A Woman is Only a Body in Private

-Nicole Gage



In CollegeHumor’s video “Why Girls Don’t Fart,” a woman is portrayed as incapable of releasing natural bodily functions in public, which shows society’s belief that women should be pure and should perform personal rituals in a place that is as secluded as possible. When the woman in the video does perform certain functions, she goes into a restroom where the stall is mechanically transported underground, and she must lock herself in a capsule to do everything she had held in throughout the day. This shows how women feel pressure to hide bodily functions, and how they are shamed into isolating themselves completely in order to act naturally.
The video begins with an attractive female who walks into a classroom and is followed by the gaze of two male students. They follow her throughout the course of a day, but she manages to hold in every natural bodily function and leaves them bewildered. First, she begins to sneeze but holds it in. Then, she almost burps but never actually does. Finally, at a lunch table she appears as if she is going to flatulate, or fart, but does not do so. The fact that she is consciously suppressing such functions while men face no pressure to do so shows the double standard that women are held to.
The issue of privacy also arises when the woman must go into the most secluded space possible in order to relieve herself of all suppressed actions. She not only goes into a private restroom stall, but is then transported underground to an area that looks almost scientific. This functionally turns her into a specimen and she is dehumanized in this process. This part of the video is an exaggeration, which shows that a woman is expected to have utmost privacy when momentarily putting down her personal front.
After she presses many buttons and locks herself into a capsule, she is shown in her most “natural” form. This form consists of a naked, screaming woman who seems to be in pain as she thrashes around and releases all previously suppressed bodily functions. Not only is she portrayed more as an animal than a human being, but the video seems to advocate that her release of such functions could be potentially dangerous, as lighting fixtures break while she is still flailing about. Overall, the video sheds light upon the societal pressures for women to privatize all of their acts that are not consistent with appropriate social norms.

E.C. Gardener, The House that Jill Built

In 1892, the architect, E.C. Gardner, wrote The House that Jill Built: After Jack's Proved a Failure, a fictional work about a bride-to-be who demands a better home than the one her fiance promises to bring to the marriage. Throughout the book, she establishes herself as an expert on domestic architecture (an idea that later gets translated into 'home economics').

What is interesting about the book is the way that it, in 1892 (prior to probably any debates over feminist epistemology), proposes a uniquely female way of knowing. This knowledge is based on the woman as a consumer of the household, who then becomes an expert in the necessary structures and materials to keep the home in order. We can say all kinds of things about the assumptions underlying such a project, but it is really amazing how much technical and material knowledge is contained in the book (meant to be a kind of how-to guide for architects).

Framed, as it is, by the story of Jill, who has rejected Jack's proposed marital home, it at once recognizes a particular kind of power exercised by a bride-to-be in a position to negotiate the kind of home she wants to live in, while also privileging the control over that space because it is one that will serve as a container for her life.

If we compare Jill's design practice (which we could characterize as feminist in some ways though not in others) to more contemporary examples, including our own in-class design competition, what do we find? In Jill, space is deterministic. She refuses to allow certain types of furniture or room relationships lest her husband "laps[e] into barbarism." The home is a space defined by materials--leather, tile, shades, verandas, sunlight, windows. Relatedly, we find an extended meditation on landscape and place as locales for the ideal country home. At times, the narrative collapses into the tedium of details, with Jill rattling off demands and Jack acting bored or clueless. What did Gardner mean by this representation? Clearly the book has an agenda of promoting shifts in home design, but its tone toward gender is also curious, portraying Jill as dominant and Jack as helpless.

This is hardly the collaborative feminist design process inaugurated in the 1970's. It does, however, speak to a certain kind of enfranchisement related to gender and space that pre-cedes suffrage by almost 30 years. Unlike contemporary feminist designers, however, space, in Jill's case, is not associated with freedom but with temperance, morality, and the preservation of the home. This complicates ideas about female designers and architects producing different kinds of space. Not in a way that would downplay the need for more women in the profession, but it does ask us to re-evaluate the "so what?" question of gender and space. Or at least to wonder whether the narrative is not a little bit altered by the narration of a male intermediary architect.

