Y'all Fancy: Joan Jolt and Miss Lady

For Joan 1986-2013

The story of Y'all Fancy:

It went like this. I had just met Joan Jolt at our Varieties of American Feminism 1830-1930 seminar, courtesy of the NEH. We were, like, legally obligated to become friends because of roller derby reasons, though we wouldn't know how good of friends yet. On what I remember as the second day we were walking back to our cars through the steamy disgusting swampy Mississippi River heat that is St. Louis in the summer at noon, y'all. I remember that she farted as a sign of our derby kinship. Love.

Anyhow, we got into a discussion where I was lamenting the olden days, where derby ladies just stank after they played and that was that. Recently, in my league, ladies had begun to spray their pads down with homemade organic derby pad deodorizer IN ADDITION to washing them with some sorta frequency. I felt a pressure to also not be disgusting. "Oh look at me, I smell good at brunch, and I'm maybe not gonna get MRSA!" I mockingly impersonated a fictional amalgam of these cleanly girls.
"Oh, y'all fancy!" I yelled to nobody as we walked toward the Delmar Loop. We were pretty amused at ourselves. She had on her grey "pajama skirt," a detail that seems important now. This is also the conversation where we invented the, as-it-turns-out, incredibly useful phrase, "dookiefoot." We often yell-talked at each other perfectly sober out of sheer excitement for our words and sharing, and I yell-talked "dookiefoot" when trying to describe my discovery of what post-practice derby girls smell like, when I used to attend brunches while injured and thus, unstanky. Turns out we actually should try to be cleaner.

Dr. Perry, the leader of our seminar wanted us to complete some sort of writing project during our seminar. Joan, mostly sensibly, wanted to do some writing and research related to her thesis. During a previous NEH seminar, I had reviewed sources related to beauty culture during the New Negro Renaissance-- which seemed to be both interesting to me and to my audience. As a hairstylist, by trade at some points, and always in my heart, I wanted to continue with this work. However, since I'm a scholar, or arguably a pseudo scholar, as a hobby more than anything at this point, I didn't want to produce a scholarly work, which would feel dead on the page, with no outlet. I wanted something that could grow beyond the seminar and edutain the masses, or at least my friends. Hence the blog.

I played around with a few names involving fanciness. I played around with the subtitle endlessly until I got it right. Then it hit me: Y'all Fancy. We had thrown the phrase around a few times since its initial utterance during our MANY outings. The more I thought about it the better it seemed to capture all I wanted to include in the blog. The best part though, I knew already, would be telling Joan. Since I'm given to drama, I merely informed her of how much should she love it. I wrote the first entry and let her know she should check it out ASAP. I can't remember the details, but I know she was unreasonably excited, as was our individual and team custom.

In comparison to my last post, written 3 months after her death, the posts in St. Louis were incredibly easy to write. They just spilled out. I know that this was partly the luxury of time, and partly the intellectual incubation of the seminar, but it was also Joan. Others have said likewise about her, but she was my biggest champion. She was my audience. She also double-checked my sometimes patchy sense of history.

Over the course of the four week seminar, we became close friends through many adventures and misadventures. We fed off of one another's desire for FANCY and bonded over our shared experiences as Southern Feminists From Crazy States. I put a red streak in her hair and taught her how to tease it big. We gave Chicago and ourselves new assholes during our trip to visit Hull House. I have some lingering guilt over distracting her from her writing (newsflash: I'm distracting) but she always said that the informal exchange at conferences was more important to her than the official pageantry. And we informally exchanged a lot of history and feminist theory at all the dive bars St. Louis had to offer. Drunk History had nothing on us. Our friendship persisted even after parting ways and always, there was a little scholarly spark between us: generating lessons, discussing what's wrong with academia, crying while Junot Diaz spoke, editing her Claude Lightfoot paper, planning graphic novels about unsung feminist heroes, decoding the cultural history of mid-century modern houses while we lusted over their double doors...

Over the past month or so, I've read more and produced more writing than in the whole rest of the year before that. I suppose that I'm trying to prove to myself, like everyone who knew her, that I can do what I used to do with her, without her. In a way though, she will always be my audience for this.

Steampunk, Feminism, Rockabilly, and Me

 

Recently, at the request of a student in my British Literature class, I put together a short presentation on Steampunk as a fashion and literary subculture. For the students in this class, it is their second year to have Miss Lady as their teacher and they are quite familiar with my penchant for using fashion to teach about history so I can teach about literature. They tolerate, and maybe even like, this quality in me.  I put together a short presentation that covered Steampunk definitions, literature, the aesthetic, and of course, the Victorian inspirations for the subculture’s fashions. Obviously, there’s no way anyone could understand Victorian novels without observing the hyperboles of femininity created by things such as the bustle and the corset or talking about the corset as both a literal form of constriction AND a metaphor for binding gender, social, and moral expectations right? And clearly no one could fully understand any of that if I didn’t wear a Steampunk- meets- Miss Lady- outfit complete with a brocade mini-top hat and sprocket earrings I made myself, right? It’s not really my preferred fashion subculture, but it’s fun enough and I like a costuming challenge. No, I didn’t wear brown and brass. Who do you think I am? I did a black and pewter version, thank you.

