In the same way that Lisa Jean Moore used a pinhole focus on sperm to elucidate the giant topic of masculinity in last week’s feature, art historian Maria Elena Buszek uses the pin-up as the way in to explore huge questions about the history of feminism, sexuality, and pop culture. (How much do you love this one I found? What's up with the fish?)
Her approach is definitely academic (the book began as her dissertation). This book is not going to appeal to a gal without a little Judith Butler or bell hooks under her belt. If you are up for a challenge, it is infectiously interesting and bold. I found myself reading and thinking, “Damn, I want to have a drink with this lady.�
Buszek ambitiously looks at the entire history of pin-ups and feminism concurrently, from the nineteenth century actress to Wanda Ewing. Her aim, as she articulates it is:
In my analyses of pin-up history from its origins to the present, I hope to reveal moments in which the pin-up has presented women with models for expressing and finding pleasure in their sexual subjectivity.
This is one of the key themes of the book: the relationship between object and subject. To my mind, what Buszek is really exploring is power. When we feel like objects, we tend to feel powerless (not always, I know…there is also the really clever way of reclaiming objectification which is also touched on in the book). But when we feel like subjects, there is a the potential sense of being adored, scrutinized, an aim to understand and, perhaps, even celebrate.
Buszek also looks at how pin-ups have been a tool of transforming popular culture to reflect a more authentic and less patriarchal version of female desire. She writes:
Moreover, by using this popular signified for desirable womanhood toward a feminist expression of subversive sexual agency, I will explore the ways in which these pin-ups not only image and provoke desire but also, by penetrating and influencing the cultures of fashion and consumption, succeed in the feminist aim of changing the rigid patriarchal terms by which desire has historically been flamed.
I know, damn.
After her tour de force through the centuries, Buszek lands smack dab in the middle of third wave feminism. A regular contributor to Bust and a third waver herself, Buszek gives young feminists (artists) a real tribute by uncovering lots of interesting efforts in complex ways.
The conclusion looks at the ways in which the different generations, particularly in the art world, seem to be crashing up against one another once again. Older feminist artists see younger feminist artists as repeating the same themes without acknowledging their legacy. Younger feminist artists see older feminists artists as critical and bitter. And on and on and on…
Buszek is sure to assert that this infighting is not representative of the majority of the feminist art world, however. She even quotes the fabu Linda Nochlin who likes our generation for our “feistiness.� Word Linda. Thanks.
Buszek sums things up in this way:
As I hope to have shown through the pin-up’s feminist history, this drive to survive and reproduce has consistently led the movement to evolve according to each moment in which it has found itself. However, as the pin-up’s evolution through these same moments has proven, both sexuality and pop culture have remained among those few issues too important to move past, but too complex to resolve conclusively.
So true. Look at the REAL Hot 100. Look at burlesque. Look at Pink’s "Stupid Girls" video.
Buszek offers us an important perspective on intergenerational feminist infighting in general. Why shouldn’t younger women be rehashing the same old issues? They are the tied into the essence of human existence. They aren’t legislation to be passed or numbers to be crunched. These are the fundamental expressions of who we are, so yeah, it makes sense that we keep wrestling with that in our own ways. We’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re taking our own ride.
Next week, keeping with the intergenerational/feminist academic theme: Not My Mother’s Sister by Astrid Henry.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Not Oprah’s Book Club: Pin-Up Grrrls.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/6060
Weekly Feministing Newsletter
Feministing RSS Feed
Art history, feminism and pin-up art, all in one book? I'm totally sold :) I can't wait to check it out.
it's worth checking out. and I'm not just saying so as a Kansas City girl (life-long, really).
get it, already.
I've been trying to get a hold of this book for freaking ever! I was trying to wait it out for the paperback version to be available in stores, but then I forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder! I'm sure I'll still have to get it on Amazon. Can't find anything in the old-fashioned book store anymore.
Sounds fun. Does she talk about the pin-up as porn, at all? Are you saying, as I think you are, that women either in pin-ups or art are "subjects" while women in porn are viewed as "objects"? Or are the pin-up grls through the century also objectified until feminism made them view themselves differently?
And of course, the fish are kissing. You could be kissing the pin-up girl, too, but you are a loser and you have to settle for a picture on the wall of your garage.*
*I don't know what it says about me that I think f this when I hear the term "pin-up girl"
I don't know, pin-up art still pushes a body image and sexual ideal that's pretty rare and impossible for most women.
I'm an older generation, dyed in the wool feminist who loves, loves, loves the new generation of feminists. I read this site daily, took my daugther to see Jessica, bought a couple copies of the book and even got our pic taken together.
I know little of this intergenerational feminist infighting. I guess that's because I don't indulge in feminism in any sort of academic way? Who knows?
Anyhow, I love some pin up art which is bizarre. Not all of it but some of it. I should get this book to help me figure out why.
"I don't know, pin-up art still pushes a body image and sexual ideal that's pretty rare and impossible for most women."
i agree pineapple, i got into feminism in the first place because i got sick and tired of trying to look like a pin-up. i read the book when it came out and it never really addressed that issue. age-wise, i'm comfortably third wave, but i resent the newer feminism pushing the sex-bot stuff a bit. i guess what's powerful and exciting for other woman is just painful and boring for me. i'd love to see a book that reiterates that there is nothing sexier than a woman eating carbs in comfy pants.
i feel the needs to clarify---not "the newer feminism" but "certain strains of current feminism" because i know we don't all think alike.
I think Morgan and Pineapple have good points here.
Certainly, pin-ups and the culture surrounding pin-ups can be empowering to women. At the same time, these images can also disempower women because the images might be regarded as 1) mere objectification of women and 2) another way of imposing false body images.
In my case, I guess I'm torn. I think that pin-ups are very glamorous and, aesthetically, I really dig them. However, it really chaps my ass that these images are so very devoid of diversity. I see one kind of "acceptable" femininity here: the white, busty, young kind. Where are the women of color?
HEY! I can answer these questions! (Since I wrote the book and all...) Courtney doesn't really get into (it *is* a 400+page book, after all) but the fact is that -Pin-up Grrrls- DOES deal with the ways that different eras of pin-ups tackle (or don't!) narrow beauty ideals in regards to both body-size and race, not to mention queer sexualities. (Indeed, if you click on the Wanda Ewing link Courtney included, or look at the paperback book cover--a photo of plus-sized burlesque artist Amie Nelson by Nicole Cawlfield--you'll get the contours of that part of the book. They begin with the shunning of non-Anglo beauty in the mid-19th century and work their way up to the reconstruction of the beautiful by artists like Alma Lopez, Cass Bird, and Renee Cox.)
But, naturally, as a working-class Hispana as well as a feminist art historian, these issues were obviously going to be tangled with.
STILL...always very, VERY excited to read what people are thinking and asking about the book! These things live in one's head for so long, that it's just exciting to see it out in the world getting hashed out by other feminists.
I LOVE pin-up as an art, so when I saw this I had to check it out. I was just wondering, when you put books on your site, is there a way you could put a link to order it off of amazon or something? I'm lazy, so that extra 30 seconds it took me to find it on there were brutal ;) Thanks for the link though, I can't wait for it to arrive!