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Pornostyle: Sexualized Dress and the Fracturing of Feminism

Pamela Church Gibson

To cite this article: Pamela Church Gibson (2014) Pornostyle: Sexualized Dress and the Fracturing of Feminism, Fashion Theory, 18:2, 189-206, DOI: 10.2752/175174114X13890223974588 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.2752/175174114X13890223974588

Published online: 21 Apr 2015.

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Fashion Theory, Volume 18, Issue 2, pp. 189–206 DOI: 10.2752/175174114X13890223974588 Reprints available directly from the Publishers. Photocopying permitted by licence only. © 2014 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.

Pornostyle: Sexualized Dress and the Fracturing Pamela Church Gibson of Feminism

Pamela Church Gibson is Reader in Abstract Cultural and Historical Studies at the London College of Fashion. Edited anthologies include More Dirty This article is premised on the suggestion that there are now two separate Looks: Gender, Power, Pornography Western systems of fashion; here the word “system” is not intended to (BFI, 2004). Fashion and Celebrity evoke the model suggested by Roland Barthes, but rather to refer, quite Culture was published by Berg in 2011; Fashion Cultures Revisited simply, to a pragmatic “system” of design, manufacture, distribution, (Routledge) is currently in press. and dissemination, similar to the cultural studies’ “circuit of culture” [email protected] model of analysis. A new, unacknowledged “system” of design and promotion has emerged in the last decade, which has its own fashion leaders in young female celebrities, its own magazines to chronicle their activities and showcase their style, its own Internet presence, and its 190 Pamela Church Gibson

own retailing patterns. These young women often resemble in their self- presentation the “glamour models” or pin-up girls of popular men’s magazines, whose “look” is a muted version of the styling associated by many with that of hard-core pornography. The “body ideal” of this alternative system is very different to that of high-fashion; once again, it resembles the look of the women pictured in magazines for men. Although one or two writers on fashion have noted this new trend, it is feminist scholars who have shown most interest; they see the new system as part of the “pornification” of contemporary visual culture. A number of these same scholars are avowed anti-pornography campaigners and I argue that this could further damage the fragile feminist project, already riven by differences.

KEYWORDS: fashion system, celebrity, feminism, postfeminism, “pornification”

Introduction

Clothing as a form of nonverbal, visual communication is a powerful means of making subversive social statements, because these state­ ments are not necessarily constructed or received on a conscious or rational level. Crane (2000: 237)

What we understand as “fashion theory” has, traditionally, focused on “fashionable” dress, and tends to exclude most clothes worn by “ordinary” people—unless, of course, they belong to a subcultural group with a fashion following of some sort. “Punk,” for example, has recently been given the ultimate contemporary accolade in the world of high fashion; it was the subject of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Punk: From Chaos to Couture, in 2013. The British “club ”’ of the 1980s received their own recognition in the same year, with an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. But it is thirteen years since Diana Crane examined differing modes of distinctive dress across social classes in her seminal book on the social agendas of fashion and , which many assumed would open up debates around clothing which is neither high fashion nor subcultural in style. This did not happen; the topic of “everyday” dress has remained unexplored. When Crane announced that “the majority of women are not interested in fashion’ (2000: 241) she was referring to the idealized images of “high fashion” rather than implying an indifference to clothing. As I will argue, there has been a recent development in and around dress, the emergence of a new mode of self-presentation, separate from that of high fashion, which has a very Pornostyle: Sexualized Dress and the Fracturing of Feminism 191

different “agenda” and which needs the attention of fashion scholars. This new “system” has its own style icons and its own separate system and circuits of promotion, dissemination, and consumption. The intention of this article is to offer an initial inquiry into a number of seemingly different yet divergent cultural trends that yoke together fashion and pornography in quite specific ways, ranging from reality television and celebrity coverage to high-end fashion editorials. Such is the reach and the power of the “pornification” of fashion culture that it seems little has escaped its reach and influence. However, it is too soon to say exactly where this is heading; in this article I can only offer a sketch of some examples from both sides of the Atlantic, as a starting point for what I hope will be further investigation. The “pornification” of fashion has troubled and alerted some feminist scholars and journalists; as fashion scholars and as feminists, we need to discuss the widespread acceptance of references, images, and appropriations that were once exclusive to pornography, yet which now seem to be the norm. Even those who actively fight censorship within the ongoing debates around pornography talk themselves of the “sexualization” of popular culture and indeed of society itself—what Atwood (2009) calls “the mainstreaming of sex.”

