Teaching Girls a Lesson: the Fashion Model As Pedagogue
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Teaching girls a lesson: The fashion model as pedagogue PhD Candidate: Angela Dwyer Bachelor of Social Science (Sociology) Bachelor of Social Science (Honours Sociology) Principal Supervisor: Prof Erica McWilliam Associate Supervisor: Dr Daphne Meadmore A thesis undertaken with the Centre for Learning Innovation. Submitted to the Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 2006 ii Queensland University of Technology Doctor of Philosophy Thesis Examination Candidate name: Angela Ellen Dwyer Centre: Centre for Learning Innovation Principal Supervisor: Professor Erica McWilliam Associate Supervisor: Dr Daphne Meadmore Thesis Title: Teaching girls a lesson: The fashion model as pedagogue. Under the requirements of PhD Regulation 16.8, the above candidate presented a final seminar that was open to the public. A Faculty Panel of two academics attended and reported on the readiness of the thesis for external examination. The members of the panel recommended that the thesis be forwarded to the appointed Committee for examination. Name: ………………………….. Signature: ………………………….. Panel Chairperson (Principal Supervisor) Name: ………………………….. Signature: ………………………….. Panel Member Name: ………………………….. Signature: ………………………….. Panel Member iii Statement of original authorship The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains not material previously published or written by another person except where due acknowledgement has been made. Signed:__________________ Dated:___________________ iv Key words: Ancient Greece Conduct of conduct Corporeality Discourse Effective history Embodiment Fashion model Foucault Gaze Hetairai Historiography Ideal femininity Influence Ironic category Pedagogy Performance Poststructuralism Posture Self as art Sexual conduct Spectacle Young girl v For Braden and Regan vi Abstract There appears to be little doubt about the nature of the relationship between the fashion model and the young girl in contemporary Western culture. Dominant literature, emerging from medico-psychological and feminist research, situates the model as a disorderly influence, imbued with the capacity to infect and, hence, distort the healthy minds and bodies of ‘suggestible’ young girls. Opposing these perspectives is a smaller, more recent body of literature, emerging from post-feminist work that argues that the model-girl relationship is a delightful influence. Thus, the contemporary field of scholarship reveals an increasingly dichotomous way of thinking about fashion model influence: the model influences young girls in ways that are disorderly or delightful, never both. This thesis argues that to assume that the model-girl encounter is ‘neatly’ disorderly or delightful is shifty at best. It suggests that, in their rush to judge the fashion model as either pernicious or pleasurable, existing literature fails to account for the precision with which young girls know the fashion model. Using poststructuralist theory, the thesis argues that ‘influence’ may be more usefully thought of as a discursive effect, which may produce a range of effects for better and worse. Following Foucault (1972), fashion model influence is interrogated as a regime of truth about the model-girl encounter, constituted discursively under specific social, cultural and historical conditions. In so doing, the thesis makes different sense of fashion model influence, and questions influence as an independently-existing ‘force’ that bears down on vulnerable young girls. Drawing on a poststructural conceptual architecture, this thesis re-conceptualises the model-girl encounter as a pedagogical relationship focused on the (ideal) female body. It suggests that the fashion model, as an authoritative embodied pedagogue, transmits knowledge about ‘ideal’ feminine bodily conduct to the young girl, as attentive gazing apprentice. Fashion model influence is re-interrogated as the product of certain forms of disciplinary training (Foucault, 1977a), with young girls learning a discursive knowledge about how to discipline the body in ways that are properly feminine. Such a perspective departs from the notion that fashion model influence is necessarily vii disorderly or delightful, and makes possible a re-reading of influence in terms of learning outcomes. A problematic arises conceptualising the fashion model in this way. To consider the model as a ‘good’ teacher breaches a number of discursive rules for best pedagogical practice in postmodern times: She is not a pedagogue of the mind; she is not student- centred, facilitative, asexual, interpersonally engaged, relational, or authentic. To create a space for