Anyhow in the course of putting together my getup and the presentation, I started thinking about Steampunk’s implications for third wave feminism, or perhaps more appropriately third wave feminism’s implications for Steampunkness. I didn’t quite have my thoughts formulated on this yet at the time of the lecture, but when the students commented that the women in my fashion exemplars looked quite provocative, I told them that somehow third wave was at play here…reappropriating the corset to take control of your own sexuality, recasting it on an active heroine rather than a fainting couch damsel, etc. After doing a little research on Steampunk politics and ideology (an admittedly missing part of my presentation) it turns out that, as I suspected, there’s plenty of thinking on this topic out there. Makes sense: how on earth would you have a diverse, modern, often progressive, crowd recreating aspects of an era known for imperialism and gender repression, without addressing this?  People write about Steampunk as a space for empowering those traditionally powerless in Victorian culture, using as examples stories with female sky- captains…you know…for the fleet of dirigibles, or stories with positive representations of queerness and color. Writers also explore the perils of females being fetishized in a culture that is often so visual, or conversely, the reversal of binary expectations that comes with the dandy, dapper, and often high adorned versions of male steampunk dress. Additionally, there are plenty of writings about Steampunk + race+ class+ sexuality and so on. I say this having only explored the blogosphere and Steampunk Magazine. At the moment, I don’t PLAN to research this further, so I haven’t looked at the presence of scholarly articles yet.

The whole topic made me want to write about this in my own preferred subculture(s) which I loosely describe as rockabilly. To be more specific, I’m a vintage and mid-century lover, with an appreciation for all things atomic and pin-up. Though I occasionally manage to look cool, in my heart, I’m just geeked out on the history, so I went down this path long before I even knew of rockabilly as a subculture or even a music. Though I sometimes feel like an outsider and an interloper in the rockabilly scene, I enjoy the music and the aesthetic, so I think it’s fair enough for me to put the rockabilly label on me. I’ve got the bangs anyhow;)

Not unlike those who celebrate Victoriana, I have to acknowledge that my outfits, and accessories…and accoutrements…and lamps belong to a time that was often unkind to women, in addition to being unkind (oh dear God I sound like my mom…unkind! By that I mean limiting, repressive, soul killing, and sometimes dangerous) to people of color, poverty, disability. Oh and the fast and loose business with liberties, like those guaranteed by the First Amendment, which is like my favorite amendment, was also pretty shitty, according to my watching of Good Night and Good Luck and my teaching of The Crucible.

Does this present some problems for a feminist? Of course. When I’m rolling on a girdle, or putting some pearls up on my décolleté so that everyone knows what a perfect specimen of demure, classy, femininity I am, or cinching my waist in, such that my tits look like rocket ships for all the boys that were such heroes in the war...or Cold War missiles...or Cadillac fins, does it give me pause? Of course. Sometimes. In between all the curling, and plucking, and shaving, and liplining, and nail painting. And sometimes, in a general feminist concern,I wonder if the opportunity cost that comes with trading intellectual activity time for primping, is worth it for any kind of look. In the end, I’m me: Miss Lady. A woman who defines herself by her power to create beauty and complexity with visual adornment that is sometimes well thought out enough to be considered an intellectual pursuit. So I probably won’t be giving up the fancyfying any time soon. In any case, though I’ve often said that I’d like to walk around in a little mid-century bubble, in reality I know I would have been unhappy with my plight and the plight of others during this time.

In one of the writings about Steampunk, the author pointed out that though the time period may have been repressive, there were many strong individuals fighting against this oppression. Indeed repression gave birth to the creation of a feminist consciousness and many people who championed for its goals and related goals: Mary Wollstonecraft (as a Victorian pre-cursor and inspiration), Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone, Ida B. Wells, Amelia Bloomer, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, to name a few. Generally, I also teach the activists of the early 20^th century as a product of rebellion against Victorian repression: Alice Paul, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, etc. Not that I long for oppression just so that we can appreciate the badasses that fight against it, but it is one way to admire an era.

This is most certainly a part of my obsession in the mid-century America. It’s the struggle, the tension, the collision of so many things. I teach the kids that people sometimes (misguidedly) look back on the 1950s as a golden and perfect time, but that you really don’t have to scratch the surface very deeply in order to see that this isn’t true.

 

A great example of this, to me, is Marilyn Monroe. (FYI after reading the recent Lois Banner photo/bio book of Monroe, I put together a monstrously long ode to her…but lost it. As soon as I manage to reread the book and recreate all my thoughts, it will be here.) I know that not everyone would think of her as any sort of gender rebel; in fact, many would think her as a gender conformist. In my mind, she plays with the rules of the time, in order to make herself arguably the most well-known icon of sexuality ever. In some ways she fits the box: blonde and primped, exuding enough childlikeness to seem girlish and submissive, but ever
in charge of her career, her image, her own production company, and men’s desires. Banner makes the point that Monroe, who was famous for playing the “dumb blonde” archetype, was careful to select only the “dumb” roles with another side, or a “secret smart.” She knew when to cover it up, when to take it off, and how to work a fucking dress such that the hot mess of her sexuality was bursting out of her smooth cover, not unlike what fascinates me about the 50s itself. She wasn’t a conformist to sexual norms of the time; she was an artist at manipulating them.