Sexualized Self-Presentation and Celebrity Culture

The emergence and the centrality of the new mode of dressing that I wish to analyze here is one directly relevant to this special issue. I am referring to the presentation of the body in a highly sexualized way and to a particular form of appearance and display that can now be seen on high streets across Europe and the USA (Figure 1). Many young women now dress in this “sexy” style, which has little to do with the diktats and demands of high fashion, but is concerned with the emulation of particular celebrities, those celebrities deemed to be sexy rather than those praised by the fashion press for their style. These celebrities wear designer clothes and flaunt expensive accessories. They have made acceptable the sexy “look” of short , skimpy tops, and very high heels that has always been with us: what is new is its appearance on so many perfectly respectable young women. Young celebrities and their followers have therefore created a mode of self-presentation which challenges and coexists with what is normally seen as “fashion.” This new “system” is certainly not “alternative” in the old-fashioned sense of the word, which was applied in the past to subcultural styles and in particular to the “hippy” look. Here, by contrast, ruthless commercialization is rampant while a , homogenized appear­ ance is demanded. It should be noted that this look is confined to young women; there is no masculine equivalent. It has profited not only those within the garment and beauty industries, but some of the celebrities 192 Pamela Church Gibson

Figure 1 The “sexy” look. The right accessories seem important. Anne-Marie Michel / Catchlight Media. Pornostyle: Sexualized Dress and the Fracturing of Feminism 193

themselves who have “created” or endorsed inexpensive lines of cloth­ ing, cosmetics, and fragrances—while themselves wearing designer clothes and wielding “high-end” accessories. In my earlier analysis of “celebrity style” I argued that it had seemingly created two different separate ideals, “the sexy and the über-stylish” (Church Gibson 2011: 22) and that this sexy look was influenced by the appearance of the “glamour model.” Over ten years ago, media sociologists first identified and analyzed what they saw as the “pornification” of culture (see McNair 1996). What has happened over the past few years within the arena of fashion, whether we choose to censure it as “pornified” or not, seems somehow to have escaped the notice of theorists within and around that discipline. It has, how­ ever, been highlighted and hijacked by some contemporary academics involved in the campaign against pornography; to this I will return, for underpinning this article are perceptible new divisions within feminism, of great concern. Pornography has, of course, traditionally divided feminists into two opposing camps; so too has fashion. But now, what many perceive as links between the two threaten to fracture further the increasingly fragile feminist project, already under siege in the age of a supposedly empowering and stoutly contested “postfeminism” with shopping and sexuality very much to the fore (see McRobbie 2009; Negra 2007).

Sexy versus Stylish

Today it is arguably the “sexy” rather than the most “stylish” celebrities who have the most power within the clothing—if not the fashion— industry. Young women and younger girls no longer turn to established fashion magazines such as Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Elle, nor do they consult cutting-edge style bibles for inspiration. They do not read Love, Tank, or Purple. They look instead at popular celebrity magazines, particularly the pages such as “How to Steal her Style” that are often available online and carefully set up to facilitate “e-tailing,” an integral component of this new style. Possibly, too, those seeking this “sexy” style might know about FHM’s annual list of the “Hundred Sexiest Women” in the world. Few of those women will be familiar to readers here, apart from film star Mila Kunis, who topped that list in 2013. When Kunis appeared in the film Black Swan (US, Darren Aronofsky, 2010) she found her way into fashion magazines through her costuming by the Rodarte design team. This new “alternative” system, the “sexy” system, has its own sources of inspiration and, significantly, its own body ideals, which are quite different from that of high fashion. The celebrity body emulated in the alternative system is curvaceous, with a pronounced bosom and long limbs, which are invariably bared and often perma-tanned; as I will suggest later, this “look” is just as problematic 194 Pamela Church Gibson

