Customer Reviews

Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Contrary to other reviews, this book is not a simple narrative. It follows fashion and feminism through history. Granted, it is a new generation of feminism and is bound to be controversial but overall she tries to explain that fashion is a matter of personal preference and conflicts with the idea of the freedom feminism promises. She also explains how fashion constraints were used primarily as class restraints during the early days of feminism (1900's) and that it wasn't a matter (for the most part) of men trying to corner women into a specific role. On top of shattering common misconceptions (such as you can't be a feminist and care how you look) the book is interesting and engaging throughout.

My only complaint is that it doesn't address the problems women do have with body image and the negative implications of fashion, if it did this then it truly would be a well rounded piece of work. Howevever I still give it 5 stars because what it covers it does so excellently.

Is beauty a vehicle of oppression enslaving women by its rigid demands or a gateway to status and empowerment? The author presents a compelling, well-researched argument that a love of feminine adornment is not at odds with the broadest goal of the feminist movement - that of individual self-expression.

Linda Scott tracks the development of the feminist movement in its three stages and analyzes the role of female adornment within the context of each wave of change. She brings to light some atypically flamboyant feminists that other books of this genre neglect to mention. Scott also chronicles the upheavals that concurrently went on in the realms of fashion and women's publications. The interconnection of the topics she deals with is complex and often amorphous, but her lucid analysis makes for thought-provoking reading.

If this book is any indication, Linda Scott apparently got run over by a truck and got up thinking she'd invented the wheel. In Fresh Lipstick, the University of Illinois professor fights and re-fights a battle that was essentially over in the last millennium. With a scant few references to anything written after 1994, Scott seems to have slept though the post-feminist wave that ran over the culture. For a decade now, girls and women (as well as the advertising, film and music industries) have been transgressing the boundaries between fashion, beauty, images of strong women and sexuality, making many of her points repetitive and moot.

The disappointing thing is that, with Scott's obvious intellect, her efforts could have been better spent illuminating the substantive issues facing us like the lack of child care alternatives, the increasing poverty rates among female-headed households, continued domestic violence (no matter what a woman wears or doesn't wear) and an oppressive ideology of motherhood. The book is well suited for bashing easy targets like old-time, `70s feminism in the guise of a liberatory rhetoric, but not for speaking to the contemporary moment.

Serious thinkers and armchair experts alike are strongly cautioned against the simplistic narrative Scott promotes in this book. There have been much better, more thoughtful works on fashion produced in the last ten years and I urge you to seek those out. This is not one of them. Doubtless Scott would reject me and my concerns as just another difference-denying feminist who wants all women to look alike. I'd expect nothing less from a writer whose characterization of feminists rarely rises above the level of caricature or straw(wo)men whose contours never resemble the actual feminists themselves. Nuance and subtlety apparently have no place in the author's repertoire. The paucity of documentation, repetitive text, and absence of references to the latest, best work on gender and fashion should warn away all but the most gullible. But if you like Tucker Carlson, shop away....

I saw this in my list of book to reviews and actually forgot I had it. I gave up on it after a while. It's really, really dry. I'm extremely interested in the topic, but not so much that I'm going to crack a textbook about it.