By the way, given your inability to refute my statement of facts above (which reveal your serious distortion of my argument on at least three counts), your claim to have “fisked” my piece strikes me as being as premature, inaccurate and arrogant as George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” claim.

Wha… wha…mmmph? Hands up anyone who thought that when I wrote “women who are exploited in Special Economic Zones”, I was referring to middle class fashion designers…?

You may think that my aunt is fetishizing submission and dependency, or dismiss her as a mere “fashion victim”. Given your dislike of Paglia’s argument, you might even think that my aunt should apologise for her interest in fabric and colour and fashion.

Wha…..wtf….what? I was specifically trying to say the opposite. We (that is to say, most people), don’t think that people should apologise for an interest in fabric and colour and fashion. That is what people who construct strawfeminists say. But we don’t like the rotten aspects of it either; in its commercial incarnation it’s big and ugly enough to look after itself, really.

Ah, the fashion world, always doomed to be mocked. ‘Twas ever thus.

And “fashion victim” is a phrase used in the 80s to describe someone like Bubble in AbFab who tries to look edgy without any reference to taste, body shape or what works for them. It’s not a feminist invention.

Thank you for giving me the chance to respond. I appreciate it.

Your posts make a number of charges, so let me do my best to respond to each in turn.

Accusation 1: My piece is a “facet” of the push to “frighten women away from [feminism]“.
Fact: As stated in my piece, my intention was actually to suggest a strategy for feminists to increase “the size of the feminist tent” and reduce the number of women who use what I describe as “that regrettable phrase: ‘I’m not a feminist but…’”: see para 10 of the online version of the piece. In short, I want more women to describe themselves as feminists.

Accusation 2: My piece “[lectures feminists] about their attitude to Jimmy Choo and underage models”.
Fact: My piece actually describes the “high-heels-and-cleavage” aesthetic as “grotesque” and “uncomfortable”: see para 12 of the online version of the piece. My piece does not talk about underage models, but I would agree that their use is appalling, on feminist grounds.

Accusation 3: My piece defends “shoes in which you can’t run or even walk properly, diaphragm-crunching corsets, designs which place fabric over the model’s mouth or eyes, photo shoots which place models in gang-rape scenarios or valorise torture, and the airbrushing and manipulation of stick-thin girls to make them thinner still (and airbrush away their exposed ribs and spine)”.
Fact: Re high heels: my piece doesn’t defend them: see fact 2. Re corsets: my piece doesn’t defend diaphragm-crunching corsets, but in fact describes them, as used by Dior, as “oppressive”: see para 9 of my piece. Re fabric over models’ mouths and eyes, gang-rape scenarios, torture scenarios, etc: my piece doesn’t mention any of those, and I would agree that their use is appalling, on feminist grounds.

Feel free to dispute any of the facts as I have stated them, although I think you will struggle. As an aside, my hypothesis is that your mischaracterisation of my piece as a “scolding” is a result of the headline, which was far more confrontational than I would have liked. My suggested precede for the piece was to read: “Today is both International Women’s Day and the continuation of the Melbourne Fashion Festival. There’s no reason why women should not be able to celebrate both, writes Kenneth Nguyen”, which I think we will agree is far more conciliatory.

There is one serious argument that you raise, Helen, and that relates to the question: What has been the prevailing approach of feminists to fashion? You say that feminist writers have pointed out specific problematic practices in the fashion industry. I agree with you (and it’s great that those feminists are doing that) — but many feminists have also taken swings at the whole idea of fashion per se. For one example, see the Jeffreys book that I cite in my piece (and no, Jeffreys cannot be ignored just because she “doesn’t appear to have much of an influence on the femoblogosphere that [you're[ familiar with" - She's a major, major figure in the feminist movement, as anyone who took feminist courses at Melbourne University could tell you). For other examples, look no further than the posts on this blog: one poster describes fashion as a "pursuit [that] fetishises submission and dependency” (Really? Is that what this season’s hottest item, the Balenciaga blazer, does?) while another poster describes those on the demand side of the fashion world as “fashion victims”.

Finally, you note that I do not mention women from the Third World in my article. Let me correct that by raising the example of my aunt, a fashion designer in Da Nang, Vietnam. Her career has allowed her to feed her children, rise from a lower-middle-class existence (by Vietnamese standards) to a middle-class existence (again by Vietnamese standards) and also given her much happiness and meaning.

You may think that my aunt is fetishizing submission and dependency, or dismiss her as a mere “fashion victim”. Given your dislike of Paglia’s argument, you might even think that my aunt should apologise for her interest in fabric and colour and fashion.

I, for one, however, would refrain from reaching for the “shottie”, as you put it. I’d rather regard my aunt as a brave woman who embodies the best of feminism in her everyday life.

Kind regards
Ken

This is a reply to Ken @ March 14th, 2008 at 12:42 am-

No time to answer everything that I’d like to, but here are a few hurried dot points:

First, an appeal to authority won’t work if it concerns Camille Paglia. The response from any feminist-identified person will generally be to fall about laughing uproariously, then reaching for the shottie. Paglia is to feminism as Bjorn Lomborg is to science.

Such blanket statements only tend to alienate those women (and I’m surrounded by them in my life) who take an interest in fashion.

Do you have actual data on this, or are you extrapolating from the women you’re surrounded with? That’s a skewed and self selecting sample. Although you mention some qualifiers in your reply to my post, the thrust of the AGE article was clearly that this tendency is strong enough to threaten the feminist movement en masse. I would submit that that’s very weak evidence and it is the year-in, year-out attempts by antifeminists and nonfeminists to frighten women away from identifying with it, on multiple fronts (Women trying to have it all!!1!1! The Biological Clock !1!!1) which is doing the damage. Your article was just one of the facets of this (Feminazis are un-fun!)