Figure 2 The sexy look goes to a fashion show—enemy territory? Anne-Marie Michel / Catchlight Media. Pornostyle: Sexualized Dress and the Fracturing of Feminism 195

in terms of maintenance and self-surveillance for most young women as the achieving of the traditional waif-like, attenuated body of “high fashion.” The hair and makeup within the celebrity-inspired system, based as they are on the imagery of “soft-core” and indeed of hard-core pornography, are also radically different (Church Gibson 2011; Church Gibson and Kirkham 2012) The hair of those who follow the new ideal should be long, thick, and shiny, while lips are glossy (Figure 2) High- fashion magazines spent much of 2013 promoting the “choppy bob” of leading model Karlie Kloss, whilst those within the “alternative” and “sexy” system stuck to their long locks. For those who seek help, there are now fake hair extensions available on the high streets on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Stylish Cross over—or Cash in

But the true power of the new ubiquitous and highly sexualized image is shown through the way in which established figures in the conventional “fashion pantheon” have been seduced by the potency, popularity, and commercial viability of what has been described by one concerned feminist academic as “porn chic” (Lynch 2012). Model Kate Moss has appeared on Vogue covers across a twenty-year period and has now agreed to pose for Playboy magazine; she has of course appeared naked before, in, say, advertisements for David Yurman jewelry and Longchamp . Far more significant than her forthcoming Playboy photographic shoot, however, was her March 2013 collaboration with leading, long- established fashion photographer Mario Testino and singer Rihanna on a shoot for V magazine. V magazine is highly regarded within the fashion industry, so for it to proffer up a self-consciously “pornified” shoot is very telling. The cover and the extensive spread of images showed Moss and Rihanna in a series of embraces and poses that seemed deliberately to parody Helmut Newton’s work of the early 1970s, particularly the famous Vogue shoot of 1975 where two women embraced in a street, one sporting a masculinized tuxedo, Le Smoking as created by Yves Saint Laurent, and the other looking deliberately ultra-feminine. But there is more within this recent shoot to note. It is almost as if Testino wants it to be made clear that he can work happily within the new realm of supposed “pornification,” whether as playful postmodern exercise or straightforward commercial gambit. He poses his two models, with black as the dominant color of their deshabillé, on sofas and against backdrops where a lurid pink is the predominant color. This is not the tasteful “shocking pink” once created by Schiaparelli, but rather a garish neon. It is a deliberate slap in the face for fashionable “good taste”; it evokes instead the vibrant pink popular in soft-porn film and photographic editorials and even hints at the supposed set designs of hard-core pornography. A few years ago, Steven Meisel had 196 Pamela Church Gibson

explicitly used the mise en scène of “hard-core” in the sets he selected for a Calvin Klein campaign (see Church Gibson and Kirkham 2012: 149). Boundaries are certainly becoming blurred and the alternative “system” is showing its power if leading “players” within high fashion such as Moss, Testino, and Meisel are working in this way. Moss soon posed naked again, but this time in the particular mode of tasteful nudity that we associate with high fashion. She appeared semi-naked on the cover of “style bible” Love magazine, wearing an exclusive designer tabard draped to conceal her breasts and pubis, and lying in a bubble bath. This tabard was, however, printed with a large, erect penis. The cover line read “Kate Cleans Up” (Love, Issue 9, Spring– Summer 2013). Another high-fashion model, Cara Delevingne, was also shown semi-naked and in a foaming bath on the following page. These images were a return to the conventions of “designer soft-porn” that have prevailed in the fashion industry since the 1970s work of Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin. A perfect example of this style is the recent fashion feature “Retrograde” in the August 2013 issue of British Vogue. Here, a blonde and quite noticeably curvaceous young model is posed on a double bed in thigh-high laced-up , legs spread apart, a shearling draped over her naked body, a nipple carefully revealed (UK Vogue August 2013: 141).