thinking differently about the model as a teacher, then, the thesis looks to ancient historical times and places in which female-to-female and body-to-body pedagogies were practised and understood. The first phase of the research project embedded in this thesis defamiliarises pedagogical work using historical texts from ancient Greece. It examines in particular the erotically embodied pedagogical relationships conducted between older, authoritative elite prostitutes known as hetairae, and their younger female apprentices. The discursive rules governing these pedagogical relationships are examined with a view to diagnosing the model-girl encounter in terms of these rules. These rules are then used to interrogate ethnographic data generated through observation of the model-girl encounter in situ in a modelling course, and through focus group interviews with groups of young girls. Working through notions of corporeal embodiment, self as art, desire, discipline, stillness, spectacle, the gaze and the conduct of conduct, the study interrogates the model-girl encounter as a contemporary pedagogical encounter. To avoid reaffirming more traditional binaries, the reading of data is ironic, working within and between binaries such as disorder/delight. Three ironic categories of femininity are produced out of the analysis: unnaturally natural, stompy grace and beautifully grotesque. These categories ‘speak’ the fragmentation, fissure, contradiction, inconsistency and absurdity that permeate the talk of young girls and model-girl pedagogy in the modelling classroom. Thus, the thesis offers up an analysis of the model-girl encounter that refuses the neatness and uni-dimensionality that characterises existing literature. viii Acknowledgements The undertaking of this thesis has been by far the most difficult task I have ever undertaken, and has been so thoroughly supported by so many exceptional people. For enabling and facilitating what has been a complicated, challenging, exhilarating and disheartening experience, I am particularly indebted to the following people for their infinite encouragement and wisdom: Professor Erica McWilliam, my principal supervisor, whom I cannot thank enough for her continuing support, for her guidance, for her inspiration, and for making tensions and contradictions productive and expedient. Her integrity, expertise and boundless enthusiasm permeate every aspect of this thesis. Dr Daphne Meadmore, my associate supervisor, to whom I give my heartfelt thanks for her proficiency, generosity, and for her unflagging support in building my confidence in my writing. I am indebted to her for all the occasions when her words of encouragement sustained my work on this thesis. Associate Professor Jillian Brannock, to whom I express thanks for all the times I have come to her door in a state of frustration for advice on the meaning of terms and phrases from ancient Greece. I am indebted also to Professor Tim Parkin at the University of Queensland for his assistance with the ever-perplexing ‘world’ of ancient Greek fragments and texts. I thank the postgraduates of the Critical Mass for all their words of encouragement, ‘pats-on-the-back’, critical eyes and supportive ears throughout the process. A big thank you to the modelling agency and the young girls that volunteered their services, without whose cooperation this research would certainly not have been possible. I also wish to acknowledge all the assistance from the School of Cultural and Language Studies in Education and all the wonderful staff that have supported this thesis. Finally, I want to thank my family: my partner, Braden, who has shown the most unerring loyalty and support and has continued to believe in my work in those many moments when I lost the drive to continue; my son Regan who provided moments of riotous laughter in times of isolation; and my mum Chris who has taught me how to be truly courageous in the face of incredible adversity. ix Table of Contents Title page i Examination certificate ii Statement of original authorship iii Key words iv Abstract vi Acknowledgements viii Table of contents ix Chapter One: Teaching girls a lesson: The fashion model as pedagogue 1.0 Introduction 2 1.1 Background to the study: Making ‘sense’ of the fashion model 3 1.1.1 The fashion model as disorder/distortion 4 1.1.2 The fashion model as delight 5 1.2 Rationale 6 1.3 Making different ‘sense’ of fashion model influence 6 1.4 Aims and objectives of the study 8 1.4.1 Specific aims 9 1.5 Key assumptions of the study 10 1.5.1 Research questions 11 1.6 Theoretical framing: Re-conceptualising pedagogy 11 1.6.1 Defamiliarising pedagogy 11 1.7 The theory/method nexus: Post-structuralism as methodology 12 1.7.1