217. FFW wants to read: Posing Beauty (& wants to see more dandies, debutantes, models, beauty queens, politician and clubwomen)
Images from Posing Beauty Photography Exhibition at NYU’s Tisch School of Arts
Last Friday Meggy, my ever beautiful-in-vintage partner-in-crime, emailed me this New York Times book review of POSING BEAUTY: African American Images From the 1890s to the Present by Deborah Willis. I a little bit despise how this review was written (then again, I’m always annoyed by the writing in the New York freaking Times,) but I was intrigued by the closing paragraph:
In the pages of “Posing Beauty,” readers can appreciate African-American men and women as dandies and debutantes, models and beauty queens, politicians and clubwomen across the generations.
I’m curious to browse the book and see the range of images Willis chose to portray. It’s important to me that people of color can be understood and seen as every kind of fashionable (and unfashionable) creature. I have three unwieldy, untrimmed stories related to why this is important to me. The first involves ‘Culture Night’ at my high school. Do any of you remember having a ‘Culture Night’ in middle school or high school? I remember frantically searching for a qipao to wear. My mom didn’t have any in her closet, and I probably ended up picking a fight with her and crying on the floor or something. I was too stupid then to realize it, but I see now how absurd it was that I thought I had to represent my Chinese-ness with an article of clothing that really had nothing to do with the wholeness (or even a few particulars) of my identity, but had everything to do with the Western fantasy/delusion/insanely limited and fatuous idea of what a real Chinese person looks like.
Photo taken from The Renegade Bean
I’m grateful for Catherine from the Renegade Bean for scanning & posting these old photos she found in the shops of Taipei.
When I look at old photos of my mom, she isn’t wearing a qipao, and she isn’t holding a fan over her face, my dad isn’t wearing a rice straw hat, they aren’t riding around in a rickshaw, but from the lamer-than-imitation-butter documentaries we watched in school about China, you’d think those were all signifiers for being and looking Chinese. My mom wore sixties’ shift dresses and 70′s shirtwaist dresses quite similar to the dresses I’m seeing on Etsy and in vintage stores and in vintage photographs. My dad wore bellbottoms. Bellbottoms! Yes, he did, and he tucked his seventies’ button up shirts into his flared pants and he wore those big over-the-brow 70′s wire-rimmed glasses. (Actually, my dad was a bonafide nerdgenius and used to wear pants that were too short, shirts with holes in them, and mismatched socks before he met my mom.)
It’s so much more difficult to write about the things I care about most, and that explains the overabundance of outfit posts and the dearth of all else. The issues of fantasy, reality, domestication and exoticization are hard for me to articulate without slamming my fist on the table and deferring to blushing never mind’s and blubbering yakety yakking. In the NYT review of Posing Beauty, the reviewer writes:
If a single thread unifies the images in this amazing collection, it is the subjects’ agency in the conception and presentation of their own beauty, which is itself a radical departure from the more familiar objectification of African-Americans in the nation’s collective visual memory.
The other night, when I was at the Melt Banana show these two drunk girls tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was there because I was with the band. Melt Banana is a noise core band from Japan. I’m a girl who’s stuck in Iowa City for at least another five months and then I’m going to start strangling the sidewalks with stalks of dried corn and bust my booty out of here. When Meggy came to visit me in Iowa City, we giggled about how everyone probably assumed we were sisters or related somehow (lack of people of color + awful assumptions = why it’s not pleasant for me to live in a small town, even a college town.) I didn’t giggle when those girls asked if I was with the band. Things got worse, but I’ll leave out the details because I don’t want to use specific examples to defend or justify or explain why being in that situation made me feel bad.
I couldn’t enjoy the show afterward because because because, because I’m not explaining this well. How do I explain it? It has to do with how I never laugh at Chinese menus that have been poorly translated into English. And goodness, there are gazillions of blogs just dedicated to posting scans of HILARIOUS translations. America’s Top Model third runner-up from the very first season, Elyse Sewell, has a livejournal that is chock full of hahahahahah they wrote ‘shitty fish’ instead of ‘spicy fish’ on the menu of this restaurant in Beijing that costs less than 2 USD per dish!!!)