Also worthy of fascination are the original women of rockabilly. At a time when the mass marketed fantasy for white middle class women, and by extension all the people who were told they should be more like this, was wedded bliss in the domestic sphere, these women (or really girls in many cases) chose music pioneering and traveling the road,  competing, more or less with male musicians. I adore the growling rasp of Wanda Jackson, who mostly wrote her own songs as a rockabilly musicians since the existing songs were written strictly for men. The topics of the songs she wrote and/or sang eschew traditional gender expectations…”Let’s Have a Party”, “Mean Mean Man,” “Funnel of Love”…in either tone or topic. Also noted, I love the story of Rose Maddox (from the Maddox family of songestry and matching outfits) nearly getting kicked out of the Grand Ole Opry and refusing to play there again over a scandalous sleeveless fringe dress. That’s right, girl; don’t let no one shit on your dress parade.

And of course, there’s the writers and activists (often the same thing) of the time and just beyond. One of my favorite poems to teach is Anne Sexton’s “Self in 1958.” I truly feel for the life that led to that poem; so far it’s been the best vehicle for teaching my students, who often believe that we are post-feminism, what it means to be robbed of your agency then and now. I don’t know how much I can say about admiring the words and actions of women like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem in any essay already too long, except that I do. Certainly connected to that are the millions of women, like my mother, who though brought up to see the domestic sphere as their destiny, made their way in the very male public spaces of “work.”

Truth be told, I feel more alienated by limited and rigid gender construction in the modern rockabilly culture that emulates the mid-century history than the history itself. To be clear, between the dance scene, the music scene, the fashion scene, the car scene, etc and all the related scenes like hillbilly, burlesque and more, I find plenty of progressive people who are complex in their thinking, artistry, aesthetic,  gender politics, and other things people put in lists. HOWEVER, there is a very strong contingent that makes me feel as if I need to have been married by 21, birthing a rockabilly baby already, and riding in my man’s hotrod as an accessory, in order to claim to be authentically rockabilly. Combine that with my inner dorkiness and this explains why I always feel like an imposter. Most of the time, I’m not unhappy about that. If any people are going to get subjugated into an accessory, it ain’t me.

Related to that is a seeming anti-intellectual bent to the culture. I understand perfectly well that some are emulating the working class of the mid-century. But I’m always baffled at the need to preserve some things that a little bit of thought could dispel, like racism or sexism, or the need to actually be working class in order to be considered authentic, rather than just a weekender who, you know, needs a reliable import to drive to work. I’m assuming this is connected; I’m having trouble finding scholarly or even bloggerly writing that takes on the topic of gender politics in modern rockabilly subcultures. I’ve found articles on women in the history of rockabilly and a few photo books which may address this, but no in-depth writing so far. Still looking.

So where do I land? How do I justify the look, when I swear that the personal (fashion ethos) is political? The best explanation is connected to the women of the time period that I love. I tap into existing expectations, so I can knock them down. Really think I look demure in my petticoat? Wait till I cuss more than my sailor father and your sailor father anybody’s sailor father that ever was. Do you think that a woman who only owns pink suits can't be excellent at her job? Watch me. That sorta thing.

As always I could be kidding myself about my power to transcend oppression and its symbolism simply with my sassy reappropriations.

 

The Pack of Wild Drag Queens What Raised Me

Sometimes I like a pretty phrase, a fancy image. It causes me to stretch the truth sometimes. As some of y’all know, I was technically raised by a decidedly regular set of parents, not drag queens. As much as I like to think of Hedwig as my mom, teaching me to apply striated glitter eyeshadow that has layers and depth, while others learned to color in the lines, or a RuPaul dad who taught me to put on pantyhose…really it was sweet Vera and Barry, teaching me to value a tidy house and proper lawn maintenance. Two things I do so well now! Never falter.

However, the phase does refer to something real. Not drag queens, (necessarily anyhow) but gay men. And not a literal raising from birth…in a rhinestone cave, but raising me from a sorta broken girl to a proud fierce miss lady thang woman diva honeychild, dammit.

Once upon a midnight queery, also known as the other night, after Pride, up in Dallas, I received a text from one of the many influential gay mens from my past and present that started with “Happy Gay Pride Day, Miss Lady!” and ended with “Thank you for accepting me and all my (2/2) faggotry!”

Its inspired me to write a message to that faggot ( a term that would make him both scowl and kick up his feet) and all others who lay claim to faggotry:  I love you. In a deep, yet sitcom worthy way. In a way that will always be somewhat of a mystery to me, the little broken pieces of our queer little hearts are drawn together into one glorious whole. (Do not confuse with glory hole.) But more importantly than loving you, I thank you. Let me count them ways:

1)   1)   First, you named me. Well, actually it was a frustrated 16 year old nail art-having, gum-popping student who first put that on me... “miss, miss, miss, umm…Miss Lady!” But it was the repeated usage and oh-so-positive response of the gay, who saw that it fit me, and knew that it was fierce, that caused me to adopt this term, that so perfectly captured all the burgeoning conflict and glitter that was growing up inside me, and the identity I was fashioning around it.

2)     2) The first and most and best visual admiration I ever got was from gay men. I know that some might think that a gaze from the gays might not mean much in a culture where women are taught over and over to evaluate their worth based on their sex appeal, presumably to heterosexual men, but it did. After trying to explain what I knew naturally to others who didn’t, the best words I can come up with is that some gay men look at you in a way that’s not sexual…but sexified! Many can easily see the sexy on a woman; they just don’t want to sex it. Honestly, sometimes I think it’s easier because it’s not all wrapped up in wondering what some buddy will think, or the ongoing scale of rating women and whether or not you’d like to bang them/ hit that/ fuck her,  or somesuch. In the past, gay men have just told me that I was lovely/sexy/hot/ awesome, simply because it was true.

