Noliwe Rooks Ladies Pages Lesson Plan – chapters 1 & 2 - Women, race, and beauty

In Peiss’ speech we saw how the emergent American consumer industry played a role in defining what
being a feminine woman meant. We also read that women by played a direct role in what was actually
produced and what was provided to the consumers. To the extent that the speech tried to “trouble” what
“woman as a mass,” the economic and class status of black women was hardly covered (but for MCJW).
But what about the everyday woman and consumer citizenship for women of color?

Today we want to continue this conversation and ask ourselves:

How did black women play a role in defining what “woman” means?
What role did black women playing in what was actually produced and provided to the consumers?

Think-pair-share – ten minutes

Review Peiss’s theory of consumer culture in relation to gender. How does Peiss argue “consumer
citizenship” attaches to people/women? Now compare and contrast it to the Rooks’ discussion of some of
the same themes. How does the formula for “consumer citizenship” change (if at all)?

Review of Kathy Peiss and consumerism:

 In what ways does Peiss envision the emergent consumer culture of the 1880s?

(NEW industry, emerging femininity, leisure activity, feminization)

 How did gender become central to the ways in which consumerism works in peiss’ piece?

 How did Peiss theorize consumer citizenship?

“Way of life”=class status=respectability=feminine=consumer citizenship

 What does Respectability mean to Peiss and in the context of Peiss’s article?

Peiss argues that women held up respectability and connects that respect to class status, however, she
fails to note the ways in which racial constructs are constitutive of that “respectability.”

ROOKS and Ladies Pages

Respectability and femininity – how do they differ for black women than the ways in which Peiss talks
about it.

Issues in Rooks (that white women did not necessarily have to deal with):
lack of access to an archives (why not)
migration (movement, contra leisure in mall)
UPLIFT (how did this differ for Peiss)
Uplift – transforming and reinventing AA identity p. 17, Black women’s clubs p 29
Assimilation p.15,
Beauty Ideals: hypersexualty/jezebel, p5, Assimilation p.15, lack of mobility until urbanization p. 16 ,

 Ch. 2
How does the issue of visibility surface in (ch.1) and Chapter 2?

Remember the theory of Visual epistemology – ways of knowing through sight --

In what ways does this emerge in Peiss – Ladies promenade at the mall/Respectability/class

 how might our understandings of this visuality change now that you have read Rooks?

Hypervisible sexuality and invisibility in the public sphere (30-31),

invisible beauty hypersexualty/jezebel, p5,
Assimilation p.15,
invisible in class representations,
nearly invisible in the archive,

Beauty Ideals: lack of mobility until urbanization p. 16 ,

Other questions:

How can we incorporate what we have learned from Berger into our discussion.

Berger - thinking now to focus test groups that we have today that actually shape what's produced, how
do they play a role?

To what degree has the content of women's magazines changed—not just in terms of putting bicycles, or
other products, into stories? To what degree was the political program, and even feminism, of such
magazines subverted by the new commercialism?

Websites and other interesting things:

(7 minutes) Watch A Girl Like Me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyI77Yh1Gg – in response to the

hair discussion

http://www.princeton.edu/africanamericanstudies/people/faculty/noliwe-rooks/ (this is Nowliwe Rooks’

page)

http://www.myblackisbeautiful.com/about/faq.php (claims to be a movement…what is this)

Theoretical Methodologies in addition to the several methods of analysis in Berger:

Feminist Intersectionality

 The Intersectional approach stems from the black feminist practice of Inclusivity -
“Thinking inclusively means recognizing that people and practices rarely belong to only
one category.”

 Intersectional Approach– an analytical tool that reveals how each of the systems of
oppression (The “Isms” Family) interrelate and works together.

 Race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect or interlock and are experienced by groups
and individuals simultaneously, however, one aspect of one’s identity may be more
salient than others.

 What part of your identity “defines” you most to the outside world? In other words, how
do you think others see you? Does the fact that you are a woman (or a man) seem to
define you more than say your socioeconomic status? Why or why not?
How do we talk about representation not as a static and oppressive force, but one that is gradual,
constantly shifting, and amorphous….what would an analysis like that look like:

• What is being represented?

• How is it represented? Using what codes?

• How is the representation made to seem 'true',

'commonsense' or 'natural'?

• What is foregrounded and what is backgrounded?

Are there any notable absences?

• Whose representation is it? Whose interests does it

reflect? How do you know?

 At whom is this representation targeted? How do you

know?

 What does the representation mean to you? What

does the representation mean to others? How do you account for the differences?

 How do people make sense of it? According to what codes?

With what alternative representations could it be compared? How does it differ?