Normative White Femininity: Race, Gender and the Politics of Beauty

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Kathy Deliovsky, Brock University, has research interests including gendered As I was preparing to write this processes of racialization, anti-racism, article, a memory of my nine-year-old feminism and social justice. daughter flashed through my mind. One evening while fixing her curly hair into twists Abstract she exclaimed, "Mommy I want blonde hair!" This article is an exploration of how Considering she is of mixed African and racialized beauty norms invoke a cultural European ancestry with very curly and discourse of racially coded degrees of brown hair, this would be somewhat femininity and beauty. White patriarchal challenging. I replied that she has beautiful discourse represents white women as the brown hair. Why would she want blonde "Benchmark woman" - a hegemonic hair? She replied in frustration that she ideology and social location that define hated her curly, frizzy hair and wanted it to dominant and subordinated femininities. be "blonde and normal like the girls on TV." Résumé Given that the images on TV are Cet article est une exploration de la façon predominantly of Europeans, I realized dont des normes de beauté basées sur la "blonde" to my nine-year-old daughter race invoquent un discours culturel des signified not just the colour of hair but a degrés féminité et de beauté codés selon la white aesthetic represented by straight hair. race. Le discours patriarcal blanc I remember feeling a sinking sensation in représente la femme blanche comme le the pit of my stomach. I wanted my daughter barème de la femme - une idéologie to love all aspects of herself, curly frizzy hair hégémonique et la localisation sociale qui included. Having experienced so much définie les féminités dominantes et anti-interracial animus directed toward my subordonnées. partner (Jamaican) and myself (Macedonian) prior to having children, I suspected that having mixed children would be an uphill battle. As a result, I would need to fortify my children from potential self-hatred that arises from living in a world that privileges whiteness and disparages blackness. In preparation I read books, talked to knowledgeable people and did most things that I was advised. Very importantly, never did I purchase a white Barbie doll for my daughter! So what happened? Why did my daughter hate her curly, frizzy hair and desire "normal" hair? While I write this introduction with some jest there is a seriousness that belies the humour; for, in a culture that places value on women's physicality, hair and other physical markers represent a powerful

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 33.1, 2008 49 political aesthetic that belies the salience of African descent and two identified race for gender normativity. themselves as lesbians. I located these This recounting of my daughter's women primarily through referrals from desire for "normal" hair is about situating acquaintances, friends and colleagues. The this paper in the context of lived experience interviews were tape recorded, later where the traumas of racialized beauty transcribed and contextually analyzed. norms express themselves. As a woman of Although the women's responses were European descent with mixed children, I recorded verbatim, they were not have watched, with sadness, my daughter transcribed as such. Superfluous respond to the terrorization of white beauty exclamations, comments and digressions, norms (Chapkis 1986). Thus, this not related to the question, were omitted. experience is the springboard into my exploration of how racialized beauty norms Opening the Circle invoke a white cultural discourse built The data suggest that white around gender, race and ethnicity and are women's identities and lives are not only used as a sophisticated means of shaped by structures of gender inequality self-regulation. Borrowing from Sandra but also by white privilege. Signalled as the Bartky (2003), I call this cultural discourse bearers of the "white race," they are both normative white femininity - the white privileged and contained by this gendered capitalist patriarchal compulsion to adopt and reproductive signification (Deliovsky styles and attitudes consistent with an 2005). This racialized reproductive imposed white feminine aesthetic. This signification functions to define the compulsion is a central element in the acceptable conduct of their "race," gender reproduction of whiteness and white and to some degree, ethnicity and class. femininity. In this context, my daughter's Indeed, a uniform social requirement of desire for "normal" hair is no surprise and white women's acceptable conduct is their speaks to a hierarchy of racially coded conformity to normative white femininity. My degrees of femininity and beauty that contention is that white women's gender culminate in normative definitions of white oppression is functionally consistent with femininity. their white skinned privilege. In the context of a Eurocentric Research Sample society, the reproduction of whiteness is This exploration into normative contingent on a hegemonic normativity white femininity derives from my qualitative specific to the regulation of white women. research on white female identity. It Heterosexual normativity is first and examines the various ways power is foremost about white patriarchal production coerced, compelled and negotiated through of a white feminine