So, in the same vein, I’d like to thank some gay men specifically for this. I’ll start with the gay man who gave me my first kiss…outside a food court bathroom y’all. While I really wanted to be hitting on his super stable straight friend who had accidentally shot his mother the year before, this was nice too. And thank you to Terry, who first taught me the power of my updos, by asking me to junior homecoming after I made a particularly fetching one in my morning cosmetology class, on the condition that I wear my hair like that. And to Juan, who will buy me drinks not for my tits, but for my grande entrances!  Or to that one big muscle man at the Village Station circa 2003 who lifted me up in the air, making me feel like a hot pant wearing size 0, and danced me about until my shirt fell off, or that guy at that weird club in Oak Cliff that gave me all his numbers after I Dancing Queened in my fairy Onassis costume, or those drag queens up in the bathroom that liked my glitter hairspray that one time and that other time. And thank you to David, a true ladies fag, who amongst other things, insists that I am photogenic, and then photoshops my pictures to prove it.

It might seem sad to anyone who doesn’t really get the toxic culture concerning appearance for American women, where opportunities for rejection and inadequacy are around every corner, but I don’t think I really understood that my exterior is worthy and fierce, just like my interior, until gay men learned me that lesson good. The interior stuff I owe to my birth parents; the rest I owe to the gay.

3)      3)Thank you for making me feel like a star. See above. And also, though it is decidedly less pronounced in Austin, nowhere else but in the gay community, do people swarm me so. Amongst my favorite moments, are the times when I arrived to an event alone and sober, let’s say it was the Puppy Parade, only to find myself immersed, given Bloody Marys, and introduced around. Like I was special…when really I’m just a little suburban girl whose shoes match her earrings which match her bunny purse which matches the holiday. 

4) I'm also supposed to say that you taught me to dress and that you are my constant fashion advisers. This was probably a collaborative effort (see suburban bustop, 1990, quote from Miss Lady, "It doesn't have to match; it just has to flow.)However, I do think we've worked it out quite nicely regardless.

For a while, gay men were the only men I knew. As my locale changed and my social goals have changed (find rich husband?) this has changed somewhat too. I don't think I ever could have had the confidence in myself to understand that straight men, with proper training on taste and all, could learn to love me too, if it weren't for you. However, my heart is still with the faggots. I hope that my Miss Ladyness is an equal exchange for all the faggotry you have graced me with. I know that not all men who claim gay also claim the faggotry, but for those who do, its always welcome here.

Teenage Miss Lady (It was SASSY, y'all.)

Here's a little story I wrote for/ read to my students when it's time to model the personal narrative process. Or learn about the many modern faces of transcedentalism. It's made to read aloud and display a simple accomplishable style for various levels of learners...in case you notice that the diction is somewhat different from the usual Miss Lady.

A Disruption to the Educational Environment

From the very beginning…wait…no…from some time in middle school, I was a rule breaker. Halloween seventh grade, due to it being 1987, I dressed up as a “punk rocker.” Blue hair and safety pin covered jeans really worked for me. So did the eye rolls I got from prissy popular girls. For that reason I stayed in costume for the rest of the year more or less. I took a break from such rebellion in 8^th grade because I had gotten really good at styling and frying my 80’s mall bangs into place, perhaps better than any other girl in the school, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could receive some validation from my classmates since this was the standard that all girls were judged by in the late 80s. I guess that didn’t work out, cause I don’t remember being popular or liked outside my small group of lightly nerdy friends.  At the end of the year I remember telling my friend Tien, “I’d rather be exotic than pretty, anyhow.”

Much to my mother’s dismay, I proceeded with that plan by spending most of the 9^th grade filtering all the non-black clothes out of my wardrobe and adding black lipstick & nail polish, pale pale make-up, and striped tights to the mix. By the 10^th grade even this wasn’t exotic enough for me. I decided that a few costumes would also be required. Bathrobes, psychedelic 60s dresses, and paisley face painting, nothing was beyond me.  I needed to be a freak even to the freaks.

My mother, who does not ever like to cause trouble or call attention to herself, no longer knew what to do with me or what to make of my outfits. So when I breezed out of my bathroom one morning dressed as a tree on fire, she just shook her head and let me sashay towards the bus stop.  At that point a green and brown outfit might have seemed preferable to her. Hair sculpted into a 8 inch flames and sprayed orange, burning tree branches delicately water-colored onto my forehead, orange lipstick paired with blazing eye shadow created from my “fete o fire” shadow quad…what were all of these things in comparison to studded dog collars and my black velvet cloak? She was numb to her freak of a daughter. How could she possibly tell what was too much?

She couldn’t tell, but Mr. Mojica, one of our ever changing assistant principals, he was pretty sure he could tell. My bus was the first one on campus and the minute I walked in the door, he was shuffling me, the so called “YOUNG LADY”, into the front office and radioing for back-up or something. Freaks were troublesome on any day. I was an emergency.

“This is unacceptable”…”It’s not fitting for a young girl”… “We DO NOT allow hair colors that do not occur naturally”… “a disruption to the educational environment!”