The only real point I was trying to make is that the fashion world is not a monolithic beast committed to the oppression of women (check out the work of Kawakubo, currently on show at the NGV, for but one example) – consequently, we need to start criticising specific designers and specific practices, rather than simply lashing out at “the idiocies of the fashion industry”.

Which is exactly what the feminist writers do, so what exactly is is that you are trying to say? In your article you say that the “feminist” angle on fashion is just such a downer that it is enough to turn whole cohorts of women off it (feminism). Then in your comment you start to qualify. Yes, feminists criticise specific practices and that is what they have been doing all along, but they are also criticising the huge amount of effort and expense that women are forced to go in for to fit a mould that’s shaped by others, and the pain and suffering involved in trying to fit their human bodies into an ever more impossible template. That’s why, for instance, we write against using a twelve year old model for GC Fashion week – child issues aside, it is simply bloody impossible for a 34 year old woman to live up to the physical ideal of a girl who’s barely pubescent.

As an aside, as a bloke you enjoy the visual aspect of fashion – but you don’t have to wear those shoes. You look, but you don’t have to feel it. Or starve yourself. Or get a brazilian wax. (Naturally I’m making some, ahem, assumptions here, which may be risible – dunno…)

Going back to the article, even the “gotcha” of feminists quotes leaves me unconvinced. All the Virginia Woolf quote said was that society valorises male stuff over female stuff. It doesn’t follow that she meant we hd to suck up some corporatised future juggernaut of mass clothes-and image-marketing – and why use the example of people like her and women like ECS who were writing a century or more ago? How do you know they’d have approved of the fashion industry we have today? Highly questionable. As for Susan Faludi not personally appreciating the feel of a well constructed garment, again, “long bow award”. It’s been a while since I read “Backlash”, but I don’t recall her saying how much she hated having nice clothes to wear.

There’s so much straw here it’s a fire hazard.

I take exception to: “The irony of the traditional feminist condescension towards fashion is that it denies agency to the thousands of women who are leaders on the supply side of the industry (the editors, the designers, the stylists, the journalists)…

The women who are exploited in third world Economic Zones to feed this “supply side” are conspicuously absent from this article. That is the problem of feminism, I admit, sometimes looking at the bigger picture does interfere with our fun, fun, fun!

I just want to reiterate though, that although you were welcome to publish that piece (and get it fisked), it was a poor decision and very ungenerous/inappropriate IMO to give that space to a piece on International Womens’ Day scolding feminists for their failings. Note that I’m criticising the editors, as usual, rather than you. There are so many good writers who could have been given a platform to tell people what feminists are really about, rather than lecturing them about their attitude to Jimmy Choo and underage models.

Cheers
Ken

A short(ish) response: Helen, we actually share disdain for various aspects of the fashion industry. You’ll notice in my piece that I single out Dior, Ford, Mugler and Cavalli for particular criticism. All these designers have, at times, produced what I describe as “retrograde” fashion, and my piece indicates my personal disgust, shared with many feminists, for corsetry (used by Dior among others), insistence upon high heels (see my exceedingly brief reference to Cavalli), etc. In my view, there is no doubt that we all need to keep criticising these specific phenomena.

The only real point I was trying to make is that the fashion world is not a monolithic beast committed to the oppression of women (check out the work of Kawakubo, currently on show at the NGV, for but one example) – consequently, we need to start criticising specific designers and specific practices, rather than simply lashing out at “the idiocies of the fashion industry”. Such blanket statements only tend to alienate those women (and I’m surrounded by them in my life) who take an interest in fashion.

Finally, Helen, I’ll note my agreement with you that many feminists DO take an interest in shoes and clothes: that’s why I specifically used the words “some feminists” in the final sentence, and the words “traditional” as a qualifier throughout the piece. I guess that I’m with the less traditional Paglia when it comes to fashion and feminism: “Women enjoy color and fabric and fashion and we should not have to apologize for that,” she once said; if she had qualified the word “women” with the word “many” (and, indeed, replaced the word “women” with “people”, I would be in complete agreement with her.

Cheers
Ken

How bad is that? Half the paragraph in parentheses and a But and However in one sentence. Now you’ve got me all nervous you two, it’s like when a visitor comes over and you’re hurriedly and dishonestly cleaning…

Handy hint No.138:
Unless complimenting the person, safeguard yourself by evading Search detection – ‘KennethNguyen’ (no space) should do it.
Corporations also search blogs for themselves: Telstra turned up at a (justifiably) critical post on Aint No Sanity Clause a while back.

He’s wrong in so many ways it’s hard to know where to start. The light scattering of quotations, out of context and cherrypicked from a tiny, out-of-date and highly skewed sample of feminist commentators, brings the premise on which his argument rests very close to the status of strawfeminism, and that’s just for starters.

But it’s depressing, isn’t it, to see journalists quite happily wittering on about topics they manifestly know nothing about. And it’s even more depressing to have it demonstrated yet again that so many people think “feminism” is some clonking great monolithic entity on whose characteristics everyone agrees — and an entity with agency, at that.

Caroline — on heels, I remember reading somewhere that apart from crippling you so that you can’t run away (and so that by the time you’re old enough to know better, they have stuffed your lower back and distracted you from fighting the good fight, as vividly explained to me by my physio recently), they give your calf muscles high definition and make you waggle your backside more. Presumably both of these things are caused by the strain of walking unnaturally, but both are deemed sexually irresistible … possibly because they mean you can’t run away. Perhaps it’s a chicken-and-egg thing.