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.

Could I Just: Little Egypt

"Could I Just..." is gonna be a little sidebar series, most likely inspired by something irking me at the moment, or something that has long irked me but that I just remembered to write about. In this case, I've been thinking about the many many many many anti-woman sentiments of the mid-century pop and rock that I lurrrve ever so much. I could start a lot of places, but I'm gonna start with asking could I just say a little something about  "Little Egypt" the Lieber and Stroller penned hit for the Coasters, since one strain of the discussion in my Varieties of American Feminism seminar today had to do with empowerment vs enslavement for women working in sex industries, and because I was talking about this song just the other day. Here's a  quick link to a version that sounds alright in case you are unfamiliar. I'm not responsible for the graphics.

Though I started out thinking that this would be unrelated to my politics of appearance blog and too modern to tie in to my seminar (1830-1930 y'all), it turns out that ties exist. Little Egypt, according to my brief internet research was the name of several late 19th century belly dancers, two of whom danced at the Chicago Exposition in 1893. As in the Chicago Exposition I recently read about in the writings of Ida B Wells who, along with others, objected to the representation (or lack of it) of African- Americans in the fair. I love it when shit comes together! Doubtless there is some thinking to be done here about othering, marginalization, and fetishizing, but that's for another day. Maybe after I read this book: Looking for Little Egypt.

On to my analysis of the song though:

The female protagonist of our story, referred to here only as Little Egypt, something that I truly hope was a self-determined stage moniker, is seemingly a burlesque/ striptease artist, along with being something of a gymnast and an expert in a move called the hoochie coochie (note to self: learn hoochie coochie in case teaching salaries fall any lower) which she does real slow. We hear of this though, not from Little Egypt herself, but from our male narrator who observes the show and later marries Little Egypt, whom I will refer to from here on out as the Narrator-Husband-Power, Agency, and Voice Usurper...or NHPAVU for short.

Now, given that Little Egypt doesn't get to tell her story her, I'm making some assumptions, but it seems to me that Little Egypt starts out as a woman of some sexual, economic, and creative power. A crowd comes to see her self-crafted dance, paying 1/10 of a dollar for the damn privilege, which doesn't sound like a lot, but if Coke was a nickel then, and now it costs...I dunno...$30 a bottle?...no, that's bourbon...anyhow, let's say $10 adjusted for inflation (no. no one should do the real math) then Little Egypt could easily pull in the equivalent of $1000 per show. Now, thanks to the NHPAVU, we haven't a clue how much her take home is, but at any rate she can afford diamonds and rubies and  an extensive backpiece tattoo that says Phoenix, Arizona 1949. While it is true that Little Egypt is likely objectified by the male gaze in order to make all this happen, nonetheless she is a woman in the public sphere with some degree of independence and agency. And she's interesting, dammit.

Whatever my reservations about the NHPAVU from the start, the story manifests its major problem after the narrative shift at the beginning of the last stanza. In a tone that I can only describe as boasting, NHPAVU explains to us that one cannot actually see Little Egypt in her act anymore, since she is now removed from the public sphere and is consumed with the domestic chores that have resulted from being married to NHPAVU, referred to in the song as "mopping" and "shopping" and taking care of their seven (Seven!...While I won't deny that Little Egypt may enjoy their sex life and the resulting children, this really seems like a very tacky boast on the part of NHPAVU concerning his sex drive and his ejaculatory prowess ( really pales next to Little Egypt's talents) children. Not only is Little Eygpt too busy to do the things that she did before, the very dynamic talents that made her so attractive to NHPAVU in the first place, but in the end her voice is replaced not just by NHPAVU, but by the children who now get to voice her famous "yeah, yeah." In the end, she is rendered as a voiceless, powerless, baby/moppin/shoppin machine.

This song, who's popularity predates Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique by a few years, seems like a clear message as to the "biological destiny" and place of a woman in early 60s American society. I abhor all that it says; yet at the same time...it's still one of my favorite songs and in my conflicted feminist way, I will still squeal when it comes on the oldies station.