ideal. Looking at women's choice of sexual partners, sexual Western representations of the feminine orientation, engagement in racial/social ideal from antiquity to the present one inequality and with normative feminine encounters modifications in the standards beauty standards. My examination over time. In contemporary western culture transpired (between 2002 and 2003) the regime of feminine regulation centers on through the oral testimonies of 12 Canadian a universal, homogenized ideal of beauty women of Northern and Western European that encapsulates the domination of a descent and 12 Canadian women of western beauty aesthetic represented by, Eastern and Southern European descent. for example, the Barbie doll, or the Within these two groups were women from countless variations of idealized white a range of socio-economic backgrounds and feminine beauty. their ages ranged from 17 to 70 years. Nine Consistent with Gramsci's 1971 of the women were involved with men of concept of hegemony, where domination of

50 Atlantis 33.1, 2008 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis the ruled is internalized as an unquestioned self-regulation as the result of "normative feature of their own moral conscience, white femininity" (Bartky 2003, 41). She argues women's consciousness is subject to a that, "femininity is an artifice, an similar form of complicity. As Frankenberg achievement" through which "disciplinary (1993) has told us, whiteness operates practices...produce a body which in gesture beyond the visible to shape and articulate and appearance is recognizably feminine" identities, which may become complicit in (2003, 27). As such, while we are born their own reproduction. In relation to male, female or intersex we become normative femininity, this masculine or feminine by the disciplinary taken-for-grantedness requires an practices and rules of patriarchy. The examination of the images of femininity to practices of these disciplinary tactics, Bartky which the research participants refer. My argues, are not merely sexual differences goal in the first part of this essay is to but are part of a process through which the elaborate "normative femininity" to draw ideal feminine body is constructed. It, attention to the insidiousness that whiteness however, "is a body on which an inferior plays in constructing white femininity as status has been inscribed" (2003, 33). normative. As Sally Markowitz (2001) While both analyses explicitly draw argues, the racial dimensions of femininity on Foucault's concepts of power diffusion have slipped away from (white) cultural and self-regulation, they are also tacitly awareness, making it difficult to discern the premised on Naomi Wolf's "beauty myth." complex intersections of race and gender Wolf argues the "beauty myth," perpetuated ideology and consequently how whiteness is by tools of "masculine culture," indoctrinates a mark of power. With this in mind, the young girls into believing that their identity second half of this paper brings into focus "must be premised upon their the racialized and heteronormative aspects 'beauty'..."(Wolf 1990, 4). The effect, she of normative femininity. argues, is that girls "...will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital Discipline and Normalization of the sensitive organ of self esteem exposed to Female Body the air" (1990, 4). This early indoctrination Some feminist scholars have turned into the "beauty myth," Wolf claims, makes to Foucault to elucidate the complexities of girls/women susceptible to impersonating women's subjectivities. Both Susan Bordo "heroines" of adult female culture whose and Sandra Bartky use Foucauldian highest embodiment are the models in approaches to highlight the ways women women's health and fashion magazines. In are subjected to the self-regulating and this regard, masculine culture paints a policing regimes of patriarchally defined picture of what women should look like. beauty. According to feminist philosopher Similar to Wolf, Helene Cixous argues that Susan Bordo this self-regulation reflects patriarchy metaphorically declares to "the discipline and normalization of the women: "We're going to do your portrait so female body" (Bordo 2003, 166). This that you can begin looking like it right away" discipline and normalization occurs as a (Cixous 1976, 892). Significantly, this form of social regulation that through the portrait and its concomitant beauty myth contemporary regimes of beauty, diet and suggest also a behavioural dynamic. In this exercise train the female body into docility way, patriarchy's portrait of women is crucial and obedience to cultural demands (2003, in directing the substance and form of 27). Furthermore, these cultural demands of normative femininity. perpetual physical improvement ensures the But more needs to be said here. production of self-disciplining, docile bodies Indeed, while patriarchal disciplinary tactics (2003, 166). may construct a normative femininity, it is Sandra Bartky identifies this far from being race-neutral. In the context of