All these things were spoken to my surly stony face. First I tried explaining to them that the students who were so easily distracted were totally stupid, and therefore not as deserving of an education as myself… if at all. This was not very effective.

My mother was called. “Ms. Hendrix? Yes, your daughter looks like a freak. We can’t educate her. Can you come get her out of our way? Thanks.” It went something like that. Mr. Mojica reported that she was on her way. I was not leaving. I made that clear.

Additional principals were rotated in for their turn at bat with the freak. While Mr. Dibinsky was explaining that the school was protecting my safety, helping me to avoid bullying, harassment, and violence, by policing my freakness, I had an idea. Which was remarkable. At this point, I had turned not living up to my academic potential into an art form. Teachers talked all day and I barely learned a thing. I produced just enough work to maintain my status as an honor student and that was it. The word “disobedience” must have woken me up one day in history class though, because as I was sitting there listening to Mr. Dibinsky’s flawed reasoning, I had a flash memory of learning about Henry David Thoreau’s protest against paying taxes to a government he found to be unfair. I was clearly in the exact same situation.

I launched into this new platform:

“ I cannot follow a rule that I am opposed to. I have a moral obligation that requires me to object to your rule.” Damn honor students. I would make them sorry they ever tried to educate me.

The details aren’t necessary, but trust me, I was very persuasive. The administrators were unflinching. My mother arrived. I sat firm. Then she cried. I caved. Yes, I caved and with much shame I went home to wash my hair and change into a black dress topped by a 1960s swim cover-up. All capped off by black lipstick, something that was just inside the perimeters of the dress code.

After returning to school, I cried with my friends at the horror that I experienced. I commiserated with my English teacher who said “They just don’t get your creativity.” And even though it led to me discovering that he stank, I was delighted to get a consoling hug from a black- clad boy that I sorta liked cause he sorta liked me back or first or something.

I was pissed, but just as the rejection of my stupid middle school peers caused me to explore myself through fashion and hairstyling, this experience defined me too. I wasn’t my classmates. I didn’t share their values and I certainly didn’t value what the admin valued. I did, and still do, value personal expression above baseless, subjective, and ineffective rules.

So…now, I’m the teacher. My days are spent bothering students to bring their books, to plan out an essay that I can only hope they are interested in, and to stop disrupting the educational environment by talking to their friends. “Do you think this is a party?” “This is not McDonald’s Playland!” I’m an agent of the administration…or so they think.

I have to tell you that I wrote this during faculty meeting. “Folks, we gotta catch these dress code offenders early in the day. Everyone has to work together to enforce this consistently.” I hear others ask, “What about hats?”…”Are we going to do anything about all this cleavage?” … “What are we doing about baggy pants?”

It’s funny. I’ve come all this way. Beauty school, college, master’s degree, more college, 2 careers, Denton, Dallas, Austin, feminist, queer activist, teacher. I’ve traveled all that way to end up in pretty much that same place as when I was fifteen.

I sigh and wonder what we are doing to promote artistic expression and creative freedom. Should I follow my district’s mandated curriculum? Will it turn my students into free thinkers? What if a standardized test gets in the way of what I know is right for my them? If one of my students wants to cross dress this year, will I stand up for them if the administration balks? What will happen to me if I do? As always, I wonder if it is my job to follow the rules.

Beauty Culture and Change: 1920s

I scarcely can even manage to begin on this entry about the 1920s because there is simply so damn much to say, but after approximately 20 dozen outline attempts I plan to just try. That there is a connection between women’s appearance and her struggle for equality in the 1920s is not surprising, for as much as I think that this applies to numerous eras, it is manifest in so many ways during this decade and is, in fact, probably what led me to recognize this connection in the first place.

Fashion, no stranger to any American woman, apparently of any class, takes some interesting though probably familiar changes during this time. More significant though is the previously alluded to fact of the utter expansion of beauty culture, specifically the cosmetics and formal hairstyling industries during this time. In Hope in a Jar ,Peiss states that  the volume of American cosmetics sales in 1849, amounted to just a mere $355,000, probably due to the “home remedy” and private nature of the industry.  However, by the end of the 1920s, it was estimated that Americans spent 700 million on cosmetics. Banner cites a similar trend in the growth of beauty parlours, which numbered at just 5,000 in 1920 but grew to 25,000 by mid-decade and 40,000 nationwide by 1930. There were numerous factors that entered into this such as the expansion of advertising and media, but the changes in fashion and the growth of beauty culture, reflected and  created numerous changes in the status of women.

Most prominently to me, cosmetics grew because of a growing independence for women. Probably, reader, you are even more familiar with the little thing called the Constitution than Miss Lady and you realize that women, through tireless decades of effort, had recently obtained the right to vote. (Yay. We’re just like people now.) The effort to do this, along with growing industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and the money driven need to fulfill the American dream (money), had pushed and pulled women from the private sphere into the public, where for better or for worse, appearance is more important than when in the domestic and private sphere. Women now work in professional and service fields in increasing numbers, including teaching and beauty culture (hey!).