How can I find mistranslation or broken English to be hilarious when my mom does it every day? And it’s not that I’m so enlightened and mature–it’s just that every Thanksgiving, my mom calls me and tells me she bought a ‘smoking turkey’ instead of a ‘smoked turkey.’ I might find it endearing, I might find it cute, but I would never think it was hilarious. It’s too normal to be hilarious, I have no way of having unfamiliar distance with it. And along those lines, the sinister thought creeped into my mind: what if the nearly all white audience at the Melt Banana show was enjoying Melt Banana partially due to their unfamiliar distance with seeing a petite Japanese girl busting her lungs screaming and a Japanese dude calmly thrashing his guitar while wearing a face mask?
On a totally related and cool side-note, Minh-ha over at Threadbared recently wrote a wonderful post, The Truth of Lagerfeld’s Idea of China that taps into everything that frustrates me, including a lovely discussion on the difference between genteel and overt racism:
It may be difficult for Lagerfeld and others in fashion who practice and endorse blackfacing or yellowfacing (as well as their supporters) to accept that these cultural modes emerge from and reproduce histories of racism, Orientalism, and xenophobia because Lagerfeld does not fit our image of the virulent racists we remember from sensationalist talk shows like Jerry Springer. Also, aesthetic practices seem far afield from more recognizably racist practices like cross-burning, for example. And it is not my contention that genteel racism and overt racism are the same thing.
Exactly! The first time I came across a blog that perfectly articulated all of the reasons why I don’t actually give much of a wank when I see Pat Buchanan talking racist smack on TV was when I was reading one of my favorite culture + music blogs, Poplicks, and contributer Junchi wrote a post on When Overt Racism is Refreshing and asked:
Would you rather live in:
(1) a society in which all racism is transparent, blatant, and in your face; or
(2) a society with as much racism as the one above but where the prejudice is largely veiled, subtle, and repackaged as something less insidious?
DIFFICULT TO SAY.
Last sidetrack: when I turn in a short story for workshop, there is always the inevitable, “I just don’t believe a Asian immigrant mom would talk like this,” comment. Are there really boundaries and limits as to how an Asian woman would talk? Sorry for outing all of the delicate cherry blossom Asian ladies out there (KIDDING,) but Asian moms and Asian girls say crude things. I talk about farts and vomit and joke about hot glue gunning a guy’s testicles together (kidding?) and you know what–so do the Asian moms I know.
On the one hand, every time a person of color writes a book about family and love and blah blah, it’s treated as THE book on the Asian American experience of family, love and blah blah, or THE book on the Native American experience, or THE book on the black experience, and etc. Then again, a part of me revolts against the idea of treating the work and creative output of people of color in America as the same as the work and creative output of white Americans, because people of color in America are not treated the same as white Americans. It’s a difficult conundrum to negotiate. For those reasons, it’s also important to me that images of African-Americans are not confined to those of slavery, violence, and upheaval. I would love for the American cultural imagination to widen and accept people of color as capable of being dandies and debutantes and vintage queens and beauty-obsessed, but at the same time, I don’t want these images to replace the very real and frightening history of violence and oppression.
Thank goodness for blogs like Threadbared, and B. Vikki Vintage–Threadbared for continuing to show us the necessity and urgency in critically engaging with the politics and cultural implications of fashion and beauty, and B. Vikki Vintage for her marvelous research and contribution toward widening our cultural imagination and reminding us that colored bodies existed (plentifully and beautifully) in the annals of vintage fashion. The project of showing people of color not just as background color, not just as oppressed and enslaved people (I’m looking at you Time magazine and National Geographic) and not just as a Western fantasy that has no basis in reality is one that we here at Fashion for Writers will always support and stand in solidarity with.
This is a long post. Then again, for something that means a lot to me, it’s an embarrassingly short, embarrassingly shallow post.
