couldn’t possibly make choices for ourselves that make sense for us, so you girls who know better just have to feel sorry for us. All women who identify as female perform their gender- not just sex workers. Save your tears for yourself, maybe? The sympathy-for-strippers gambit reminds me a lot of when the teenage virginity brigade “pities” women who “give up” their precious maidenhood before marriage.

Also, I know a lot of strippers and other women who’d resent the idea that men are buying “access” to dancers’ bodies. That language comes a little too close to sounding like rape apologists’ justifications for why strippers get assaulted, to me. Exotic dancers perform for men, they don’t give men “access” for a fee.