This post is the first in a series on women and sexuality in our culture, which will touch on (Velvet Verbosity, are you paying attention?) the long awaited topic of porn (though they will swing broader, because that's the way my mind rolls).
This particular post is about wedding dress marketing, and before I start I want to make it clear that I have no problem with the dresses themselves or the women who choose to wear them. I'm not interested in making a moral judgment about their appropriateness or exploring how women "ought" to dress. I'm not saying sexy dress shouldn't be manufactured or worn. I'm not saying the women wearing them are lacking in taste or moral values. (After all, I'm a reasonably attractive woman who has certainly worn my share of sexy dresses.)
What I am interested in, in this and future posts, is the subtext. How are the designers positioning these dresses for sale and making them appealing to women? What does their sales pitch say about our culture and our underlying beliefs about sexuality and women? What messages are women sending by buying into and accepting those underlying beliefs without question? Why is it important for a woman to appear or to feel sexy and what kind of sexuality is she looking to portray?
So, without further ado...
While reading a recent New York Times article on increasingly form fitting and revealing wedding dresses, I came across one statement in particular that has been rubbing on me for days now, like sandpaper. A designer said his dresses are designed to appeal to a woman who is “confident in her sexuality.”
Confident in her sexuality. Just breathe for a moment and think about those words. They're rich with meaning, those four little words designed to sell dresses. Shakespeare couldn't have written four words with a deeper subtext.
I'm going to take those four words on, on one by one, out of order, because I'm both crazily academic and insanely disorganized.
Let's start with the gender of that third-person pronoun "her." It makes sense, so much sense that we don't even think about it, to talk about sexy formal attire for women. But what if we change the gender? A man may look sexy in a tux or a suit, but overt sexuality isn't the overriding purpose of a man's formal attire. It's hard to imagine different types of men's formal wear, with one set designed specifically for a bridegroom concentrating on appearing sexy at his wedding (or any other formal event). What would that even look like? A skin baring set of suits? Something along the lines of a bare chested, bow tie sporting Chippendales dancer?
In fact, when I asked my husband what a man confident in his sexuality would wear, he answered "pink." I did a Flickr image search for "confident in his sexuality" and found one man sporting a purse, another in a skirt with a coconut husk bikini top and (my favorite) Weird Al Yankovic in (go see if for yourself) heart bedecked boxers, a pink tutu and fishnet stockings. I googled "confident in his sexuality" and found that about a third of the references on the first page were to homosexuality. Yep, we call a man "confident in his sexuality" (albeit in jest) when he is brave enough to appear to be the most fearful thing a man can be: feminine.
If the reverse were true, a woman confident in her sexuality shouldn't be wearing makeup, adorning her flowing ringlets with flowers and wearing something akin to lingerie; she ought to be forgoing the makeup, cropping her hair short and wearing work boots. Yet women express their "confidence" by hyper-sexualizing within gender boundaries. Hmm... That seems (dare I say it?) insecure. A man's confidence in his sexuality is a given, but not a woman's.
Which brings us to the noun "sexuality." We can define a woman by so many characteristics, even if we are focusing solely (as talking about attire demands we must) on appearance: her beauty, her grace of carriage, her flair, her unique style, her peacefulness, her radiance, her physical fitness... The defining characteristic could be any of those, but it's not; it's sexuality. It's more important to be sexy, in particular, than anything else. The idea that women in these dresses will be perceived as sexy is what's powerful, what sells.
Bringing us at last (since, let's face it, I'm not really going to take on the preposition "in") to the adjective "confident." While it describes the women wearing the revealing dresses, it also implies something about the women who do not. These are dresses that not everyone can wear: only "confident" women can wear them. In fact, these are dresses some women will be too scared to wear. These dresses show that the women wearing them are powerful and the women not wearing them are weak and insecure.
The coup de grace, of course, is that women, when they choose their attire, are not simply displaying confidence or insecurity; they are displaying confidence or insecurity in their sexuality. Women who wear revealing dresses exert that powerful sexuality over men and women alike. They don't just draw attention, they "turn heads," they control. By extension, women who are too scared to wear revealing dresses are (so we are to believe) ashamed of their own bodies. They're frigid: unable to enjoy or use the power of sex. That's the subtext.
In those four words, we are being sold on sexuality. We are being sold on being sexy starlets. We are being sold on the idea that sex is the most important thing about a woman. We are being sold on the idea that sex brings power. We are being sold on female hyper-sexuality as the ultimate power. And ultimately, we are being sold a disturbed fantasy. And we are buying it.
But believe me, you'll be even more disturbed when you tune in tomorrow and find out what kind of sexuality I think we're really aspiring to when we buy all that.
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