Television Takes on the Trend, Cinema Takes up the Theme

So dominant has the über-sexualized look become that it has spawned a weekly slot, “Starlet or Streetwalker?” currently a staple feature of the American television program The Fashion Police (E! TV, 2010– onwards).The show’s host is comedienne Joan Rivers, and she has with her a panel of “experts”—none of whom, interestingly, have any formal credentials or experience within the fashion industry. Each week, they study images of young women in revealing garments whose faces are obscured to assure anonymity. The group passes judgment and hold up placards, which proclaim each girl to be either a “starlet” or a “streetwalker.” There has been a good deal of feminist anger over the use of photographs of real-life prostitutes, a fear that these young women may be further traumatized by seeing their bodies onscreen; this has led to an online petition. But what is of relevance for this article are the “starlets,” who are the kind of celebrities I have described, invariably popular with young women and possessed of power as well as economic and erotic capital. This program does not therefore provide exactly the same form of “symbolic violence” described by Angela McRobbie in her analysis of the British television program What Not to Wear (2009). McRobbie Pornostyle: Sexualized Dress and the Fracturing of Feminism 197

criticized the verbal violence directed against the guests, members of the public who had asked to appear and to be “made over.” She argued that the two middle-class presenters were deploying their own social and cultural capital against much more vulnerable women, participants who became, in fact, the victims of their supposed hosts (McRobbie 2009: 128). In the case of Joan Rivers and The Fashion Police (see above), the targets of criticism, by contrast, are young “starlets.” How­ ever, the “starlets” are not the disempowered, anonymous women who sought help from the presenters of What Not to Wear. Not only do they have a public following but what they are wearing reflects the taste of their many fans and is that self-same highly sexualized mode of dress I seek to contextualize in this article. Certainly, many middle-class viewers and the affluent presenter—for Joan Rivers is one of the richest women in America—can and do mock what they see as the “trashy” and by implication possibly “lower-class” taste of the girls featured in this program. However, the “starlets” know that they are part of an “alternative” and potentially very lucrative system, that it is their style and not that dictated by bourgeois good taste—to which Rivers presumably aspires—that so many young women today want. They know, too, that the clothes they wear and the accessories they wield are expensive. Nevertheless the “starlets” are still, despite their followers and their own forms of capital, set up here as the target of middle- class hauteur, and as I will suggest later in this article, “high-fashion” industry insiders are just as judgmental as Rivers and her team. Sofia Coppola’s film The Bling Ring (2013) is in part notable for show­ing the lengths to which celebrity worshippers can go in their pursuit of the right clothes. The film dramatizes the true story of five young people on America’s West Coast, who stalked and then stole from the sexy young celebrities they admired. They took clothes, jewelry, cash, and accessories worth an estimated three million dollars. They used their spoils, incidentally, to make themselves look as “sexy” as possible when they went out in public; they did not seek material gain, despite two half-hearted attempts to make some money from the stolen goods. What they really sought was the “look” of the celebrities they followed in the social media. The film’s reception has also made clear, through some of the reviews, that the class snobbery and “symbolic violence” McRobbie described are still very much with us, despite the shifts I have described. Reviewers did not launch attacks on Coppola, now well established as both director and “high-fashion” icon. She is not only the daughter of a leading Hollywood director, but also a close friend and business associate of Marc Jacobs, for whom she has modeled in advertising campaigns and designed handbags. The film is open to criticism; not only does it speedily become a series of disconnected vignettes strung together by the soundtrack, but Coppola seems unable or unwilling to criticize the wealthy celebrity-obsessed children she depicts. Her own credentials within both Hollywood and the fashion industry serve to shield her. 198 Pamela Church Gibson

