Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism
Author: Linda M Scott
Fresh Lipstick shakes feminist fashion down to its Birkenstocks.
Linda M. Scott wants to put an end to the belief that American women have to wear a colorless, shapeless uniform to achieve liberation and equality.
A pointed attack on feminism's requisite style of dress, Fresh Lipstick argues that wearing high heels and using hair curlers does not deny you the right to seek advancement, empowerment, and equality. Scott asserts that judging someone on her fashion choices is as detrimental to advancement as judgments based on race, nationality, or social class. Fashion is an important mode of personal expression, not an indication of submission. She demonstrates that feminism's dogged reduction of fashion to sexual objectification has been motivated by a desire to control other women, not free them. This push for power has produced endless conflict from the movement's earliest days, hindering advances in women's rights by promoting exclusion. It is time for the "plain Jane" dress code of the revolution to be lifted, allowing all women to lead, even those wearing makeup and Manolos.
Marching through 150 years of American dress history, Scott rips down feminism's favorite positions on fashion-from the power of images to the purpose of makeup. The illustrative examples-from flappers to Twiggy to body-piercing-are often poignant, occasionally infuriating, but always illuminating and thought-provoking.
With Fresh Lipstick, Linda Scott gives women the ammunition to settle the fashion debate once and for all. She challenges feminists to move beyond appearances and to return their focus to the true mission of the movement: equality for all womeneverywhere.
Publishers Weekly
In this strident, well researched and sometimes exhausting critique of the women's movement's strains of "antibeauty ideology," Scott, an associate professor at the University of Illinois, argues that feminist doesn't have to mean frumpy. It won't be news to post Sex and the City "do-me" feminists, but adornment, Scott insists, is a natural, inherently positive way for women to express their identities; fashion is neither the instrument of male oppression that members of the mid-19th-century anti-corset "dress reform" movement insisted it was nor the vehicle for sexual exploitation (or signal of antifeminist backlash) that some contemporary feminists suggest it is. Beginning with Susan B. Anthony's prudish rejection of stylish Elizabeth Oakes Smith at the 1852 Women's Convention, academic and upper-class feminists have consistently discredited women (especially of lower classes) who don't fit the mold, Scott argues. Scott's analysis extends to what she sees as today's antibeauty books and films (e.g., Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly movies), which she argues are hypocritical, reductionist and, at worst, classist. Scott is most convincing when she argues for the liberating capacity of fashion: "By ignoring the way that self-decoration expresses the human force of creative expression...[;] and by denying the strength these practices can bring at depression, dislocation, and even death, the antibeauty critique engages in cultural cruelty." But she sometimes falters, as when she glosses over the media and fashion industry's relationship to the very real danger of eating disorders. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Scott (advertising & women's studies, Univ. of Illinois) contends that leaders in the women's movement-from Susan B. Anthony to Gloria Steinem-have misled women by suggesting what they ought (and ought not) be wearing. Scott disputes the claim that a patriarchal fashion industry has been oppressing women and offers a detailed and revealing analysis of women's magazines and advertisements with a focus on the women involved in their publication. Scott argues that, from the beginning, the feminist movement has been dominated by white, educated, financially comfortable women who have not considered the concerns of women from other social classes or ethnic groups. She observes that body decoration is practiced by men and women in cultures worldwide and is a valid means of self-expression, arguing that feminists should stop being concerned with what women wear and focus on important issues like jobs and discrimination. This well-researched, enlightening, and provocative book is recommended for academic and large public libraries.-Debra Moore, Cerritos Coll., Norwalk, CA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Table of Contents:
| Introduction : tossing down the glove | 1 | |
| Ch. 1 | The natural fallacy | 11 |
| Ch. 2 | Dress reform and domination | 23 |
| Ch. 3 | Making the myth | 53 |
| Ch. 4 | Reading the popular image | 89 |
| Ch. 5 | The power of fashion | 127 |
| Ch. 6 | Sex, soap, and Cinderella | 165 |
| Ch. 7 | Rethinking necessities | 191 |
| Ch. 8 | Freudian feminism and commercial conspiracy | 223 |
| Ch. 9 | Something different | 251 |
| Ch. 10 | Style and substance in the second wave | 281 |
| Ch. 11 | Exclusive rights | 311 |
| Ch. 12 | Fresh lipstick | 327 |
Mitchell's Story: Living with Cerebral Palsy
Author: Jeff Parkin
Mitchell's Story. . . . Living with Cerebral Palsy is about a mother who has a touching and somewhat sad tale to tell about her only son who contracted the frustrating disease called cerebral palsy.
The remarkable thing about this book is the courage displayed by Lynda and Grant Thompson as they began a daily struggle to give their son as normal of a life as they possibly could.
Lynda feels that this book can be of great assistance to those who are just now finding out that their son or daughter has this awful disease. She speaks of obstacles she has encountered which can prepare the new parents of CP kids for the challenges that lie ahead.
Part of the book deals with the help she received as she was dealing with her son on a day to day basis. Inside the book is information that new parents might find valuable in dealing with and helping their child.
We hope that everyone who reads her story will find that it helped him or her in some way.
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