Coupled with this is the lifting of some of the Victorian constrictions that had restricted women prior to this. To paint or not to paint was no longer a question or just for prostitutes and other bad reputation ladies. The corset, restrictive as hell, had been switched out for the girdle, which, trust me, ain’t no picnic either, but which generally allows for a relatively full range of motion if one is motivated enough. The hemline rises, in fact a good bit more than the dress reformers of yestercentury had pictured, though not quite so high as the stupid costume makers of today seem to think. (Future entry: Halloween— an opportunity to express your inner poor judgment whore!) All of these things reflect the new modern woman’s ability to create a place for herself in society (yes, with limitations) and move about society freely, literally, and in the sense that she can occupy a greater number of positions and associate with more people than before.

Super free 1920s girdle

Fabulous!

Look at these ladies being all public sphere with their ankles!

Note boxy shapes for later down the page.

Makeup: Make-up, acceptable to be noticeable for the first time in polite society, swung to the opposite side of the pendulum in terms of its heaviness. The heavily powdered face, the extended brow, and deep and deeply unnatural cupid’s bow lip were popular during this time, and epitomized in icons such as Clara Bow. As I’ve written about previously, this is the moment that truly launches the democratic ideal of beauty, but also that ties it forever to products, and makes beauty a commodity to be sold to women over and over at a fairly high cost. From this time we see the rise of many commercial cosmetics companies from the lines of Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden, to a bit later, Max Factor and then Charles Revson aka Revlon. More dangerous than the idea that any woman can be beautiful for a price is the idea that a woman who refuses to pay this price is likely not to be beautiful, because she isn’t playing by the new rules. It’s tempting to write this off as the beginning of the end, a tragedy for women. However, it seems undeniable that women of the time…shit, women of my time…or well at least Miss Lady, used the new cosmetics to create new selves. A made up woman was a modern woman, who defined herself against the old Victorian guard and their ideas about who she should be, a woman who displayed the triumph of industrialization and American hope all over her damn face, and was looking forward, moving forward. Perhaps a bit overstated and dramatic, in my usual way, but still true.

Painted ladies!

Androgyny: Woe be to the American male who thinks that a bob is an androgynous hairdo today (to be clear, Miss Lady supports whatever kinda hairdo people want to wear…except maybe ugly ones) but nonetheless the bob, in my assessment embraced a sort of androgyny. It was a hairdo, that once again, in a glance made a woman clearly distinct from her elders and elder ideas, but also, in shedding the very locks that had for so long symbolized femininity, women claimed their rights, not just to control their own hair, but also to vote like men, to work like men, to drink like men, and to go wherever they pleased in life. Did some women wear it as a purely aesethetic fashion choice? Undoubtedly. Such is the case of any significant hairdo (thinking of the Afro specifically) but that doesn’t negate its political or cultural meaning, and it certainly doesn’t negate its practical purposes. As much as I like a long beauty process, there’s no doubt that taking it out of your life, does free you up for something that might be a more productive interest for you. Clearly, that shit don’t apply to Miss Lady, but the point remains.

Even more clearly androgynous than the bob though, is the silhouette of the dress during this time, which becomes increasingly more androgynous as the decade progresses. Hemlines rise, sure, but waistlines drop, lower and lower, until no trace of the hip, the previous hallmark of femininity ever accentuated by the corset, is really visible at all. Women take to binding their breasts, again rather than accentuating them. The overall result, while not androgynous or even masculine to the modern eye, is in that context an erasure of all that had defined femininity visually before (and later as it ebbs and flows throughout the 20^th century. Again, this is perhaps not significant or conscious for all wearers, but the relative freedom and gender erasure of this new dress, does mirror the relative breakdown of old gender norms, roles, and spheres for the modern American woman of the 20s.

While most of what I have written here admittedly grows out of the history of white middle class women, as that is the history that has been written about the most and the identity that applies to me (for a while...teacher salary ain't keep pace with COL!), the dynamic changes for African- American women are also visible in their beauty culture. I've made a distinction here and said "their" not because I'm the kinda gal who others people with the word "they," but because African- American and white beauty culture were and still are pretty seperate, for a complex set of reasons that involve choice, self-determination, discrimination, racism, and practicality all at once. Let's put the lid back on that can of worms though until I can address it in a more informed and thorough way.

The democratic ideal also applied to women of color at this time, though it was not without complicated racist and self-deprecating overtones as products were marketed and purchased to assist women in emulating white ideals of beauty. The history of skin lighteners, hair straighteners, and such have been well documented and this debate is a part of public discourse today (for a quick example see Good Hair), so I'd rather go into more detail about profound racial uplift that can be found in the print culture that reflects the fashion and beauty practices of African- American women around this time.







Ad from The Half Century



Map detailing number of beauty salons in 1925 Harlem

1920s Harlem Beauty Salon

In the 1920's, magazines for African- American women increasingly begin to represent models of black beauty in their stories and adverstisements. For instance, in early 1920s editions of The Half Century magazine, women of color were represented as beauty queens (in addition to celebrating their education, okay) and used to model the products being sold. Furthermore, this sent the clear message to African- American women that they were capable of owning the products being sold. Indeed they were too. The magazine, its adverstisements, and its readership reflected powerful change for African- American women; it reflected literacy, a rise in education levels, urbanization, and the increasing spending power of the Black middle class. I won't pretend that all of these positive things are not occuring within the context of a still profoundly racially divided and unequal America, but it is undeniable that uplift for African-American women is visible in the fashion and beauty culture of the 1920s and increases throughout the first part of the 20th century. I learned this by examining reprints of The Half Century itself and from the writing of Noliwe Rooks in her 2004 book, Ladies Pages: African- American Women's Magazines and the Culture That Made Them. As I've only barely scratched the surface here, I recommend her book and any primary sources like The Half Century that you can access. (No link here for you. Lemme know if you find something digital with free access.)