Love, Jenny
So glad you wrote this, Jenny. I am proud to be a co-blogger with you, and glad that I didn’t try to write about that NYT article myself, as I would’ve probably just babbled incoherently and not said anything interesting at all.
xoxoxoxoxo
I’m even prouder to be a co-blogger with you!
I just subscribed to your blog yesterday courtesey of http://www.Racialicious.com for pointing it out.
What a great article. I especially like this part you wrote:
“Last sidetrack: when I turn in a short story for workshop, there is always the inevitable, “I just don’t believe a Asian immigrant mom would talk like this,” comment. Are there really boundaries and limits as to how an Asian woman would talk? Sorry for outing all of the delicate cherry blossom Asian ladies out there (KIDDING,) but Asian moms and Asian girls say crude things. I talk about farts and vomit and joke about hot glue glunning a guy’s testicles together (kidding?) and you know what–so do the Asian moms I know!”
I feel the same way– I write plays and short stories. I’ve been asked by white folks and even people of color, if Muslims and South Asians can be really be into punk rock, wear leather jackets, have mohawks, watch porn, and drink beer. Because according to them, it seems too “fake.” Sigh.
I have to say I feel bad for visiting those blogs which make fun of mis-translated English signs taken in China, Japan and other non-English speaking countries. So thank you for bringing our attention to that issue.
Wow, DIMA, thank you so much for your comment on this post (and also on the previous post.) Your sensitivity and thoughtfulness is truly appreciated, and I’m always happy to know that there are other smart, artistic, creative women of color in the world. Keep on kicking ass and pottymouthing off!
Wow. I don’t know what to say except for I’m glad you said it. I’ve had so many of these sentiments running around in my head but I kind of suck at letting it out in words. I identify with much of what you’re saying, especially the part about your parents. My parents never wore ponchos or a big straw hat, they were decked out in go-go boots and platform shoes and liked The Beatles and disco!
Also, the part of where you said “For those reasons, it’s also important to me that images of African-Americans are not confined to those of slavery, violence, and upheaval.” I feel that way about (specifically) Mexican immigration. Like all of us with a Spanish surname have to suddenly act a certain way, speak a certain way, if not, we’re not “authentic”. WTF. Anyway, just had to put in my two cents. I found your blog via racialicious and so glad I did. This blog has inspired me to dig deeper and express more my love for vintage clothing, because seriously, I’m sure there were Mexican-Americans in the 50s and 60s. (duh!)
Andrea! Thank you so much for your comment–and your very eloquent comment at that. I’m so grateful for supportive comments like yours and also your parents sound awesome! Go-go boots? Amazing.
When I first read the title of this post, I thought about the underground and very fashionable ball culture from NYC in the 1930s (Harlem ballrooms) which later evolved into a queer-POC movement in the 1980s and died after it got mainstream attention in the modeling and music (Madonna) world, especially with the ‘vogue’ element of the sub-culture. (It still, though continues in limited circles in major cities). If you’d like to know more about it, ‘Paris is Burning’ is the essential documentary to watch. Anyway, ‘posing’ was a very integral part of this culture, especially when it came to identity-formation and trying to become a part of the mainstream ‘fantasy’ since most participants were outcasts not only due to race but also due to sexuality and gender-expression. I think it fits in very interestingly with your post (which I think is very interesting), and recommend for all who are interested in this topic to watch ‘Paris is Burning’. Its about fashion, its about identity, its about family (not the one you are born into), its about fantasy.
Also, I was also just referred here from Racialiscious, and will definitely become a regular, as I like your smart take on fashion. Kudos, and thanks for such an enjoyable post!
Thank you so much for recommending the documentary Paris is Burning. I heard about it a little while ago and I have been meaning to check it out. I’ll already placed a hold on it at my school library!
JJ Zhang has done it.
PS You guys gotta start categorizing your posts. This one for instance goes under BEING RIGHT ABOUT RACE.
