Women

MoMA had an exhibition by women artists and craftspersons which is part of an ongoing series demonstrating the increasing participation of women in the creation and performance of arts.  Having been married to a woman who was ardent in wanting a career as an architect for the very good reason that she had a recognized talent at envisioning problems and possibilities in the design of buildings, I know at first hand the problems a woman faces.  It is all about domesticity, about a woman's surrender to demands of the home, more often than not crudely imposed. Because my wife married when knowing almost nothing about cooking or any other domestic skill, she was better prepared to resist the demands of the culture that she become chief cook and bottle washer, but nothing alters the playing field faster than a new baby not to mention a young man's necessary overly eager engagement with the first phase of a career.  A mother's surrender to a baby is a natural and happy circumstance but difficult to get out from under, particularly when another baby appears on the scene.  The simple physical facts of early motherhood place her very much at the mercy of her already by nature far more physically powerful spouse.  I don't mean this to be sinister, but weak and strong are a fact of the household, and with that inevitably go power and powerless, already in evidence in the inequality of him who goes forth to earn money and her who stays home to suckle the baby at the breast.  i turn now to another exhibition I encountered which was the display at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of the work of couture of Charles James, a celebrated British born American dress designer from the twenties into the fifties whose evening wear achieve a standard of design and workmanship which have won him the highest praise from the fashion industry as well as cultural critics and even art historians.  The gowns on display are very much works of art, but what impressed me the more is the way in which fashionable clothing is a form of aggression and control for the women who wear such clothes.  One can extend this beyond such opulent and contrived items on display at the Met to the larger phenomenon of women dressing themselves as an act of self presentation.  Of course, a girl learns early on the intense sexual excitement she generates in any male passerby, and therefore girds herself up for each such encounter if only unconsciously.  She must take her inherent victimhood as the object of the male gaze and make it her mode of attack.  Looking at high fashion is always so satisfying from this aspect, since it demonstrates the female willingness to go on the attack, impose their bodies, rather than offer their bodies to the surrounding throng.  High fashion is not for everyone, but the act of adornment however simple renders the same result: control.