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 33.1, 2008 51 a society founded on European imperialism images. This recognition, however, did not and colonialism, normative femininity is stop the women from emulating them. Gina, never signified outside a process of racial for example, revealed that when she was domination and negation. My contention is young she studied magazines in order to women's bodies, as sexed and raced, are "cultivate a certain image." She said, "I represented "through an optic saturated with studied Glamour and Elle, all those racial and sexual visibility" (Deliovsky 2002, magazines. I would practice my makeup 238). Historically, white women's whiteness and hair for hours in order to look like the and femaleness have been interwoven and models...I never felt that I lived up to the conflated in such as way as to constitute image." Similarly, Gail stated that she "will hegemonic femininity (Collins 2004). sometimes buy fashion magazines for the Understanding this connection is vital images and cut them out...to emulate them." because it is this "historical schema" (Fanon She said that she wondered how she 1967) of whiteness that constructs compared. W hen I asked Gail how she felt normative femininity as white. she compared she replied, "I don't think I compare to them...I don't think my body fits Normative Femininity: Gender, Beauty with how ideal bodies are represented." This and Behaviour sense of shortcoming is not unique to Gina Turning to patriarchy's portrait of or Gail. None of the women felt they lived up women, what does it actually look like? As to the images. Britney replied "no one is my daughter's exclamation suggests, the really happy with the way they look." portrait reflects a woman with blonde hair. I These feelings of insufficiency are, asked the research participants, "what kind of course, no surprise. Reports like these of feminine images do you think Canadian are just some of the observable society promotes in the media and in manifestations of W olf's "beauty myth." magazines?" They unanimously stated that Promoted by the diet, cosmetic and fashion the feminine images promoted by the media industries, and as of late mainstream were those that were slim and beautiful. culture's love affair with cosmetic surgery, Notably, and a "fact" riven with the beauty myth's notion of the ideal beauty contradiction, the images they described comes back on girls and women "as self were ones they believed the media hatred, physical obsessions, terror of promoted and not necessarily ones that ageing, and dread of lost control" (W olf reflected their own beauty ideals. Sera, for 1990, 2). Natasha is a fitting example of example, exclaimed with frustration, "we're how the beauty myth reverberates back on all supposed to be skinny and beautiful." women and is experienced as personal Melissa exclaimed that the image promoted deficiency. She said, "I had a thing with was "a blonde, big-boobed, beautiful thin being thin...My friends were really tall and woman." Priscilla said, "[t]hat perfect model, slim. I was one of the shortest ones and I no stretch marks, no cellulite." In another really tried to look like them. I starved myself example, Antonia with exasperation for three days and [then] I passed out." exclaimed, "[we are suppose to be] five foot Gina's statement reflects a similar seven and one hundred and twenty experience with bodily deficiency. She pounds...the blonde or brunette with the explained that her role models came out of robust chest but...tiny everywhere else." fashion magazines and it taught her "to hate And with an air of resignation Natasha said, [herself]." "ones that most cannot achieve..." Explaining this phenomenon, W olf Ironically drawing attention to states that the beauty backlash is patriarchy's successful appropriation of disseminated and legitimated "by the cycles beauty, health and fitness, many of the of self-hatred provoked in women by the women recognized the "absurdity" of the advertisements, photo features and beauty

52 Atlantis 33.1, 2008 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis copy in the glossies" (Wolf 1990, 55). And background of a pervasive sense of bodily indeed, many of the women's narratives deficiency" (Bartky 2003, 33). Tammy's reflect this experience. Antonia, in another adolescent experience exemplifies this example, spoke of the moments of force. She recalls, self-doubt that arose from the inundation of these feminine images. She said, "[i]t's I tried to follow that image to a T - I everywhere. You get it from the media and it had the streaked blond hair. I is so overwhelming. Then you...feel like 'oh I already had the blue eyes, thank am a fat slob' and you feel the pressure to you god! I would have gotten blue lose thirty pounds." Isabelle said, "when I contacts if I hadn't. We were look in front of the mirror I am constantly teenagers and we wanted to look assessing how I look because I know I will beautiful...there was a lot of stuff never look like that." Similarly Gina portrayed on TV by stars and you comments on the pressure for constant would follow them...because self-assessment. She states that, "it is whatever you see on TV must be relentless...you have to be thin at all beautiful... times..." These women's responses suggest As Tammy suggests, normative that there is constant self-surveillance and femininity defines what is beautiful and self-management in service of this beauty functions like a gold standard (Wolf 1990). myth. When women do not give the Regardless of whether the ideal is or is not appearance of self-care and weight attainable is inconsequential to the fact that management there can be this gold standard exists. Bordo argues it is self-condemnation and condemnation from the created image, the unreal, that captures family and society for having "let oneself women's "most vibrant, immediate sense of go." This