Thanks tony baloney, couldn’t have done it without the psychic support of my rice brother (you.)
You both are on a roll, and I’m so thrilled to read this.
Thanks Mimi (and also thank you for inspiring me to write this in the first place)–I can’t wait to read your thoughts on vintage fashion.
Beautiful, wonderfully written post!
And yes! More dandies, please. I fancy myself an eventual quaintrelle – and what’s the use without a dandy by my side?
Thanks lady!
Hi Jenny! I just found your blog. Awesome post. Hope you’re well
Hi Jin! Thank you! I wish you would start a blog…
Just stumbled across the site yesterday and created an RSS feed for it. I really enjoyed the posts I read, and this newest one was a memorable read. I just wanted to tell you that I agree with you, and that I am really glad you wrote this. I know it’s important and you feel it wasn’t long enough, but you did at least cover several issues. Thanks for writing it, and I’m looking forward to your future updates.
Thank you so much Tiffany–it means a lot to me that my little thoughts crisscrossed with your world.
I’ve been subscribed to FFW for a month or so now, and this post really hit a good spot. I’m working on a post for an English-language China blog about “Chinglish”/those “funny” (mis)translations that are so common all around China and its implications when we react to it/exotify it, and I think I will be linking to this post. Also, by the way, if you want to view some ’80s fashions in China, just when all the “new” fashions from the rest of the world were seeping into the newly opened economy, I recommend Jia Zhangke’s “Platform” (站台). Long and slow movie but has some great scenes and great to look at.
Hey Jane–I’ve been meaning to watch Platform ever since I saw the first ten minutes of it at a screening and then had a massive allergy attack and had to leave! Thanks for reminding me of the movie–I’ll definitely check it out. I’m looking forward to reading your post about ‘chinglish’!
I adore this post and can identify with pretty much all of the experiences you wrote about, from Culture Night to comments in seminars that made me want to slam my head against the table (seriously, how are immigrant parents supposed to speak!?! My parents, husband and I were all pondering the exact definition of “bitch slap” a few weeks ago. Fairly typical conversational fare in my family!). Every time I handed in a paper about Asian Americans in a psychology class, I’d be called on to be *the* class expert on the AA experience in seminar. It was a really odd experience. On the one hand, it was nice as an insecure college student to be treated like an expert in anything, on the other hand, I hated being pinned up like a research specimen — while at the same time basically being told to do the same to other Asian Americans.
I remember a few years ago DKNY (I *think*) had a ad campaign where Jeremy Irons posed in moodily-lit street scenes that were supposed to take place in Hong Kong, I believe. Basically, the only Asian people in it were dressed up in straw hats, pulling rickshaws and looking downcast. Blech.
I think Donna Karen and Calvin Klein have done the same advertising campaign — one in Hong Kong and the other in Viet Nam. I know in the Viet Nam campaign, it was fishing boats and blue and black “pajamas” on the “natives” and then Linda Evangelista or someone equally tall and white wandering the crowded streets full of psuedo-”peasants” in colorful sheath dresses. Ugh.
Catherine–thank you for your comment! It was your posting of the vintage photos you found in Taipei that inspired me to write this so THANK YOU for being you and being a kick-ass blogger. Your husband and your family sound rad. I wish our families could chill, they’d get along.
And ugh ugh ugh to Donna Karen & Calvin Klein. And here we go again with Mr. Lagerfeld.
Aww, this post warmed my heart because I totally get that frustration in not having the language to explain why this subtle racism hurts so much. I also love the minority solidarity!! My family emigrated from Jamaica in the late 80s so I understand how things at home are different than your friends at school. I found your blog through Racialicious (blog). You should check ‘em out. While every post may not resonate the blog gives you a lexicon to start verbalizing your experience.
Thank you so much Kadi. Your comment warmed MY heart! I love racialilious and have loved it since the beginning. I’m always astounded by how eloquent the writers are. I was especially moved by the article, “It’s Not All About You, The Case for Empathy.” I felt like the article was one big hug for my soul.