Unkind comments are, instead, directed by reviewers at Paris Hilton, who appears in the film as herself and whose own home serves as a film set; it was the target for five of the burglaries. She is castigated for her bad taste, her nouveaux-riches pretensions, and the gaudy opulence of her home. Class structure and class snobbery are still in place, but there are nevertheless new movements around and within that system. Most significantly, the new fashion system—of which Paris Hilton is a part— can challenge the unofficial autocracy of the fashion world, even if it is ultimately the manufacturers who make the profits from the various products she endorses. Her own closets and extensive dressing rooms, which we see in the film, are stocked with clothes and accessories which provide both a roll call and an overview of the top luxury brands. The young women pilloried in The Fashion Police and the celebrities stalked in The Bling Ring display the symbolic and financial power of the other “fashion system,” as do the “crossover” activities of Testino and Moss. We might look briefly at other television “reality shows”— where we find confirmation that the sexualized “look” is itself moving across social boundaries. For there is a “tasteful” variant of body- conscious dressing, complete with mane of long, glossy hair and tanned limbs, that is now seeping into the upper echelons of society.

Pornostyle Moves up the Social Scale

British television is always ready to use social class to boost its ratings; sometimes this involves fashion. Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–onwards) is popular on both sides of the Atlantic. This series, which celebrates a mythical English past and its rigid class system, stars young actresses who have appeared in fashion editorials for British Vogue, while what has been termed “Downton style” has pervaded catwalk collections. Its effect could be seen clearly in the Louis Vuitton advertising campaign for Fall/Winter 2012, where very feminine models in Edwardian-inspired and were photographed posing primly in an old-fashioned Pullman car. But the very different styles of dress seen onscreen in two English “reality series,” Made in Chelsea (E4, 2011–onwards) and The Only Way Is Essex (ITV2, 2010–onwards) are much more popular with younger viewers. The “stars” of these two series will never find their way into a “high-end glossy” or style bible; they are, however, regularly interviewed in and photographed for celebrity magazines. The series set in Chelsea, reflects the reality of contemporary Chelsea, no longer home to the Bohemians of the “Chelsea Set,” with whom the area was associated from the 1920s to the 1960s, but now an area where only the wealthy can reside. They are not all “upper-class”; Middle Eastern millionaires and exiled Russian oligarchs may be found here, and English class credentials are not as exclusive as in Downton days. The second of these “structured reality” series depicts the young inhabitants Pornostyle: Sexualized Dress and the Fracturing of Feminism 199

of Essex, an area populated by those lower down the socioeconomic scale; the protagonists can be compared to those seen in the American series Shore (MTV, 2008–10). The same snobbery applies here as in the USA, where poor “Snooki” of Jersey Shore was mocked both in print and in the blogosphere as the epitome of bad taste; Joan Rivers dressed up as Snooki for Halloween. But whereas the popular girls from both the Essex- and the Chelsea-set series are to be found in the lower end celebrity magazines rather than on the pages of Ponystep, Tank, or Purple, one thing is interesting, relevant, and important in this context. These “Chelsea Girls” of the new millennium have long glossy hair, heavy makeup, and quite often a possibly fake tan. They seem to seek glamour rather than “high style.” If there were in 2013 a retail outlet that was the equivalent of Mary Quant’s original Bazaar shop on Chelsea’s Kings Road—fashionable, edgy, but not exactly provocative— they might not shop there. “Binky” Felstead, one of the show’s “stars,” is a particular favorite of the celebrity magazines and has posed for OK! Magazine in satin underwear (June 26, 2013). The underwear was expensive, but the poses—parted lips, hair across one eye, a hand stroking her own flesh—were those of the soft-porn glamour shoot, of a pin-up girl for a pornographic calendar. The garment and beauty industries find the coexistence of these two different strands most profitable; they provide two ways to proceed and to profit, along parallel, even divergent lines. We are familiar with the fact that “main street” and “high street” chains across Europe have showcased “collaborations” with designers and style icons who are recognized by the fashion industry, from Karl Lagerfeld and Rei Kawakubo to Anna della Russo. There has been a very different set of collaborations in recent years, targeted at those who want the particular look I have described. This also involves the fast production of cheap fashion—not only endless copies of celebrity outfits, but more significantly of their own “designs.” The Kardashians, who found their fame through their American reality show Keeping up with the Kardashians (E!, 2007–onwards) have successfully launched their own clothing lines. The best-known of the Kardashians, Kim, perhaps owes her greater personal fame to a leaked “sex tape” as, of course, does Paris Hilton. It is Kim who many young girls admire; she is both curvy and well proportioned. For while the fashion industry continues to tie itself in knots around the size zero debate, this other, ignored-by-the- commentators strand within the apparel industry is promoting more curvaceous women. The Kardashians and Mila Kunis would not fit into high-fashion sample sizes. Interestingly, Kim Kardashian (Figure 3), whose inexpensive ranges retail at Walmart in the USA and at Dorothy Perkins in the UK, wore an inordinately costly dress designed by celebrity-turned-designer Victoria Beckham at a high-profile event, the Wimbledon singles final in June 2013. Earlier that year, when finally permitted to attend the “Met Ball,” fashion’s equivalent of the 200 Pamela Church Gibson