Beauty Culture and Change: 19th Century America

The 19th Century                                                                                                                                                                              





In American Beauty, author Lois Banner characterizes the 19^th century as the feminists vs. the fashionables. Feminists in later 19^th century America worked hard to promote the idea that any woman could be beautiful (probably with some obvious elitist, racist, and nativist complications, mind you). This was in opposition to the idea that only a few chosen women were graced with beauty and that the arena of appearance was competitive. Furthermore the idea was that the natural woman was better; beauty in fact, followed virtue, so that a woman who was virtuous, thought at the time to be the specific domain and talent of the woman (please see the Women’s Christian Temperance movement and the Cult of True Womanhood), was likely to exude beauty. To feminists not only was fashion and the pursuit of beauty often dangerous, as in the well-documented ill health effects of wearing a corset or the willingness of women to apply skin lighteners containing lead, but the often consuming focus on beauty and fashion was also a distraction from the pursuit of women’s rights and an impediment to a woman’s ability to elevate herself through education. Dress reformer Celia Burleigh wrote, “Dress has become primary, woman secondary. Other dress reformers, who included Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone Blackwell, manifested this feeling and a concern for the physical restrictions of women’s fashions in their alternative manners of dress such as shorter dresses and bloomers. Many wearers of the reform dress back off after public criticism eclipsed their other important concerns (like voting), but of course, we know that eventually women’s dress does become less restrictive (at least literally) though it isn’t exactly the triumph over fashion that might have been imagined. Nonetheless, the point remains that dress was not only an area that needed change but also was, though not smoothly, a part of the pathway to change. I flippantly quip to my students that you couldn’t drive a car to go vote in a corset…but it’s not untrue.



Corsets were so crazy that you needed assistance. As a bleeding heart liberal, I feel for this poor maid. As a woman who has struggled with a snap crotch "miraclesuit"...no comment.



Oh shit. Amelia Bloomer is why we call bloomers bloomers.

Nonetheless, despite the obvious dangers of certain practices, the protests of advocates for women, and the prohibition against obvious cosmetic enhancement that ebbed and flowed throughout the 19^th century, many women still engaged in beautification practices. The reality of this time is as Charlotte Perkins Gilman put it in her 1898 Women and Economics, “that the economic status of women generally is dependent on men generally.”  She further says that “her living, all that she gets,--food, clothing, ornaments, amusements, luxuries…these things bear relation only to the man she marries, the man she depends on,-- to how much he has and how much he is willing to give her.” Women’s primary form of agency (if you want to call it that) for attaining greater wealth was through marriage.  And the more distinct her sex, which I take to mean the more pronounced her femininity, the more optimal she appears to the masculine gaze of this era.  Thus, feminine beauty, whether a reflection of nature, virtue, or enhancement, was ostensibly (then as now) a way to secure a better marriage and thus position in life. The 24 karat question here seems to be...how much different is this now? It's an actual question, not just a rhetorical one. Someone answer it.

As is common when discussing the struggle for women’s rights in the 19^th century, which often emanated from white women of some means, the above analysis is truer for white upper and middle income ladyhood than anything else. I can and will address beauty culture for African- American women in the late 19^th and early 20^th century directly in a later, more specific entry.

Beauty Culture and Change

Another question that I seek to answer is that of how beauty culture—fashion, hair, and cosmetics—can be a vehicle, or at least a reflection of, change. It seems clear to me that I have answered this for myself on a personal level. As previously stated, I’ve used my visual identity to define and reflect an identity that is powerful, creative, and informed. I’m more interested in how this has worked collectively and individually for women throughout American history, particularly in the 20^th century.

I’m not a historian, though clearly I have an interest in history. Though my job requires me to teach literature, as any English teacher will tell you, that requires one to teach some history as well, no matter how strong the history curriculum is in a community. Given that I’m always interested in knowing and teaching what literature reflects about its context and the context of the readers, I would probably teach it even if it didn’t seem to be required for student success though.

