Smith, Dorothy:
“Femininity as Discourse” in Texts, Facts, and Femininity.
Routledge, 1995.
"I am exploring here the possibility of replacing statements about gender and gender- differences with explications of (some) social relations that gender. Here gender is explored as a distinctive effect of a complex of social relations specifically defining femininity and organizing, in and across actual local sites of people’s lives, the homogeny of gender difference." p.120-1
"I think of social relations not as fixed relations between statuses but as an organization of actual sequences of action in time." p.121
"The strategy of attending to social processes as the ongoing activities of actual people can be extended to phenomena which have formerly been approached as subjective or as cultural phenomena, i.e. as socially given forms of subjectivity." p.121
"explores femininity as the actual social relations of a discourse mediated by texts in which women are active as subjects and agents." p.121
"Women are not just the passive products of socialization; they are active; they create themselves. At the same time, their self-creation, their work, the uses of their skills, are co-ordinated with the market for clothes, makeup, shoes, accessories, etc., through print, film, etc. The relations organizing this dialectic between the active and creative subject and the market and productive organization of capital are those of a textually mediated discourse." p.121
This text really essentialises women and women's pass-times to fashion, accessories etc: "The practical activities of individuals aim at and accomplish primarily symbolic relations, the radio report of a sports event, the talk among riders in the cab; or in the arena of femininity, the relation between the image in the fashion magazine and the production of a fashionable appearance on a particular woman’s body." p.122
"Textually mediated discourse is a distinctive feature of contemporary society existing as socially organized communicative and interpretive practices intersecting with and structuring people’s everyday worlds and contributing thereby to the organization of the social relations of the economy and of the political process." p.122
"the notion of femininity deployed as a descriptive category does not locate a bounded class of events, or states of affairs. The most it can produce is an extended collection of instances." p.124
"Texts that are constituent of the relations of discourse carry properties of their organization; where people write of experiences of being active in those relations, or write fictionally of them, their texts reflect a tacit knowledge of the organization of the relations of femininity; so too where they write an ideological gloss on femininity. In effect the quotations analyzed in this chapter sample those social relations; they are ‘pieces’ carrying the social organization of femininity imported directly into the text of this chapter." p.125
"Striking here is how the textual discourse appears as providing a standpoint for the subject from which her own conduct or the conduct of others can be examined. This consciousness of self is the lived moment bringing local settings under the jurisdiction of public textual discourse." p.125
"Pictures of fashionable clothes and fashionable beauties circulate early and provide visual paradigms for women’s production of appearances reflecting the image and appealing to it as interpreter and criterion." p.127
"The printed image is interpreted by doctrines of femininity; doctrines of femininity are inscribed in printed images." p.128
"The discourse of femininity articulates a moral order vested in appearances to a market and the production of commodities. Images change while fundamental features of doctrinal organization, particularly those suppressing the active presence of women as subjects and agents vis-à-vis men, do not." p.128
"Doctrines of femininity generate and interpet the visual images of femininity and interpret its embodied correlate in women’s appearances." p.130
"She who wears the delicate, the floating, diaphanous fabrics (see how the range of adjectives comes readily to us), the pastel colors, presents herself as a text to be read using the doctrines of femininity as interpretive schemata. They are read back into her as the underlying pattern to the ‘documents’ of femininity she exhibits." p.132
"Appearance may be controlled by a woman but its intended meaning is established by discursive texts outside her control. When women enter domains formerly exclusively male, such as business settings, there are problems about locating a style that, like the Israeli sergeant, preserve the signature of femininity (and hence does not challenge male hegemony), while avoiding the signals entering a woman inadvertently into modes of heterosexuality incompatible with her competent presence as business woman." p.136
"Being fat specifically excluded Findlay from the circuits of the discourse of femininity. A bodily appearance which contradicted the ‘documents’ of the interpretive circle also disallowed the doctrines of femininity as its interpreter." p.136
"Discontent with the body is not just a happening of culture, it arises in the relation between text and she who finds in texts images reflecting upon the imperfections of her body." p.138
"As she goes to work to remedy her defective body, it becomes the object of her work; she becomes an object for herself to be worked up to correspond to the textually defined image; she becomes the object of her project of realizing the textually defined ideal." p.141
"Doctrines of femininity interpret women as producing themselves for men as extensions of men’s consciousness and as objects of men’s desire." p.142
"The passive construction ‘he would find me attractive’ is governed by the conventions of the subject-in-discourse, the subject whose appearance is governed and interpreted by the discourse of femininity. She is to be found to be attractive. He is agent; he finds her to be attractive." p.142
"While the appearance, the presentation of themselves that women seek to create on their bodies, denies and obliterates their heterosexual presence as autonomous subjects, the production of appearance calls for thought, planning, the exercise of judgement, work, the use of resources, skills. Behind appearance and its interpretation is secreted a subject who is fully an agent." p.143
"Being desirable, being attractive, is a condition of participation in circles organized heterosexually; such circles intersect with the social relations of the discourse of femininity. Being desirable, being attractive, arises as the textual norms of the discourse of femininity provide standardized ideals of what is desirable and hence evaluate a woman’s success in achieving desirability on her own body." p.144
"A woman active in the discourse works within its interpretive circles, attempting to create in her own body the displays which appeal to the public textual images as their authority and depend upon the doctrines of femininity for their interpretation." p.145
"Appearances must express character or personality rather than testify to the art of the maker. Craft must not be seen as craft; art must not be seen as art if the interpretive circles of the discourse of femininity are to interpret feminine appearance as a document of a woman’s inner reality." p.148-9
"We have seen how desire is constructed in the relation between the perfected image in the text and the forever imperfect actuality of the body to be groomed, dressed, and painted." p.150
"When the codes and images are viewed as women use, play with, break with, and oppose them, the discourse of femininity appears not as managed construct of the fashion industry manipulating people as puppets, but as an ongoing, unfolding, historically evolving, social organization in which women and sometimes men are actively at work." p.151
"The discursive relations of femininity are vested in texts designed for and distributed on a mass market, and the production and distribution of those texts coordinates, differentiates, and regulates the market and production of clothes, cosmetics, etc." p.153
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