Just as I could scarcely begin this entry, I can scarcely manage to end it. I imagine that this one will be subject to edits, which we really shouldn’t take as an indication of any weakness in myself as a writer (though I will, trust me) but rather as an indication of the complexity of this era, of its rich possibility as an entry point for teaching both the history leading up to it, that which follows, interpreting what it means to be a modern woman.

Dress Code

While digging around in my thousands of emails for another file I ran across this little thing that I wrote in 2006 in response to some new (now forgotten thankfully) school dress code initiative that directed me to scope out the necklines of all of my female students. Me now is impressed with the badass passion of me then, and I post it here for your consider fucking ration.

Why do all these rules seem be directed towards policing the dress of women?

Because we live in a world where female sexuality is always ALWAYS policed and it never belongs to the woman who really fucking owns it.

A world where…

            A girl can still be thought of as “asking for it”

             Where one in four girls in the state of Texas will have to personally endure a violent sexual act in her lifetime and our best idea of a solution is to tell them not to walk alone at night

             Where a man’s erection is a woman’s fault, and worse, somehow her responsibility

A world where

            Even though every conservative hack with a tv show, radio hour, or syndicated column will tell us that provocative dress is ruining our society and our little darlings’ purity, girls see and know that a shapely piece of skin will get you more quick attention than math and science savvy

           

             Where people can usually separate a man’s looks from his brains, his physicality from his sexuality and both from his intellect, but not so much for women.

            Where women who are told to cover up, are uncovered in the billion dollar porn industry which has to cover itself up on magazine stands and hide in the shady part of town so that ministers and husbands and dads and football coaches and other perverts can gaze upon them and then hide them away in a closet or a secret file.

A world where

            A whore will and a bitch won’t

             Where governments make it hard for girl to run their own bodies: maybe you can have emergency contraceptive, maybe you can have an abortion, maybe you can have an HPV vaccination that protects you from FUCKING CANCER!

            Where little girls are told they need a husband and should grow up to be a mommy and boys are taught that they need a good job and a lot of pussy to be a man

A world where

           

            Wearing a short skirt could make you a slut in some people’s eyes, but wearing athletic pants could make you a lesbian. Supposedly that’s bad too.

            Where women are looked at every day by millions of eyes that say pretty, not pretty, great tits, fat ass, gross thighs, hot body, not after 30 beers, I’d like to hit that. It never stops, no matter what you look like.

            where men look at little girls all the time; we blame the men; we tell the girls to act like ladies, but everything we hold up as beautiful in women (small waist, perky breasts, etc) is best done by little girls. Its all of us.

And you want me to tell a girl how to dress? You want me to look at her skirt to see if its too sexy? Shouldn’t I be welcoming her to my engaging learning environment? I am supposed to check to see if she has been burdened/blessed with the kind of breasts that spill out of shirts? Shouldn’t I be trying to assess her reading comprehension skills or wondering if she could be a poetic genius with the right kind of encouragement?

.

When I was in high school, I rarely dressed in ways that my school fully approved of, but I was pretty used to the idea that the school got to regulate that somewhat. I tested the boundaries, and the school let me know they were there by sending me home to change from time to time. There were many other arenas that taught me that my body was policed, under control, and male property, at least visually if not actually. And some other healthier voices, but I just didn’t hear them over the din of patriarchal, paternalistic noise. So, in my senior year, when my boyfriend told me to wear shirts that covered me up, it seemed like a fairly natural thing. I may have even thought it was a compliment, him protecting me from the eyes of other men like that. It wasn’t until he got violent with his possessive protection that I understood that none of this was his right or his duty. I don’t know if my experience or all the similar experiences would really turn out differently if we didn’t put out the message that girls need their daddy and their principal to protect and police their sexuality, but I’m inclined to think it would help.

So, I won’t do it. I’m a woman; a feminist; and a proud rule breaker. Not a traitor.  I don’t need a government or a school, a parent, a man, or an employer to tell me what to do with my body and I won’t tell a young girl that she does either.  I own this body. Its easy to forget in this world where… well…you know, but most of the time I remember that I get to decide if this body is pretty or not. I clothe it. And I give out permission to touch it. I decide what it does. It’s mine. And I promise you I had to dress like a slut, whatever that means, a time or two, or right now to fucking get here.

Beauty Culture and Economic Empowerment: An Intro

In the continuance of my reading journey, I am now on to Hope in a Jar by Kathy Peiss.  I already had plans to write about various instances wherein beauty culture proved to be economically empowering to women as this is in keeping with my reading and observation about African American women and beauty culture from last summer’s NEH Institute, The New Negro Renaissance in America. I am further inspired (and disheartened—how could even Miss Lady say it better?) by numerous paragraphs from her introduction that capture this perfectly.

Peiss says “…this business for women was largely built by women.” And … “The very notion of femininity, emphasizing women’s innate taste for beauty opened opportunities for women in this business, even as it restricted them elsewhere. And women seized their chances, becoming entrepreneurs, inventors, manufacturers, distributors, and promoters. Handicapped in pursuing standard business practices, they resourcefully founded salons, beauty schools, correspondence courses, and mail-order companies.”