A little problem with this though is that I’m not someone who cares to sit down and read a conventional chronological book of history most likely periodized by wars and presidential administrations. I strongly prefer to pick up my general political history by learning about other things, areas of interest preferably. For instance, in high school, thanks to a habit of being somewhat distracted and sleepy in the history class that followed my early morning cosmetology class, I might not have learned anything at all about World War II, if it hadn’t been for my growing, almost obsessive interest in air-cooled Volkswagens. I have often noted how I compartmentalize and evaluate history based my knowledge of 20^th century hair and fashion history. As a simple example, a picture of a bob hairstyle encapsulates modernity, increasing industrialization, so-called moral decay, and greater independence for women, and a bold colored mid-sixties A- line represents the dwindling of American innocence that follows Kennedy assassination and escalation in the Vietnam Conflict. At some point, not too far in the past surprisingly, I realized that there’s no reason that I can’t teach history as needed using the very items that I know and love so well, and that are icons of the American history (uneven though it may be) in my head. I mean, really, what on earth is the point in having a Miss Lady as a teacher if you can’t learn about the significance of the shift from the corset to the girdle, or the symbolism of Eames era furniture or the super ultra glamourous atomic earrings she wears to cocktail parties in her other life?

In my readings throughout the NEH Varieties of American Feminism seminar, it has occurred to me that both the condition of women and the struggle for women’s rights can be read through the story of beauty culture.  I will attempt to capture this in the series of entries titled “Beauty Culture and Change.” While this won’t be utterly comprehensive of all American women’s experiences, and will, as always with Miss Lady, include more depth when discussing my beloved 20^th century, the links between beauty culture and change for women should be clear and various “entry points” for teaching this history will be provided.

American Beauty

So, because I’m a student as well as a teacher, this blog will sometimes just take you on the journey with me. In this case, you’ll be coming along as I read American Beauty by Lois Banner, along with a few other texts that I’ll get to later.

Banner says that “1921 was a pivotal year in the history of women’s looks” because this was the first year that the Miss America beauty pageant was held, thus symbolizing the “triumph of fashion culture over feminism.” Feminists in an effort to refute the constraints of the beauty ideal had held that any woman could be beautiful.  In Banner’s words, the commercial beauty industry turns this on its head by ensuring that this democratic ideal of beauty is interpreted by the masses, not as, or at least not just as the idea that everyone has an innate beauty, but that every woman truly possesses the ability to be beautiful through the purchase of products.

Margaret Gorman, the first Miss America, in casual afternoon attire.

Gorman again. If this don't say it all!

Banner writes about the irony of this in the 1920s,when women free themselves of many Victorian constrictions—such as the oppressively heavy and modest dress styles, and the prohibition against being obviously made up (despite the fact that women have long felt a pressure to “improve” with cosmetics)—and with this liberation comes an ever increasing “commercialization of beauty.” In Banner’s analysis, this remains unchallenged until the feminist reforms of the 1960’s.

So, a question that I will most likely circle back to repeatedly then, as it is perhaps the central question of this blog, is whether the “democratic ideal of beauty” and this now expanded beauty culture, hold any sort of empowerment for women, or whether it is mostly a further constriction for women, one that binds them not just to society’s standards of beauty but to the many purveyors of beauty culture and endless consumerism. I think that it is an important question (to explore, maybe not to finally answer) for women’s history, but also for ourselves, or certainly for this self, Miss Lady.

Miss Lady’s take on beautification and power: On a personal level, I feel increasingly empowered by beautification, by cosmetics, by fashion, and by the accessories, dammit! My early training (thank you vocational high school education) as a cosmetologist provided me with a personal sense of worth and efficacy that I’m not sure I would have gotten in other arenas as well as a creative outlet. In the past, before I was a TEACHER ( do y’all mind if I capitalize this every time?), I used my creative talents in service of others (more later on the feminist complications of this), but now, save a few weddings per year (oh. the. pageantry.) I mostly use my talents on my own hair. And is it every powerful. With my Comare 303, I create bouffant and beehives to delight all. It draws in attention, which I may appreciate far too much mind you, from friends and strangers and commands an admiration not just for the aesthetic product, but also for the skill, creativity, knowledge, and wherewithal, it took to create the damn masterpiece. While I take somewhat less pride in the craft of this, my accessorization, makeup, and overall look are often as admired. I’m trying to say this as humbly as possible while still saying it by the way; I cherish this attention not just because I’m a diva/leo/onlychild, but I appreciate the mutual taste required for this interaction to occur. I do it for the purpose of pleasing.

What then could be feminist about that? It sounds absolutely trivial and coquettish. I do it to please. Please! …To unpack that, it gives me a sense of efficacy and agency in a forum where I have many MANY times (along with countless other women) felt none. That is, how I will be perceived visually, in this culture that refuses not to perceive me visually, and exactly HOW that will be associated with the perception of my interior. In essence, I suppose, my identity.

