Pole Dancers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUTYVN-_FCA

"Pole Dancing as Performance Art".

When anyone mentions "Pole Dancers", we immediately think of darkly lit clubs in London's "So Ho".

 These women took the place of lap dancers and podium dancers of the 1960's. It is fair to say that most of these girls were making a living from the only options that were available to them.

 Of course there were some that worked in this arena because they chose to, and a lot of women today do the same but the difference is that they do have a choice.

 Sometimes it is still seen as an easy way to earn money. But in the 2000's this has moved to a stage of a different kind they are now also seen as performers, alongside female bodybuilders in competitions.

By the 1970's the women's feminist movement of the previous decade had taken hold and into the 1980's we were openly educating young women that they were being exploited by men and the media.

 The Samantha Fox "Page Three" models were in decline and women were stepping out of this market place.

But  suddenly the has been a complete "U" turn and women are openly putting themselves back into the focus of the voyeur.

In Natasha Walters book  "Living Dolls", she investigates this controversy.

In a paragraph from her book she questions this movement:

"This association of femininity and sexiness starts early: while hardly new for women to be sexy. it's new that even childhood playthings should look sexy. Although feminists in the 1970's deplored Barbie's tiny waist, large breasts and perfect features, she could be marketed as a pilot, doctor, or an astronaut, with accessories to match her roles.

Bratz dolls, who recently toppled Barbie from her throne as the best selling fashion doll, were created with a wardrobe for clubbing and shopping, dressed in fishnet and feathers, crop tops and mini skirts, with heavily painted faces that look as if they have been created by Jordan's make-up artist."

Gone are the educated guides of feminist mothers from the earlier decade of encouraging their daughters that they can be and achieve the same aspirations as boys and become architects, financiers and politicians. Jordan actually became the new role model for girls young women

Instead we have women that feel that they are liberated to exercise their own right to empowerment by using their sexuality as a way of expressing themselves."

She then goes onto talk about the fascination with the upward trend towards pole dancing.

"Similarly, the fashion for pole dancing classes is talked about as if it were liberating women. The website for Pole Hen Weekends states that, 'Pole dancing classes are all about freeing yourself from the restrictions imposed on you in your everyday life and empowering yourself. Even occupations such as lap dancing and prostitution are often surrounded by this quasi-feminist rhetoric."

This fashion for pole dancing is talked about as if this is part of the liberation of women, this is empowering them to take control of their own identity. They are certainly in the realms of athletes in their skill and strength. And realistically you couldn't  perform on a steel pole in a jogging suit. But there are obvious visuals that are read by the males brain that are going to attract ideas of sexuality aimed at them?

Natasha Walter quotes in her book that in an interview with an ex-editor of a "Lads" magazine he said to her, "it's the women who are driving this change."

I would like to ask people from a mixed background and gender What their comments and views are? I have tried not to give my definite stand point so as not to influence the debate. Just some areas of discussion.

How do you describe your Gender?

What is the main attribute that gives you that gender role?

Do you feel totally comfortable with your gender role?

How do you see the sexualisation of Women by men?

How do you see the sexualisation of men by women?

1) Do you feel comfortable in a situation with a woman that is wearing nothing but a thong and bra? YES/NO

2) Do you feel comfortable in a situation with a man that is wearing nothing but a thong? YES/NO

Did your parents influence your childhood by:

3) The way you were dressed? YES/NO

4)The colours that dominated your clothes room? YES/NO

5) The toys you played with? YES/NO

6) And later by their expectations of your place in society- work? YES/NO

Please add any comments that you would like to make about the subject that you feel relevant. 

Photographer Robert Maplethorpe.

The Corset

Construction

On this page I'm going to explore ideas and thoughts on the construction of the Corset.

The fabric, the construction, the stitch and pattern shown in this important part of the make up.

I want to also look how these stitch patterns show the tension that is placed upon the garment.

This is an example of a typical corset of the 1940's/50's.

Here the calico samples have been pieced together to show the way in which the various panels in the corset work against one another to stabilise the effect of the tension created through the constriction. 

Using the pin tuck techniques within the garment used to give shape and flexibility.

The Calico fabric panels were then used to print from, the calico is stable enough to make quite a firm surface and the reproduction has been excellent.

The working title for my studio work is

 "Flesh and Bone"! 

So this has influenced the colour pallet that I will be working in.

The Skeleton

The Corset Sketchbook

The idea behind the corset is to articulate the place of woman in society and how society see's her and how "we" as women see ourselves.