failure to live up to the beauty myth what is, of what matters, of what we must is, of course, most painfully experienced at pursue for ourselves" (Bordo 2003, 104). the personal level. Gina, for example, said, The pursuit and practice of trying to attain "I have always felt lacking, inadequate, like the unattainable, which is never meant to somehow I was never enough, not thin be, nor can it be, achieved, is what creates enough, not tall enough, not pretty enough, desire and regulates women's behaviour. just never enough." Hence, self-regulation does not Sexuality and The Beauty Myth mean the women are dupes to the social Normative femininity is clearly more and cultural forces at play. They see beyond than aesthetics and appearance. The the falsity of the images; however, being hegemonic formation of the foregoing "real" (embodied, unmodified, not air elements signals their behavioural dynamic. brushed) in the context of "normative Key features of both performance and femininity" invariably means not being behaviours are the regulation of desire and "enough." Not being enough generates a the construction of feminine heterosexuality. constant tension between conforming to In Pretty in Punk, Lauraine LeBlanc argues normative femininity and being real. Gail, in that not only is normative femininity the example above, while realizing that the determined by patriarchy, it also demands images she emulates are not real, uses heterosexuality of women (LeBlanc 1999, them as a guide for self-improvement. In 136). During my interview with Isabelle we this way, normative femininity, which no real grappled with the issue of heteronormativity women can measure up to, regulates desire and femininity and its implications for desire and behaviour because, as Bartky argues, and sexuality. I asked if she had a sense of "the technologies for femininity are taken up how women in the lesbian community who and practiced by women against the identified as "butch" related to the promotion

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 33.1, 2008 53 of the prevailing feminine images. She answers the question by saying that responded by saying that, "I think a lot of America's mirror (and Canada's I would butch women know [they are] not attainable add), screams back, and so it is incredibly painful because [these images] are what you are supposed to look Blondie, Rapunzel, Cinderella, like and never will look like...there is not only Marilyn Monroe, Christie Brinkley, a value but...a behaviour attached to looking Diane Sawyer, Michelle Pfeiffer. Oh that way." As such, there is conduct in yes, sometimes, the look service of the beauty myth that is a function changes...But no matter that they of what Adrienne Rich calls "compulsory may sing the praises of voluptuous heterosexuality" (Rich 1979). this year or dark sultry the next, the I have argued elsewhere that objects of beauty are always heteronormativity for white women in the overwhelmingly white. And as the context of a white capitalist patriarchy calls ambitious so-so singer named not only for a compulsory heterosexuality, Madonna knew when she reached but a compulsory white heterosexuality for the bleach and peroxide, blonde (Deliovsky 2005). One telling component of is still considered the apogee. the anti-interracial animus directed toward (Gillespie 2003, 202) white women who were intimately involved with black men is the notion that they are Given the previous responses of the "too beautiful to be with a black man" research participants and my daughter's (Deliovsky 1999). Many white women, who exclamation, Gillespie is right indeed. were considered stereotypically attractive, Gillespie clearly apprehends the implicit were admonished by family and friends for racial component to Western feminine wasting their stereotypical good looks on beauty ideals. Who is typically blonde and someone "black" and racially undeserving. beautiful in Western culture? The answers Time and time again they were reproached are fairly obvious, but I think it points to an with "but you are so pretty. You don't have important issue in how white femininity and to settle for a black man. What's wrong with white racial imagery are represented in you?" (1999, 67). This discourse suggests popular culture. Richard Dyer in White that the most sensible and appropriate argues that, "[w]hites are everywhere in expression of feminine desirability that representation. Yet precisely because of this makes the fullest use of stereotypical white and their placing as norm they seem not be good looks is to put those good looks at the represented to themselves as whites but as disposal of a white male. At the heart of this people who are variously gendered, discourse is the notion that the bodies of classed, sexualised and abled" (Dyer 1997, white women ought to be regulated in 3). service of and for the pleasures of white In a manner similar to how white men and to the higher ideal of people are positioned, white femininity is heteronormative white supremacy. positioned as normative because it is not seen as white per se but rather as just "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the femininity. In this way, most of the women in fairest of them all?" my study were able to point to the many I have suggested that patriarchy's defining characteristics of normative portrait of women reflects two criteria: one femininity, such as beauty, class and based on physical ideals and the other heterosexuality while never naming them as based on behavioural dynamics. But, this white. In this framework, race is an absent still does not reveal the whole picture. presence, operating "invisibly" beneath "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is white discourse, while at the same time the fairest of them all?" Marcia Ann Gillespie animating implicit racialized norms of beauty

