“I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless/ cos everyone knows that’s how you become famous.”
Taking a side step away from specifically trans posts (cos y’all tiring me out already, and I have another week to go here), I want to talk about fear. Recently Mark K-Punk had this to say about Lily Allen’s “The Fear.”
“All Allen can do is point to her own inertia and complicity but awareness can only reinforce the very condition she is talking about [. . .] The verses are unsure whether they want to be satire or not, unsure whether they want to mock consumer-nihilism or celebrate it , unsure because – after all – what’s the alternative, where can all this mocked from? [. . .] Celebrity culture and its critique are coterminous; the jeremiads about its superficiality as cliched and empty as the culture itself, both appearing on the same pages of LondonLite. Only the negative capability of the choruses, only the admission of The Fear, breaks out of this circuit.”
What gets left out of this perceptive critique is precisely how sexed this is, how fear is produced as an affect on/in/through female bodies. What lies behind so much of our self-policing is fear.
When Lily sings that couplet about how everyone knows that taking your clothes off gets you famous, she’s pointing to the fact that media culture runs on a certain kind of manufactured prurience. I mean, at this point, is anyone really shocked by nudity? Sex tapes? Infidelity? Homosexuality? Is it even possible to be?
And yet, manufactured sex “scandals” co-exist side-by-side with advertisements using sex to advertise practically everything. One punishes, one rewards. Yet they’re two sides of the same coin, it’s not hard to go from one to the other (Paris Hilton), and then back again.
But see, blaming sexualized women is too easy, too simplistic, too trite. To say only that there’s a pressure to get naked is to ignore the other half – that the “critique” of raunch culture is as patriarchy friendly as the pressure to get nekkid. That half of the culture will encourage you to be sexy, and half will condemn you for it. As a culture, we love to see someone fall from grace, and then love to see them make a comeback.
Most of us don’t have the specific pressure of someone in the media, but every woman bears the specific weight of having a visible, spectacularized body.* The Fear lurks behind other kinds of body policing, that it tells fat women to slim down (and cover up for the moment), tells black women to straight their hair, tells women with disabilities to not be sexual, tells older women to look younger, tells trans women that we’re not real women unless we’re feminine (and then someone else comes along to suggest that a real woman wouldn’t femme up so simplistically). It gets so efficient, so pervasive, that you don’t even need to tell us what we need to be afraid of, we’ve got the message, we pass it onto to our friends, our daughters, our lovers.
As a trans woman, I’ve learnt to live with fear on a daily basis. Fear of violence, above all, but part of that is a fear of attracting desire. I’m afraid that a man will, all on his lonesome, check my engaged, monogamous, lesbian bottom out and then scan me. Realize that I’m trans and then feel so “deceived” about the desire he produced that he’s simply forced to assault me. (this doesn’t feel that remote a fear, I’ve been assaulted before). So what do I do? I cover up, spend thousands of dollars on hair removal, wear feminine but not hugely sexual clothes.
My point, then, is this. If you produce fear, you produce a market. Every commercial, informercial, reality tv show is working on you, nudging at you to feel inferior (the fear, of not being pretty or hot or desirable enough) or superior (displacing that fear onto someone else, someone else not policing themselves as we do). And then you have a slew of products which suggest they’ll ease that fear that they themselves have helped to produce (and of course that ease is only temporary, because God knows permanence doesn’t help anyone sell anything).
Cos maybe being rich would give us enough control over our lives, our bodies to get there – “I wanna be rich and I want lots of money/I don’t care about clever/I don’t care about funny.” Maybe (not that I’d know, personally) part of what being rich would be having the luxury to disconnect from your body, to not come home covered in fat or need to break your back lugging boxes, to have other people prepare your food or clean your house, pay the electric bills. And instead, have Botox and surgery and eat organic food and have the time and energy to work out, live in air-con and be shuttled around in first class. And then maybe The Fear gets stronger rather than weaker the more you work at it, the more you try to make your body into an ideal (into someone else’s ideal?).
And I wonder how we get ourselves out of this deadlock, how do we get beyond simple truisms about self-esteem or slut-shaming or whatever the fuck.
What happens after we’ve been taken over by the fear? What do we do next?
* At the risk of oversimplifying, I think that even with metrosexuality, the appearance of male bodies as a whole are less likely to be policed (men of color’s bodies of course are spectacularized and often criminalized in other ways). This is not to say that male bodies are not desired and objectified, but that the specific regimes of body policing seem less pervasive – men rarely have to think about how much skin they’re showing, or whether they’ll be taken seriously or attract unwanted or even dangerous attention if they wear that cute outfit.
Similar Posts:
- Lady Looks Like a Dude by Holly May 22, 2009
- In Which Solnit and BFP Split Some S*it Right Open by Jess H. August 12, 2008
- Feminist Porn: Sex, Consent, and Getting Off by KaeLyn July 23, 2008
- The Angry Tranny: Tone Arguments and Trans Women by Cara March 29, 2010
- Lessons from the Magic Carpet by Octogalore August 4, 2008
Sigh. This is something I’m working out pseudo-privately myself, between work fears and body fears and Am I Good Enough fears and sexuality fears. Work is interesting — in my particular kind of work capacity I’m a sitting duck for all kinds of people’s prejudices and expectations. Some dudes think I’m open for a Limbaugh-style rant and vent their hostility on me when I’m not, some think it’s perfectly okay to hit on me, ask me out, woo me with baubles, and when they find out I’m not interested and am really only as nice as I am because I’m PAID TO BE are prepared to hit me across the face and kick my cat. Work rules.