All this, I already discovered during last summer’s work, but I really like the way that Peiss words and contextualizes this in the debate (though it sometimes seems like a closed case) over the meaning of cosmetics and beauty culture for women. It seems sensible enough, but we have been well- versed since at least the second wave of feminism in essentializing the cosmetics industry as mere purveyors of false hope and subjugation to ultimately destructive beauty ideals. I don’t want to say that it isn’t that…cause it is, but that’s not all that beauty culture is.

In addition to being a woman surviving in the media- rich modern American beauty culture, I am also someone who worked in the industry, “behind the chair”, as the expression goes for hairstylists, who continues to do hair in the bizarre world of the wedding industry, and who holds many acquaintances working in various capacities in beauty culture from cosmetics counters to “med-spas.” I had long ago written it off as a predatory industry from both my points of view as a provider and a consumer of beauty culture.  To sell silicone laden shampoo, companies create the idea that your hair isn’t shiny enough. To sell “wrinkle cream” aka anti-aging products, marketers (whether on Madison Ave or behind the counter) prey upon the complex web of fears women often experience concerning aging. Self-tanner becomes necessary if pale skin is seen as undesirable, cellulite cream is for the poor unfortunate victim of that assault on thigh perfection, stupid unhealthy douches are sold to anyone with most any kinda fear about what lurks “down there.” Given the extent to which marketing exploits (or creates?) societal fears, the lack of efficacy in the face of considerable expense, and the sometimes dangerous and misrepresented side effects, it’s was pretty easy to come to a negative conclusion, especially as I experienced a growing feminist consciousness toward the end of my full-time hairstyling career.  (In case anyone is curious, I dealt with this by promising myself to never ever knowingly trade off someone’s insecurities, and to only promote reasonably priced and practical hair products. I can say that my conscience feels clean, though it might again be one of those issues where I kid myself. I did lose out on clients a few times because I declined to perform unneeded services.)

I was struck however, with a new thought, upon learning about Madam CJ Walker’s accomplishments within African- American beauty culture at the beginning of the 20^th century.  There are numerous biographies and websites dedicated to Madam CJ Walker and I will most likely write more about her here as well, but suffice it to say that she made a lot of money selling the “hair grower” she invented and further empowered other African- American women to have careers outside of modest or low paying jobs in domestic service to white households. It was then that I saw what had been in front of me all along—what beauty culture had done for me and for other women I know.

When I was fifteen, I made the decision to enter my school’s cosmetology program the following year. At that tender point in my early days as a rebel, I really just wanted to learn to color my own hair pink, but before very long in the program I began to picture something I just hadn’t really pictured yet: a career, adulthood, independence. As I grew up, completed my program, and became an officially licensed beauty operator by the then governing agency, the Texas State Board of Cosmetology, I gained a real career and a sense of personal efficacy through working. Hell, I gained a work ethic…because I didn’t have one before. I was fortunate enough to have some financial support from my parents as I decided to continue college and pursue teaching, but during this time hairstyling paid for my car and entertainment expenses and eventually my living expenses as I (arguably) learned how to be an adult. More importantly, it gave me a base of learning experiences to draw upon when it was time to begin at my other calling, public education. Which was good, because learning to teach was complicated enough that if I hadn’t already propelled myself from a trainwreck of a haircutter and a mediocre chemical technician, to a fairly good haircutter and an excellent chemical technician, I never would have believed that I could become a great teacher, or hell…even just survive. So there, it gave me faith.

More striking though, were the stories of the women who owned the salon where I spent the majority of my full-time career, Rizos Salon in Denton, TX.  Like Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden (who I barely know anything about at the moment, but got plans for!) my former bosses and dear friends, Techy, Yolanda, and Maria, are women who immigrated to the U.S. and sought out economic  opportunities. After training and working in an upscale salon, the three decided to open their own salon in 1993 in a rented retail space.  Through-back breaking work (trust me), superior skills, and dedication they were able to expand their business over the years, first with the addition of a beautiful, talented, young employee (me), then by purchasing and expanding their building and thus their business. I won’t pretend to know the extent of their financial success, but I did see them partner to support one another, raise their children, buy homes and other commodities, sometimes solely through the proceeds of the salon. The business they created provided financial support for all four of us and at various times, other employees as well, and I presume, continues to do so today.  Additionally, Rizos Salon was a friendly place that often provided a community space for the many females who gathered there to wait (and wait)  for us to do their hair. Finally, it was a place that attracted, for various reasons, other Spanish speakers seeking beauty services, including but not limited to those with a limited proficiency in English. In this way, it also was partially a support system for the Latino community of the area whose money in turn supported the three Latina owners of Rizos. Yes, all that, in a “just” a salon.

I have no idea why it took me so long to see both the profound examples of beauty culture as empowerment in story of Rizos and the story of myself since it seems pretty clear. This strand of my blog will be dedicated to telling the story of the women who were economically empowered by beauty culture. To start with: Madam CJ Walker, Annie Turnbo Malone, Helena Rubenstein, Elizabeth Arden, Mary Kay Ash and the women who sold her products, along with the Avon Ladies. It is dedicated to the women of Rizos Salon and Betty O’Bannon, the cosmetology teacher of South Grand Prairie High School’s Vocational Education Department while I studied there from 1991-1993, a woman who like myself, chose to be a beauty culturist and a teacher.