54 Atlantis 33.1, 2008 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis and femininity. within the overall system of In view of W estern ideals, it is white meaning, they will not be permitted women who are primarily represented as to overwhelm the representation thin, blonde and beautiful in these images. and establish a truly alternative or But, we need to ask who are we not seeing "subversive" model of beauty or represented and how this strategic success. (2003, 25) "invisibility" is achieved and what are its implications. These questions are important Establishing a truly alternative because who we see and do not see and in model of beauty suggests that there is a what cultural contexts, reveal entrenched standard model of beauty from which dominant cultural values and sensibilities anything else is a deviation. This standard is that point to two primary issues. One issue not women of African, Asian, Aboriginal or is that as recently as 10 years ago Africans, Latina descent, though as individuals they Asians and Aboriginals were essentially may be contextually beautiful (i.e., beautiful "invisible people" (Biagai and in spite of...). Contextualized within their Kern-Foxworth 1997, 155); they were respective racial frames, as a group, they excluded from popular culture's editorial represent and signify the exotic/erotic but coverage as well as advertisement not the beautiful. depictions. The second issue is the context Mirroring this argument, Gina in which racial and ethnic representations believes that the beauty industry are seen to exist. Numerous studies have categorizes different of groups of women revealed that when not "invisible," according to their ethnicity or race. She representation and coverage of racially recalls that when she was a young woman marginalized women is most often distorted, she was frequently told that she was "exotic unrepresentative and demeaning (1997, and sultry looking." Sera had a similar 155). In one instance, Gina stated, "you experience in being told that as a young don't really see images of Asian women Italian woman she had "that sexy ethnic unless it is context specific...Asian women thing going on." When discussing with would be seen selling 'Asia' if you know Allison the issue of feminine images and what I mean." Calling this representation representation she relayed to me an "contextualized in otherness," Lilly argued experience she had as a young woman. that, "women who are from the South Referring to my dark brown hair and eyes Pacific, for example, have this exotic and olive coloured skin, she explained that, background going on...their beauty is tied to "I had a friend who had your colouring. She their [race]. It is not them as a beauty." looked a little like you but she had the Gina's and Lilly's reflections are Bianca Jaggar lips. A [white] male friend of interesting because they speak to an issue mine described her as the kind of girl you central in representations of beauty in a look at and you can't get it out of your pants white capitalist patriarchy and draw attention fast enough." to who is permitted to be an icon of Allison explained that she was put "beauty." Susan Bordo, for example, states off by the comment and asked him what he that, meant. She explained that "he said you are the type that [guys] date and take serious." consumer capitalism depends on Allison described herself as a girl who had the continual production of the "long flowing blonde hair and freckles." novelty...to stimulate desire, and it The implication here is that the European frequently drops into marginalized ethnic "Other" with her dark colouring and neighbourhoods in order to find full lips conveys sexual access for (white) them. But such elements will either masculine pleasure, while the wholesome be explicitly framed as exotica, or, (white) girl next door with the "flowing

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 33.1, 2008 55 blonde hair and freckles" you take home to appropriation of "Hottentot" physiognomy mother. Gina (Macedonian), Sera (Italian) (Gilman 1986). and other non-Anglo-Saxon white women Normative definitions of feminine are, therefore, exoticized/eroticized within beauty, however, are not totalizing forces; their respective ethnic frame. They are not they can and do shift and change in viewed as beauties in their own right but as response to historical conditions (Bordo "ethnic" beauties. Their ethnicity separates 2003). But, in terms of dominant beauty and them from an Anglo-Saxon norm/ideal. It is racial/ethnic representation, the message is important to understand, however, that while clear - it's a white woman's world ("straight, these women are relegated, contained and "Anglo, middle-class, at that). This message marginalized within the category of "ethnic" is reinforced by the fact that racially beauty they are nevertheless white relative marginalized women are either noticeably to negatively racialized women. Whiteness, absent in dominant cultural representations as a process of positive racialization, of beauty or when they are represented are confers on all white