Do we conform to stereotypes to be subservient to the male ego? Or do we impose these restrictions on ourselves as a need to be perceived as purely a decorative device?

I would like to work with my studio practice in machine knit to explore this idea firstly of oppression, suppression, restraint, constraint and tension. To use technical stitches and yarns to develop this impression through my work.

I want to utilise this language and the words that I have chosen to develop knitted samples that show the concept of the control within the corset.
 Then to take those samples to portray this idea of women's identity and what makes a physical impression of a woman. Is it just shape, colour or even texture that denotes the feminine gender? 

The starting point for this has to be the structure that all bodies are formed on, that is the "Skeleton". Its function to support the body, the underlying frame work. 

The corset is the external Skeleton, the exoskeleton. But not only does this framework support it constricts the body. This then becomes the equal to the outer skeleton of Crustacean.  

Artists and Influences

Elsa Schaperelli

The Skeleton Dress; The Circus Collection

Object: Evening Dress
Place of Origin: Paris, France.
Date: 1938 (made).
Artist Maker: Schaparelli, Elsa.
Born: 1890- died 1973 (designer)
Darli, Salvidor (designer)
Materials and Techniques:
Silk crepe, trapunto quilting, cotton wadding.

To many contemporaries the sinister black skeleton evening dress with it's padded representations of the human bones was an outrage - an offence against good taste. Although otherwise in elegant harmony with the prevailing lines of the late 1930's evening wear.

The skeleton dress is so constructed that it became a second skin and the imitation anatomy sat defiantly proud of the fine matt silk surface.

Schaparelli exaggerated the usually delicate trapunto quilting technique to make enormous "bones" - the design was stitched in outline through two layers of fabric. Then cotton wadding inserted through the back to bring the design into relief on the front. The shoulder seams and right side are closed by bold plastic zips. 

John Paul Gaultier

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZCgbBFibAVQ 

Follow the link to see John Paul talk about his work! 

This to me give the impression of the fabric taken away from the corset and you only being left with the structure.

It can be regarded in two ways, firstly that the woman's body is being held inside of the cage, restricted. Or it can be see that the woman's body trancends the steel frame showing her inner strength.

Alexander McQueen

In McQueen's words-

"I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artist.
 I have to force people to look at things."

Harper's Bazaar, April 2007

Hussein Chalayan

This designer continually pushes the boundaries of what is accepted and expected from clothing. His focus is on the technical side of materials and construction.

Jenny Saville

https://vimeo.com/46612357

"I want to be a painter of modern life, and modern bodies".

Damien Freud

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping

Freddie Robins

"She uses knitting to explore pertinent contemporary issues of the domestic gender and the human condition, as well as the cultural preconceptions surrounding knitting as a craft.

Her work aims to disrupt the notion of the medium as  passive and benign.her work often incorporate both humour and fear. There is also a display of almost obsessive perfectionism in the quality of each piece's hand-made finish".

Links and reference:

http://www.bustle.com/articles/114547-hussein-chalayan-melting-dresses-are-unwearable-but-awesome-photos

Body Image

The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.
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Over the last six decades women have had the added pressure to conform to an idealized body type from the growth of the commercial market.

 Through popular culture, film, print and advertising. We have been sold a notion that to be happy we have to conform to this representation of what is desired to have a good and fulfilled life.

From the fifties glossy film stars to the Baby Boomers of the sixties, it has continued to build. This is unbelievable to comprehend that as woman have become more educated we are still vulnerable to these pressures. But it seem the more we have, the more critical we are of ourselves

"Body Image" has become a product and a brand. Sold to us through every media possible. Anything but this "Image" is not acceptable as the "norm"!

The other important factor is that now this pressure is being transposed onto young adolescent girls.

Fashion is sold on stick thin models that are nothing but clothes horses for the garments.

There is now an awareness of these concerns and women are fighting back with promoting "Fuller Figure", "Plus Size" models.

Ashley Graham Plus size model TED Talks. "My Size"!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAgawjzimjc

Icons

Women have also had the influence of advertising and marketing. Here two worlds collide. On one hand we have the product and on the other very often a Designer who becomes the Brand. The two overlap and its confusing as to what we are actually buying into. Very often these Branded items are being sold under their sexuality and it is this that is being sold to us.

Perhaps woman are guilty of subliminal sexuality as well? 

Why would we prefer to buy perfume in a bottle in the shape of a Corseted Female Torso?
I opened this line of conversation with a group of women and they put forward that it was the men buying these items for the "women". This is suggesting that the product is designed for the Male consumer? To me this is very confused, " the man is purchasing the item that appeals to himself, for the woman that he is trying to please with the gift"? What do you think?