An example: For various reasons which don’t belong here, I will never win the competition (that does exist) on being thin, nor will I probably ever come close to conforming to whatever the standard is for that…unless it expands a good bit. I’ve been acutely aware for as long as I can remember of this standard and often felt lesser for not meeting it in my youth. When I assert my own beauty, through what I believe (aware that I could be fooling myself) to be my choice of methods, be that mid-century make-up, or carefully crafted hair, or a vintage broach that you’ll never see again on anyone (ever, dammit!) , I feel that I am sending messages to others about the facets of my visual identity that they will find important if they have any sense. It removes me from ongoing competitions about who is the blondest, or most narrow waisted and shifts the focus to what I like and what I’ve created. This, pleases me.

Secondly, when I say that I mean to please, it isn’t always the heterosexual male gaze I’m dressing for. I’ll admit that this has somewhat changed in my life as I have focused more on heterosexual practice of datin’ the mens, and as I have tended to emulate mid-century styles that were seemingly crafted to entice men, but I believe that I first started glamorizing myself for the validation of gay males. After myself of course. Currently, I find myself most often creating looks designed to please my large group of female friends, most often my fine and true ladies in roller derby. And here and there, I find myself dressing, oddly enough to create a certain identity for and connection with my teenage students, whom I must teach all about American literature and culture. Why the hell can’t we start a unit with my sputnik earrings? (Pronouned ear-rangs, thank you.) Beats the hell out of starting with a war, dammit.

And finally, the strict pursuit of beauty is not always the goal of the beauty arts I create. Sometimes the goal is also to preserve and reflect history. Other times, like when I beglittered a skate wheel (calm down derbies; it was a bald Radar Flat-out) and integrated it into my hair for a derby banquet, my goal was to please through whimsical humor!

So, does it feel empowering to me? Yes, it do. Could it be that I’m just kidding myself, that I want to have my cake and eat it too? That I want women to be fully empowered, but that I don’t want to give up my baubles and my brushable hair laquer to do it? Yes, that too.

WTF is a Miss Lady and why does it have a blog?

Who is Miss Lady? Why is this so important to her? What on earth is her purpose?!

In short, Miss Lady is me. Or not me.  An alter ego? Or the real me? Either way, I’ll often refer to her in the third person, because like femininity (arguably anyhow), Miss Lady is a construct and a creation. A fancy one.

Miss Lady is a conflicted feminist teacher raised in the gaudy, southern yet western culture of Dallas, Texas. The net effect of this is that she is a lady and a maverick all at once. With big hair. Always.

So just WTF is a Miss Lady? How can someone who claims to be a feminist be known by both the contested, often subjugating, or pedestalfying titles of “miss” and “lady”? How does that make any sense? Think of it as double femininity, if you will. A hyper-femininity. Like the pack of wild drag queens what raised me! Or maybe it’s like a double negative: no femininity at all. You decide. I, myself, liken it to another oft used phrase: fuck you. Not lady-like, I know. But true.

A few tidbits about Miss Lady’s personal life and history will be helpful for understanding from whence I come on some topics. I am hairstylist and a high school English teacher with a love of American culture, history, and icons. I most often embrace the aesthetic of mid-century America and American women, never mind the regrettable politics of the era produced. When I’m not participating in some messy hobbies like running, hiking, roller derby, or dog parking, I enjoy reading, writing, accessorizing, hair creations, and generally being fancy. Surprise, right?

I go into this with the assumption/ assertion that American women cannot be wholly detached from beauty culture, for better or for worse. Whether we embrace it, negotiate with it, or seek to remove ourselves from the adornments, the consumerism, and judgment, the politics of appearance are always complex and our results are complicated. I explore to find out how beauty and appearance, so dear and yet so frustrating to me, came to be what it is (aka history) and whether there is anything empowering to women in it, or is it merely (as many would posit) a snare of ideals and products that hold us down.

A note about language: yes, I am very much aware that I speak Southern Coquette dialect—the language of the oppressed, that smacks with all the worst covert power, manipulative hedges, and backstabbing bless-your-hearts. Yo, I took some linguistics courses once upon a time. I also dabbled in some theoretical feminism though, and I came to the conclusion, that we have no language outside of the patriarchy except the one we claim. And I claim this one, dammit.