women access to white whitified, "contextualized in otherness" or femininity. And while not all white women distorted. As the models of feminine beauty, (working class, "ethnic" and lesbian) are white women (sterilized of any "ethnic" granted "full" membership, racially identification) occupy the apex of a beauty marginalized women are relegated outside hierarchy. It is their feminine beauty that the boundaries of white femininity, for they becomes normative (Collins 2004). As Sally occupy the category of subordinated Markowitz argues, "[i]t is not difficult, after femininity (Collins 2004). Some racially all, to find a pronounced racial component to marginalized women (for example, the idea of femininity itself: to be truly celebrities) may be invited to sit at the table feminine is, in many ways, to be white" of white femininity. This invitation, however, (Markowitz 2001, 390). is "always already and only honorary, These white feminine contingent, itinerant and temporary" (Davy representations, however, are not "real" as 1995,198). the women themselves conveyed earlier. If These responses illuminate the the women we see gracing Cosmo, disturbing patterns in dominant racial and Glamour, Elle, etc., are not Gail or other ethnic representation in popular culture. "real" women of European descent who are With respect to beauty representations, they? They are white patriarchy's Bordo argues, there is a homogenization of regurgitation of what constitutes "hegemonic images in W estern culture. This femininity" (Collins 2004), ironically, homogenization means those racial, ethnic represented by popular culture's plastic and and sexual markers "that disturb celluloid icons of white femininity, such as Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual expectation and the Barbie doll, Pamela Anderson or identifications" (Bordo 2003, 25) are, Madonna. oftentimes, smoothed out or eliminated. But But the Barbie doll, among others, I would also argue that, sometimes, racial is just one contemporary manifestation of a and ethnic markers, for example full lips or white feminine beauty ideal. Idealized "big butts," are appropriated into normative representations of normative white definitions of feminine beauty and become femininity have existed long before Barbie's markers of beauty when on the bodies of entrance onto the scene. In a complex white women (for exaample, full lips on argument that I am simplifying, idealized Angelina Jolie are designated as beautiful representations of white femininity occurred and seductive). Interestingly, such in distinct historical phases within the appropriations of "primitive" and highly context of European colonialism/slavery and sexualized attributes can be traced to white, imperialism (Dyer 1997; hooks 1981). These Victorian, middle-class women's idealized representations portray white

56 Atlantis 33.1, 2008 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis women as bathed and permeated by white feminine images of beauty). Along the way, light (Dyer 1997). This glowing women learn (or should learn) that they representation was constructed alongside need to have constant vigilance in their their positioning as the moral custodians self-assessment, continually searching for and bearers of the white race. White women methods of correction. Keeping in line with were accorded a position of moral normative white femininity, Debra Gimlin superiority above all non-Anglo-Saxon (2001) argues, these methods require an women and at the same time were enactment of a normative identity, which is contained within rigid identities/categories of premised on "the youthful 'W ASP' who is virtuous lady and mother. These categories the only truly valued member of were not separate from "glowing" contemporary Western Culture" (2001, 142). representations of white beauty. They, in In this context, methods of correction such fact, were conflated. as cosmetic surgery must approximate the As a day-to-day ideal, the image of youthful W ASP in order to confer beauty. the glowing virtuous white woman no longer This approximation means Asian woman, has the same social/cultural currency as it for example, getting "double eyelid" surgery, did in the nineteenth and early twentieth Jewish women getting a "nose job" and century. Dyer (1997) points out, however, African women bleaching their skin (Chapkis that the discourse surrounding this 1986). contradictory image and its symbolic Women, however, also learn that referents retain their power in various forms feminine beauty has less to do with physical of culture and commercial representation perfection and more to do with behaviour (1997, 131). He suggests that to "glow still and decorum in service of white masculinity. remains a key quality in idealized Naomi Wolf argues, "beauty is a currency representations of white women" (1997, 32) system like the gold standard. Like an and can be seen especially in "the economy, it is determined by politics" (W olf representations of the white heterosexual 1990, 12). Assigning value to women's couple, the bearers of the race" (1997, 131). bodies, based on cultural and racial A key point is that white women's image standards of beauty, is an expression of signifies the apogee of beauty, motherhood white masculine power relations in which all and morality (Carter 1997). women are ultimately the losers; however, some lose more than others. This assignment of value placed on beauty, W olf Conclusion: Coming Full Circle