Or is this us trying to conform to that ideal again? 

"Female Icons and Role Models"

The graphic novels of the 1950's, here there was a total dominance of the male artist so as you would expect these are fantasised ideals of women. 
As a young woman I did enjoy the dramatized T.V program, "Wonder Woman". I think because she gave women the idea of an alter ego, girls could become super hero's too! We accepted the sexulised body form, in fact there weren't many of us that didn't dress up as our heroin for a fancy dress party.

2015 and the Heroione has moved into the realms of cyber space!

But the imagery is the same. Men like Big Busts and we do everything to be complicit to their desire. The corset was the main player to accomplish this now we can have surgery and design our bodies to order.

This is that "Superwoman" in reality! this athlete has developed her body for fitness and strength. Whether it is also to conform to a preconceive image is questionable? But remarkable for the training that went into achieving this, the development of the muscle does not include the development of the bust! So her body does not conform to the male stereotype. So what do we think about this?

The hourglass figure has been swapped for the more masculine silhouette of the inverted "V"?


Body Builder Rene Campbell
https://fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net/rsrc.php/v2/y4/r/-PAXP-deijE.gif

The Ideal Housewife of the 1950's 

This was the age of the "Domestic Goddess"!

Women were still expected to be the home maker and wife supporting the husband. Although some women worked it was another decade before it started to become more of the norm.

Women were also expected to dress to please the husband as a show piece of his position.

The Real Housewife of the 2015's

What have we done? is this really the image that we want to give our generations that are growing up now?

Where did all the work of the Suffragettes go?

 What happened to all of Germaine Greer's work for feminism of the 1970's go? 

If you ask any woman who she dresses for she will tell you,
 "other women". 

It is to other woman we try to aspire, it is other women that we try to emulate.

 Yet this society has manage to portray us as these shallow mortals that have nothing better to do with our lives than to out dress and diminish the intelligence of each other, to that of ......................

 sorry but I can not insult anything else to that level!




 The Burlesque Dancer

Body Image, Self: http://www.bustle.com/articles/107140-8-ways-you-were-unconsciously-conditioned-to-slut-shame-as-a-child

"What Defines a Woman?"

This is the question that I'm posing as my core research in my final year work for my BA Hons in Textiles

The Iconic image Of Madonna wearing a Corset.

 designed by John Paul Gaultier.

The concept that has been imposed on Women to "Fit" into the prescribed body shape that society dictates as the accepted requirement.

This has been manipulated over centuries to obtain the perfect body image. Mainly due to the desires of men. This reflects the male dominance over woman.
 The exception is that the one garment that both men and women once wore to contrive to visual ideal has become the mainstay of women's under garment.

 Whether for practical reasons or titillation for sex the prize piece
 ( or Constructed Textile), is a "Corset"

"Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"
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Femme a la toilette, 1896  Comte de Toulouse Lautrec

"Historically"

Victorian Dress Reform

The dress reform was first started in the late Victorian era. They were middle class woman that had the confidence and voice due to their position in society. they would have been active in the women's temperance movement and were already working towards furthering women's education for all and also involved in the upcoming Suffragette movement.

The dress reform movement was working for the emancipation of women to break free from the dictates imposed by fashion and the requirement to cover the limbs adequately for modesty.

Women had already started to move out of the home and its domestic dictates. The industrial revolution was bringing women to the front in the manufacturing industries and their clothing was not helping. They were required to be agile and mobile. The middle class woman also found herself having the freedom to participate in outdoor activities and even sport. But it wasn't just the opinion of men that was restricting this new articulated lifestyle it was their "undergarments", and one in particular. "The Corset".

For decades women had been torturing their bodies with Cloth, Bone and Steel, whatever it took to reshape their torso's to the extreme hour glass figure.

Men have always fixated on this ideal of a women's figure. 

Men are completely stimulate visually, sexually, so this is what they dictate as the ideal a woman should fit. Breasts should be round, full and elevated, towards them. 
Waists are only reduced to nothing to emphasize the hips! 
The hips relate to the primeval notions of reproduction, that both men and women are hot wired to do.

So the hips "offer" the best of all, shapely, wide and sway! 
It has been the dominance of men towards women that has imposed this ideal. 

The only way women can fit this idea is to manipulate the body beyond its own physicality.

This resulted in horrendous irreparable  internal damage. women couldn't breathe the corsets were laced too tight. years of wearing resulted in damage to the internal organs as well as miss placement of the skeleton.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.
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