The body fears are scary once the market effect grabs hold of you. I’ve recently been able to step away from it emotionally, right about the same time one of my best friend is being roped in. This week she told me she wants to “be sexy” and will pay whatever is necessary to “exude sex.” I know that what she means is that she wants lots of guys to want her. I wrote it off to Margaret Cho’s “I’m not bisexual, I’m I-sexual,” but I’m not so sure.
I really liked this. And: “To say only that there’s a pressure to get naked is to ignore the other half – that the “critique” of raunch culture is as patriarchy friendly as the pressure to get nekkid.” especially spoke to me. Thanks.
I think it’s the pervasiveness of the fear that eventually makes it so hard to pinpoint. That and the endless catch-22s. There’s also something in there, about women and our appearance, that includes not being natural but making it look natural. To wit, you have to shave your legs, but stubble is EVEN WORSE because it shows you might have once had hair. You have to wear cosmetics, but gods forbid they not look natural. You have to have a certain level of grooming, but don’t show it takes a while or costs a lot or then you’re just a mindless, primping female.
I’m reminded of the housewife’s handbook from the 50s about how a woman should go to bed wit her husband, then after he’s gone to sleep (and presumably after sex if he wanted it) she should get up and do her beauty routine so he wasn’t bothered by seeing it – then she needs to wake up before he does so she can get all that stuff off so he thinks she magically looks like that.
Corralling your appearance to any standard requires an investment of time and money. To women I think an added burden is needing to then make that investment invisible.
“And I wonder how we get ourselves out of this deadlock…What happens after we’ve been taken over by the fear? What do we do next?”
I’m totally on board with Mark K-Punk, its only with identifying and admitting the Fear that we can break away. We’ve got to realize that the Fear isn’t normal or natural, and then be able to shout out loud that we don’t deserve it. Once the Fear gets us, we’ve got to find some way to let it out. I’m a huge fan of baby steps: from diary writing, to anonymous internet/radio admissions, to personal friends, to family, to the world! Chipping away the Fear takes longer than being taken by it, but it can (oh i hope!!) be done.
There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
Fear can serve a useful purpose when it warns of actual danger, and prompts us to take action to alleviate the threat. The problem with much of the dread in this current circumstance is that it is manufactured solely to facilitate interpersonal manipulation.
It’s much easier to push someone around when they are off balance, and the fear of imperfection leaves everyone wanting greater stability- something that proves most profitable to the shills and their masters.
Being heavy or trans or old or different isn’t inherently dangerous, but the perception that these characteristics warrant abhorrence prompts not only disdain but sanctified violence; for although no one can fully attain the ever shifting standards of beauty and style, everyone can inflict pain on those who fail- if for no other reason than to defect attention from their own shortcomings. Instead of being recognized as craven behavior, public denouncement of non-conformity is lauded for affirming social values, even as it diminishes and destroy the society it purports to cherish.
When fear becomes continuous, it loses its value; the constant alarm tends to be ignored, even when the threat is real. With the inability to distinguish between clear and present danger and contrived dread, comes a lust for the one element that is seen to provide mastery of the situation : power. Perhaps control over one’s self is unattainable, but with enough money, fame, violence, etc., order (no matter how dismal) may maintained by controlling others.
The problem, however, is that power creates its own fear- fear of its loss, fear of greater power- which demands ever more power to control. This path leads down into the mire of terror; where all the conformity and power imaginable aren’t enough to prevent being taken over and pulled under by fear.
Oh, bullshit, Loosely Twisted. Have you just not been paying attention? Women who fail at attaining the beauty standard risk losing jobs, not getting hired, being refused promotion. They are constantly told that they are unlovable and unfuckable and are probably lesbians. Women who succeed more at attaining the beauty will do somewhat better on the job front for a while though the assumption will be that they got there by trading sexual favours, not by virtue of talent and their advancement will eventually come to a screeching halt.
All of us risk battery, rape, and death at the hands of men who feel entitled to hit us, fuck us, and kill us. Trans women — and among trans women, trans women of colour — are at particularly high risk and die at heartbreakingly high rates.
There’s a bit more to fear than paranoia.
Perfect example of the double-standard women face when it comes to sexuality and beauty.
Women who fail at attaining the beauty standard risk losing jobs, not getting hired, being refused promotion.
There was a survey done some years ago that found women who didn’t put on makeup gave the impression they weren’t as ‘serious’ about their jobs.
@kaninchenzero and Persia Yes, absolutely. That’s kinda why I snarked about “self esteem” at the end, not because there’s anything wrong with that (of course we need self esteem) but because there *is* societally sanctioned punishment lurking behind that fear. So it’s not irrational at all to fear, nor is it weak or politically retrogressive to do what you need to for your safety, job security etc.
So I guess what I’m thinking about is how individualist solutions of themselves aren’t so useful. You know, like throwing out the razor or whatever could be personally empowering to be sure, but that of itself doesn’t really change owt. The problem isn’t any particular arbitrary line, but the compulsory nature of them – and the way that patriarchal capitalism incorporates their opposites too (eg there’s an evangelical beauty market too, in line with uber-conservative beauty standards).