argues, creates a vertical hierarchy in which Homogenized representations of women must compete. By now it should be "whitified" feminine beauty become clear who are the winners and losers in this normalized and function as models against competition. As Patricia Hill Collins states, which women continually measure, judge, "these benchmarks construct a discourse of discipline and correct themselves (Bordo, a hegemonic (White) femininity that 2003). While the research participants becomes a normative yardstick for all pointed out that the reigning images of femininities in which Black women typically feminine beauty are not real, they do not are relegated to the bottom of the gender have to be real nor are they intended to be hierarchy" (Collins 2004, 193). But this real. What is at issue here are the real competition is more than looking a particular effects of these images. These images are way, while that certainly may help. Being a ideological and provide the benchmark for winner in this competition means behaving the discipline and normalization of women's appropriately by the rules of normative white bodies in order to minimize the distance femininity, which is in line with compulsory between the "real" (embodied, unmodified, white heterosexuality. The mantra that white not air brushed) and the ideal (whitified women involved with black men are "too

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 33.1, 2008 57 beautiful to be with a black man" starkly women (including many White ones) may be reveals the connection between these two able to achieve" (2004, 193). W ith this ideals. critical elaboration, my daughter's desire for We have now come full circle to "normal" hair because she hated her curly, patriarchy's portrait of women to find it has frizzy hair comes into sharp focus. The multiple complexities with differential narratives of the research participants (and implications for women. When we speak of my daughter's) call attention to the femininity we must understand to whom it contradictory ways that intersecting historically refers. When Sojourner Truth, for identities are taken up in everyday example, repeatedly exclaimed in 1851, engagement with white patriarchal "Ain't I a woman," as an African woman she strategies of feminine regulation. was speaking to the scientific and social racism that proclaimed her body not quite References female and human and therefore Bartky, Sandra. "Foucault, Femininity, and undeserving of the category woman/lady. the Modernization of Patriarchal Power," Truth and other African women, who were The Politics of Women's Bodies, Rose "chattel beasts of burden" like Aboriginal Weitz, ed. Second Edition, New York: women who were seen as exterminable Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 25-45. "squaws" and like Asian women represented as docile Geishas, are vital Biagi. S. and M. Kern-Foxworth. Facing examples that images of feminine bodies Difference: Race Gender and Mass Media. carry significant class and racial Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, connotations. 1997. Femininity, then, far from being race-neutral, is always already raced as Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: white (Elder 1998; Frankenberg 1993; Feminism, Western Culture, 10th ed. hooks 1992). In other words, white women Berkeley: University of California Press, represent the "Benchmark Woman" 2003. (Thornton 1995), an ideology that constructs "hegemonic, marginalized, and Carter, Sarah. Capturing Women: The subordinated femininities" (Collins 2004, Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in 193) relative to a white female norm. To be Canada's Prairie West. Montreal: clear, I am not arguing that white women's McGill-Queens University Press, 1997. bodies are truly valued in their own right but, rather, are deemed more valuable in the Chapkis, Wendy. Beauty Secrets: Women hierarchy of femininity and in the role of and the Politics of Appearance. Boston: white reproduction and nation building South End Press, 1986. (hooks 1990; Ware 1992). While white women clearly benefit from this Cixous, Helene. "The Laugh of Medusa," arrangement, they are in many respects Signs1.4 (Summer 1976): 892. trapped in a gilded cage. For what is experienced as power and control is in fact Collins, Patricia Hill. "Very Necessary: the reproduction of normative white Redefining Black Gender Ideology," Black femininity whose practices are intended to Sexual Politics: African-Americans, Gender regulate the white female body in docility & The New Racism. New York: Routledge, and obedience to cultural and racial 2004, pp.181-212. demands. As Collins argues, "[t]his ideology prescribes behaviours for all women based Davy, Kate. "Outing Whiteness," Theatre on these assumptions, and then holds all Journal 47 (1995): 189-295. women...to standards that only some

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Gillespie, Marcia Ann. "Mirror Mirror," The Ware, Vron. Beyond the Pale: White Politics of Women's Bodies, Rose Weitz, ed. Women, Racism and History. New York: Second Edition, New York: Oxford Verso, 1992. University Press, 2003, pp. 201-95. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. London: Gilman, Sander. "Black Bodies, White Chatto & Windus, 1990. Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature," "Race," Writing and Difference, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986, pp. 223-61.

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