Figure 3 Kim Kardashian, here demure in black, is photographed with little-known Lizzie Cundy, one-time TV presenter, in tight white dress and extremely high heels. Photographer: Anne-Marie Michel / Catchlight Media. Pornostyle: Sexualized Dress and the Fracturing of Feminism 201

Oscars, she wore a Givenchy evening ; perhaps she remembered the association of that couture house with Audrey Hepburn. If proof were needed of high fashion’s hauteur, it can be found in the fact that Kardashian was cut out of all the images which Vogue featured on its website to commemorate the event. In these pictures, her partner in life and her companion that evening, musician Kanye West, would seem to have attended the event and walked the red carpet quite alone. This interference with photographic evidence is proof of high fashion’s dislike of, and distaste for, the other “system” delineated. Significantly perhaps, Kardashian was heavily pregnant; the sociologist Beverley Skeggs has written of the fear generated in the middle classes by the sight of the fecund working-class body, of the perceived reproductive abilities which threaten middle-class domination and might upset the social status quo (Skeggs 2008: 110). Fecund, pregnant or not, this other, opposed, contemporary ideal is curvaceous in a particular way that is no easier to attain than the overall slimness demanded of the fashion model. Few women, or girls, have the relevant curves in the right places. So the beauty industry stands poised to help; cosmetic surgery is booming as never before. For those without the funds, there are of course padded brassieres; there was a furor in England when they were marketed for seven year olds (BBC News 2003). And if fake tan, long hair, and nails are part of the ideal for many, that means yet more profit for manufacturers and for those in the relevant sectors of the service industries. The new alternative ideal—if pursued—needs constant self-surveillance and endless maintenance. To read the articles in celebrity magazines is often to read repeated accounts of the desire to achieve this other exclusive body. Even minor celebrities struggle—Tori Spelling gave an exhaustive account of her own problems with her “body image” to Celebrity magazine (June 3, 2013). The cover line read: “Endless nips, tucks and four kids—I’m finally happy with my body.” However, it is vital to stress here that many young women seemingly choose to ignore the traditional rules around exercise and diet and do not pursue that elusive celebrity body; nevertheless, they still happily wear the revealing clothes discussed here. This results in the extensive display of expanses of flesh, transgressive bodies exposed in a kind of carnivalesque confrontation of bourgeois norms. One particular transformation should have alerted those in high fashion, if not high theory, to the existence of two very different and mutually exclusive fashion ideals. I have described elsewhere how one “celebrity” changed not only her style in dress, hair and, makeup but also remodeled and recreated her own body, in order that she might reinvent herself as a “designer” and so be accepted within a new sphere. I refer of course to Victoria Beckham (see Church Gibson 2011). I was surprised at the time that no one in academia had commented on her extraordinary physical re-creation of herself and realized what it might signify, the fact that there are now two coexisting, highly 202 Pamela Church Gibson

oppositional, ways of “looking” and dressing. I did suggest then that there are questions here around “looking,” of who exactly is “looking” at who and why. Arguably, the “high-fashion” look is usually same- sex, invariably asexual; we need perhaps to invoke the concepts of the homospectorial, to reference, say, Fuss (1992). It is possibly for this reason that so many contemporary young women favor the “sexy” look, which aspires specifically to attract the male gaze, rather than a high-fashion look, which so often serves to deflect that very same gaze.