Bras and Purses: the spatiality of gender in internet memes

--Carly Cindrich



If you are a female with a Facebook account, there is a good chance that you received this message in your inbox at some point this week:

About a year ago, we played the game about what color bra you were wearing at the moment. The purpose was to increase awareness of October Breast Cancer Awareness month. It was a tremendous success and we had men wondering for days what was with the colors and it made it to the news. This year's game has to do with your handbag/purse, where we put our handbag the moment we get home. For example "I like it on the couch", "kitchen counter", "the dresser" well u get the idea. Just put your answer as your status with nothing more than that and cut n paste this message and forward to all your FB female friends to their inbox. It doesn't have to be suggestive. The bra game made it to the news. Let's see how powerful we women really are!!!

If you haven’t seen this message yourself, there is still very likely that several “I like it on…” statuses appeared on your news feed. The explanation behind this successfully viral Facebook message is that October is breast cancer awareness month. Last year to raise awareness, a group of activists sent a similar Facebook message to all of their females friends asking them to simply post the color of their bra they were wearing. The end of the message read, “Pass it on and be sure to do your breast self-exams!” While the game is amusing and made for a pretty successful internet meme , it seems that this year the actual purpose of the game got lost in the goal to a) exclude men from knowing something and b) to be as suggestive as possible. This year’s message did not even remind women to do their self-exams, nor did the secret behind the game have anything to do with breast cancer. However, in a world where women feel so disempowered by men, it is really no wonder why a little “don’t let the boys in on the joke” game could be appealing to women all over the world. Both years’ games shared this exclusivity aspect, but this year’s “I like it on…” statuses introduced a strong sexual note into the game. At first, it might just seem like a random silly thing to do or a way for some girls to flirt with the idea of themselves as sexually adventurous and experienced. However, if you look again at the big picture you can see that the sexual connotation of the statuses still links back to the issue of empowerment. In “The Sex Which Is Not One," Luce Irigaray writes about how women find pleasure in viewing themselves as the proxy for male pleasure. For women, viewing ourselves as having some hold over men gives us enough power that we regard the small shred of it we get from having something men want to make it synonymous with our own pleasure. Men are thought of as sexual beings and therefore their sexual fervor is socially acceptable, and traditionally women are not supposed to have their own sexual needs or desires. Possibly for some women, the allure of these Facebook statuses is that it allows them to express a preference about something sexual simply for shock value.
The fact that each woman is asked to identify the place she likes to put her purse brings into play the idea that space is never neutral and is most often gendered. By participating in the game, each woman consents to having the place of her purse be construed by the public as the place she likes to have sex. Therefore, the most obscure places to have sex, even if it made perfect sense for a woman to place her purse there, resulted in the most comments and amused feedback. One popular status this week came from my best friend who “likes it hanging on the wall.” By turning the spatial home of a gendered object into the site of sexual activity, the sex itself becomes gendered in the same way. Therefore the place aspect of these statuses was another way for women to assert their sexual dominance and desire.
Although this year’s Facebook game was successful strictly in terms of participation, the official purpose to raise breast cancer awareness was rather lost in all the excitement. To make sense of the popularity of these Facebook statuses is to understand that for today’s disempowered and misunderstood (or simply unheard) woman, the iota of power that marginalizing men for a day on a social networking site along with the allure of being sexually suggestive while remaining innocent is enough to make a simple Facebook message turn into a viral trend seen around the world.

Semiotics of the Kitchen

Design competition roundup

Here are the relevant posts on the design competition:


Guidelines and expectations

Introduction

Initial reactions

Entries

Final Results

Life or Wife? Representations of female vulnerability in a Super Bowl tire commercial

--Shivani Williams



In this Super Bowl commercial advertisement that was shown in 2010, Bridgestone Tires made a rather bold statement about the role of women in less than sixty seconds.

