A personal, revealing, and sometimes humorous exploration of female experience, Performing Femininity challenges traditional and feminist perspectives on gender roles. Using ethnographic method, Lesa Lockford transforms herself into an image-obsessed weight watcher, an exotic dancer, and a theatrical performer. In several evocative narratives, Lockford uses this experimental methodology to rupture the conventional dichotomy of patriarchal versus feminist points of view, goading and challenging her audience as she breaches the borders of these typically opposed ideologies. She explores how both paradigms constrain women, but also how they are simultaneously enacted and subverted in the "performances" women play in their daily lives. Performing Femininity will be a provocative read for the student of feminist thought and for those researchers looking at innovative ways to produce and present their research.
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Editorial Reviews
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This book is a groundbreaking work of utterly fine prose rendered in a most intriguing and often beguiling style. It is a full performance of theory and self on every page. The exploration of women via 'subversive feminism' is a welcome addition to the growing complexity of theoretical and ethnographic explorations of womanhood in postmodern culture. Lesa Lockford's book is a major contribution to that dialogue and one that I am quite sure will spark a great deal of self-reflexive thought, writing, performance, and debate. (H. L. Goodall, Jr. )
About the Author
Lesa Lockford teaches courses in theatre and performance studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Currently, her scholarly interests are performance methods and composition, gender and sexuality, alternative forms of scholarly representation, and qualitative methods of inquiry. Journals in which her work has appeared include Text and Performance Quarterly, Qualitative Inquiry, Theatre Annual, and Women's Studies in Communication. She has performed her original creative texts and texts by others at regional and national academic conferences. Before returning to the Academy to pursue graduate studies, she trained and worked as a professional actor in the United Kingdom.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
positive feminism,
By Jennifer Robison "idunna74" (Virginia USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Performing Femininity: Rewriting Gender Identity (Ethnographic Alternatives) (Paperback)
What is ethical and/or moral when it comes to sexuality? Who determines this?Is sex performance/genre any more or less ethical than other performance style? Is it less or more powerful? Why is Western society so uncomfortable with its own sexual expression and choices? Desire is desire is desire...the hierarchy of desire... ...at the top, of course is the most accepted form, heterosexual monogamous coupling. Below this and in declining order resides queer desire, desire expressed in S/M, masturbation, desire aided by pornography or sex toys, promiscuous desire or more than one partner at a time, desire for partners from different generations, and desire expressed or fulfilled via commercial sex (Lockford 61). Lesa Lockford explores the physiological, psychological, sexual, and social feminine identity today's Western culture within her dissertation. Lockford interweaves humorous stories with first hand accounts in an academic method known as autoethnography, which breaches the line between feminist verses patriarchal points of view. She explores the social and cultural paradigms of feminine behavior as a result of women's physiology, and sexuality. "To be a feminist, one has first to become one". Commonly referred to as "consciousness raising," this process of profound personal transformation" entails self-reflexivity and the development of solidarity with other women [regardless of sex or gender]...this transformative experience "goes far beyond the sphere of human activity we regard ordinarily as `political'": indeed it manifests itself in everyday performances of self: In the course of undergoing the transformation to which I refer, the feminist changes her behavior: She makes new friends: she responds differently to people and events; her habits of consumption change; sometimes she alters her living arrangements or, more dramatically, her whole style of life. Becoming a feminist then is the embodying of the maxim "the personal is political" (Lockford 32). The social implications and expectancies constructed by our predominantly patriarchal and sexually inhibited culture renders women sensitive to issues of appearance, identity, and sexual confidence. She explores the most baring of feminine issues: from the humbling system of weight loss...to the allure of make-up and a girl stuffing her bra...to the public politeness of sexless/fearing academic circles... to the independence of a confident stripper and exploration of herself as a performance artist. The subordination of women by men is pervasive, that it orders the relationship of the sexes in every area of life, that a sexual politics of domination is as much in evidence in traditionally private spheres of the family, ordinary social life, and sexuality as in the things we do in the traditionally public spheres of government and the economy. The belief that the things we do in the bosom of the family or in bed are either "natural" or else a function of the personal idiosyncrasies of private individuals is held to be an "ideological curtain that conceals the reality of women's systematic oppression. (Lockford 32-3) By society's everyday actions and words, women are dictated on how they should behave: by what we have been taught and how we are expected to behave, determines our power and the way we are perceived in society and our culture. When a woman undermines the primary social power's expectations, she becomes an outcast, a renegade, a delicious forbidden fruit. The persuasiveness of objectification...time to start the music... Lockford explores how "we women experience our agency and constitute our subjectivity given the persuasiveness of objectification" (x). The most extreme objectification situation she discovers and experiments with herself is inside sexual performance. She then discovers that society underestimates the true power of the sexual performance, and that the labels of objectification are misplaced. She then questions society itself and the labels we place upon ourselves as a result of other's expectations and "moral" implications. Claiming space and giving voice to our perspectives was and is a vital touchstone for the development of empowered being and for revalorizing what traditionally has been considered important in the world (x). I think we are approaching a time where the emphasis of the individual is becoming the forefront of intellectual and social accpetance. Perhaps this makes me idealistic, a liberal feminist, etc. I choose individualism, and this book definitely breaks the ice on feminist theory and sexual performance.
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