Bianca Balti | Mason Poole | L'Officiel Singapore September 2011 | 'Lady Immaculate'
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Vanessa Bellugeon styles Bianca Balti in ‘Lady Immaculate’, a now familar theme of the fall season executed in a traditional way by Mason Poole for L’Officiel Singapore’s September 2011 issue.
I playing catchup today, with lots on my mind after yesterday’s incredible day in New York, listening to and meeting old and new women who have done so much for women’s rights. We were honoring Anita Hill, 20 years after the Clarence Thomas hearings.
Feminism, Clothes and Respectability
One of the positive high notes of the day involved a discussion of SlutWalks — where is it going and how can it be leveraged and integrated into a larger movement. Whether you love the name or hate it, it’s the first women’s rights activist action taken in years by so many women around the world.
I’ll discuss details of my day in a Sexual Politics article, but want to underscore a key point made by Tulane University professor and author Melissa Harris-Perry about why we shouldn’t condemn SlutWalks — and especially black women shouldn’t condemn it. (Note — at least in one city a name change is in the works. Yeah!)
Harris-Perry reminded the audience that we now know that dressing modestly or ‘respectably’ does not advance women’s rights. Women are told that modesty — or being ‘Lady Immaculate’ as male religious leaders advocate — will give women respect, but it rarely does.
The downside is a sexually-repressed, testosterone-infused, aggressive culture, as we have in America, where we may own more guns than the rest of the world put together. Gotta verify that assertion by adding up the numbers, but it may well be true. See global statistics on gun ownership.
Respectability Doesn’t = Rights
Lubna Hussein’s outfit got her arrested in Khartoum for dressing like a whore.A woman can dress as ‘Lady Immaculate’ because she loves the look, prefers a more modest attire, or is a fashionista following this season’s trend. Dressing as ‘Lady Immaculate’ will not protect her from being perceived as a whore, if the prevailing cultural institutions decide it’s in their interests to project her as a whore.
We learned this with the Lubna Hussein flogging case in Sudan, where Lubna was arrested and scheduled for flogging, along with 40,000 other women in Sudan in 2008, according to court records.
I digress here and aologize to readers with promises not to rant too much on women’s issues in Private Studio — of all places.
Yet, I have learned a stiff lesson in the past few days about young women blaming feminists like me for destroying old-fashioned romance and seduction between men and women. That is pure poppycock, and I won’t stand for it — even among friends.
It’s one thing to be belittled by the right-wing who blames feminism for absolutely everything that is wrong with America. I’m accustomed to that argument and deal with it regularly.
To come under attack by young women I support — not personally as Anne Enke, but under the mantle of feminism which I embrace — stings, quite frankly.
I say ‘let’s cut the crap, ladies’. I’m fighting like crazy these days to keep your right to birth control alive in America, while promoting a healthy sexuality and female self image in our screwed-up country.
Pleases turn your sling shots on the Republican War on Women and not feminism, my dears. Better yet, get your beautiful butts into the streets and start fighting to protect the rights that I marched for and got for you, because it is the primary agenda of the Republican right to take them away from you.
As for defining feminism as it really is and was, because I’m tired of these attacks from younger women who don’t know what they are talking about, we will take a more focused approach as educators. Telling the true story of feminism has always been high on the Anne of Carversville agenda, but it is moving up a notch. I simply never understood how mixed up and misunderstood this word is in American culture. Love, Anne
On the subject of life ‘Lady immaculte’ life in Singapore, check out the memorable Singapore scholar Catherine Lim in If Only We Could Have Lubna Hussein, Dr Catherine Lim & My Dear Pixie for Tea AOC Women