This commercial depicts a man driving a very fast car only to be stopped by a group of men who threaten him to give up either “his Bridgestone tires or his life.” The driver mistakes the word “life” for “wife” and quickly makes the decision that he would rather keep his tires by throwing his wife out of the car and driving away. By choosing to keep his tires, the woman is shown as less important than material items, such as the parts to a car. Not only is the message a sexist one, but the environment also aids in setting the tone for the exclusion of women. The illusion of the industrial setting as the workplace for men helps create the tone for this commercial. As British feminist and political theorist Carole Pateman put it, “men represent the series of liberal separations and oppositions: female or, --nature, personal, emotional, private, intuition morality, subjection; male—or culture, political, reason, justice, public, philosophy, power, achievement, universal, freedom...” The fast-moving vehicle and power tools imply that the world is a man-dominant one with man being the central character who is associated with power and achievement in this scenario. The scared, surprised look on the woman’s face is associated with vulnerability and emotion—terms commonly used to describe a woman’s innate characteristics.

The physical appearance of the wife can be interpreted as how women should be viewed according to not just men’s standards, but society’s standards in general. The woman in the commercial is unrealistically represented as “the modern wife,” or how the modern wife should look. She is a young, thin female wearing a leather outfit and heavy eye-makeup. Is this the model that society thinks all women should strive to be? Bridgestone sure seems to think so. Furthermore, the man driving is not even shown, demonstrating that a man’s appearance is not nearly as important as that of a woman’s. Again, this gives men some level of superiority over women.

The fact that the man who was threatening the driver didn’t even think twice about threatening the life of the driver’s wife gives women everywhere a representation that they are not worthy against the value of a set of tires. The man gives a look of defeat thus proving that the woman in front of him is useless.

Basically, Bridgestone sums it up for us with its motto at the end of the commercial, “It’s Bridgestone or nothing,” which seems to leave us thinking that they live by this a bit too literally.

Feminist design competition - final results!

The two submissions showed us a number of important things about the relationship between gender, space, and feminist design practices. The first, and most important, has to do with how we define what words like "feminist" and "gender" mean. When we say that feminism is about "equality" or "difference," who are we talking about being equal or different? Relatedly, when we talk about preserving respect for difference while promoting equality, how do we plan to go about doing this and what do we do when trade-offs inevitably occur? The answers to these questions are complicated. In fact, feminists have been, for some time, concerned with answering these questions in order to further political agendas.

Throughout the semester, the class has discussed ways that space can be oppressive, either by design or by default. We have also looked at many examples of ways that design can be a political practice of perpetuating or altering exclusionary spatial practices. This is a unique and empowering position for designers, we've found, because it rebuilds the built environment that forms the basis for our daily interactions. The current trend toward "green" architecture and Ecological Urbanism comes in part from a recognition that design is not merely aesthetic and has the capacity for social change.

The questions that remain are whether we have chosen the right kind of political agenda and whether our designs can achieve that agenda. SAGE and Friedan Hall, as the previous post explains, adopt very different approaches to feminism, not only as a way of thinking but as a method for design. SAGE is focused on equality that does not privilege any particular identity. Friedan Hall, while also at times concerned with maintaining neutrality, also builds in innovative ways of getting residents to interact, share space, and become aware of different lifestyles and opinions. There are pros and cons to each approach that are debated between the second and third wave feminists. I won't reiterate them here, but suffice it to say that I thought that both groups achieved their particular feminist approach very well through their designs. There were places that both could have improved, but given the constraints of the exercise, I was very impressed with what was produced.

To that end, and giving a nod toward the consensus between the groups that rejecting hierarchy is a desirable feminist practice, the outcome of this contest is a tie. Deciding in favor of either team would require choosing a superior form of feminist thought, rather than who had the better design, because both teams achieved their goals equally.

Both teams will receive extra credit for this assignment. Congrats to all involved!