The Academy Intervenes: The “Porn Wars” Recommence

Where the newly dominant style has been discussed, it is within con­ temporary feminist, rather than fashion, scholarship, where it is severely criticized. Academic Annette Lynch, who has explored it thoroughly and labeled it “porn chic,” is not only a Professor of Textiles and Apparel; she is also Director of the Centre for Violence Prevention at the University where she works. She describes how what she calls the new “raunch eroticism” influences the deeds and behavior of young women; she is concerned to protect them from sexual harassment and worse. She herself argues that this new style of dressing, “seemingly empowered,” is in fact “‘a well put-together marketing guise, a cover-up for conformance to a minimised and often sexually-objectified position for women and girls in the social order” (2012:10). Radical feminist and anti-porn activist Gail Dines also has a lot to say about contemporary clothing in her book Pornland (2010). Some of her observations about dress are worth noting—even if she is censorious in a very different way to critics writing within the sphere of fashion, misunderstands fashion per se, and seeks to place sexualized dress firmly within the long-running “harms debate” that runs through academic debates around pornography.1 Dines states, confusingly and I would suggest incorrectly, that “the fashion industry has always pushed clothes that sexualise women’s bodies.” She then moves on to what is for her firmer ground: “The look is in part inspired by the sex industry … we are now expected to wear this attire everywhere—in school, on the street and at work” (2010: 103). Like Lynch and other feminist scholars, her wish is to protect young women. The idea of “empowerment” through dress and sexuality has become highly divisive for feminism; it seems to foster existing generational conflict and to provoke further tensions. Conflict over pornography itself is of course not new. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, women who followed the leading anti-pornographers Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon clashed violently with those feminists opposed to censorship, who saw the anti-pornography campaigners as authoritarian, right-wing, and denying women the pleasure provided by a full exploration of their sexuality. They also saw Pornostyle: Sexualized Dress and the Fracturing of Feminism 203

the anti-porn lobby as problematic for lesbian women and were unhappy with its denunciation of sadomasochism. Lisa Duggan, writing in 1995, commented on the acrimonious nature of what she christened “the porn wars”; she suggested that these “wars” lasted from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, and noted that “the scars remain” (Duggan 1995: 6). Feminists opposed to censorship have continued to argue that women have a right to express and to explore their own sexuality through the use and even the creation of pornography (see for example Atwood 2009; Smith 2007). Arguments around revealing dress have now been drawn into this contentious and long-running saga; the scars have not healed, it seems, and the old wounds are now being reopened. The academic journal Porn Studies, which will be launched by Routledge in 2014, has led to controversy on both sides of the Atlantic: Gail Dines has called its editors “cheerleaders for the industry” and noted how much online pornography now depicts heterosexual rape (Cadwalladr 2013). “Porn chic” has also been analyzed in more populist volumes. American journalist Ariel Levy describes in her book Ranch Culture how she came to question her own ultra-liberal ideals around women’s right to dress and behave as they please; she notes how seeing a twelve- year-old girl snap the string of her underwear as an older boy passed her in the hall of a Junior High was a Damascene moment (Levy 2006: 23). English journalist Natasha Walter was similarly converted, revisiting her original ideas around what she originally hailed as “the new feminism” to take the mode of self-presentation scrutinized here into account (Walter 2010). Walter, like Levy, was originally convinced that women—and particularly young women—had the right to self- expression through dress; she now feels that they are being socialized as “Living Dolls.” The writings, of Levy and Walter and the academic work of Dines and Lynch, indicate the nature of a new and highly contentious conflict within contemporary feminism. The powerful desire to protect young women is at odds with the avowed “post-feminist” refusal to be reg­ ulated; this led to the Slutwalk protests which began in Toronto in 2013 and quickly became a global phenomenon. Their most famous slogan is “It’s a Dress, not a Yes.” For the protests were sparked off in 2011 by a Toronto police officer who suggested in a talk on campus rape that if young women were to remain safe, they should “avoid dressing like sluts.” The two young women who cofounded the movement instantly took up his phrase and used it against protectionist elders. Here we find yet another area of conflict around dress and display—the new use of the semi-naked female body for protest, for a different kind of “empowered” display. The Slutwalk protests saw their members scantily dressed, to make it very clear that it is not provocative clothing nor even undress that leads to rape and sexual violence. The women who took to the streets to defend their right to dress as they pleased and 204 Pamela Church Gibson

to use their bodies as sites of display were in sharp conflict with some of their feminist elder sisters and their own contemporaries. The Slutwalk movement was described as “the pornification of protest” on a number of blogs; the source of the soubriquet is not clear. Young feminists, incidentally, have increasingly taken to the Internet to make their voices heard; Jessica Valenti set up the blog and website feministing.com in 2004 to provide them with just such a platform. This leads us back to the debates around pornography which have now resurfaced in the USA and the UK, to the idea embedded in the minds of the anti-porn brigade that uncontrollable male desire can be unleashed by a pornographic film or a revealing dress. The FENEM movement, which originated among young feminists in Eastern Europe, is intended to protect women from repressive political regimes. The protesters take the use of the naked, decorated female body still further. They parade topless and painted through the streets to confront their powerful enemies. Some adopt revealing underwear, in a parody of glamour modeling. Again, their method of protest seems to have been highly divisive; as with Slutwalk, the protesters are mainly young and their critics are from an older generation of feminists. Most scholars, however, have been mostly silent on the subject of increasingly sexualized dress and this, I would suggest, is part of a con­ tinuing silence around the “everyday” and more significantly, perhaps, a reluctance to tackle a subject as provocative as social class. As I have tried to argue, questions around class and taste have become even more complex and of greater significance in the age of celebrity culture and its challenges to the traditional “fashion system.” Although some might think that social class is a peculiarly British issue, the example of Joan Rivers’ malice towards the dispossessed would seem to contradict that idea. And of course worsening economic inequalities underpin any future debates around social class.

Conclusion

All the factors considered in this article are disturbing for any feminist; they should also provoke the attention of fashion scholars. We have seen here the distaste of the “fashionable” for those whose dress is deemed overly sexual, the worrying media configurations of these two systems, and the interesting defection of some to the new realms of supposed “porno chic.” It is impossible to predict how these two “systems” might develop in the next decade, in a time of both global recession and the growing dominance of luxury brands, themselves a clear assertion of the power of economic capital if not of social class. One thing seems certain—the fact that the already-troubled relationship between feminism and fashion has been exacerbated by the new dress codes I describe, which are possibly the clearest visual signal of generational Pornostyle: Sexualized Dress and the Fracturing of Feminism 205

conflict. The feminist project is under siege as never before; evidence suggests the inevitability of further conflict. Lines of battle are again drawn up around dress, as they were forty-five years ago with beauty pageant protests and the supposed discarding of in the late 1960s. This time, however, scornful “fashionistas” find themselves in the arena, lined up alongside the anti-pornography feminists. There are questions here for fashion scholars as well as cultural theorists; I wanted within this forum to stress their significance. All I have done is to collate evidence, to ask that it be considered carefully.

Postscript

While this article was in preparation, I found a particular Internet site and a related phenomenon that illustrates clearly just how difficult the debates around Internet pornography have become for those of us theoretically opposed to censorship. I was looking at an advertisement in which the tennis player Caroline Wozniacki poses in the underwear range, This is Me, which she both designs and models, when a pop- up appeared for a site with the name bang.tidy.net. Suddenly, super­ imposed across her breasts was a slogan, “Ugly Girls Need Cock Too”—followed by the suggestion “Just Sign up and Fuck These Poor Women.” If readers consult this website, they will find that it is, in fact, devoted to images of attractive young celebrities. Its claim is that “this is the best place to honour celebrity beauty.” It seemed an appropriate way to close this article.

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank Gary Needham for suggestions made during the writing of this article.

Note

1. A clear analysis of this debate can be found in Segal ([1993]2004).

References

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