Being Gorgeous: Feminism, Sexuality and the Pleasures of the Visible

Description

Being Gorgeous explores the ways in which extravagance, flamboyance and dressing up can open up possibilities for women to play around anarchically with familiar stereotypical tropes of femininity. This is protest through play - a pleasurable misbehaviour that reflects a feminism for the twenty first century. Willson discusses how, whether through pastiche, parody, or pure pleasure, artists, artistes and indeed the spectators themselves can operate in excess of the restrictive images which saturate our visual culture. By referring to a wide spectrum of examples, including Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, Matthew Barney, Dr Sketchy's, Audacity Chutzpah, Burly Q and Carnesky's Ghost Train, Being Gorgeous demonstrates how contemporary female performers embody, critique and thoroughly relish their own representation by inappropriately re-appropriating femininity. Contents......Page 7 List of Illustrations......Page 9 Introduction......Page 11 Being an Art Object......Page 17 Part I......Page 29 Exquisite Surfaces......Page 31 Eye Candy......Page 37 Naked Girls......Page 49 To Be Looked At23......Page 59 Part II......Page 69 Anarchic Femininities......Page 71 Creative Sexpots......Page 79 Being an Object1......Page 90 Subcultural Models......Page 98 Part III......Page 111 Fashion and Art......Page 113 Glitter and Meat......Page 123 Sex......Page 133 Masturbation......Page 141 Part IV......Page 149 Crumbling Bath Bombs and Flaking Nail Varnish......Page 151 Toxic Flowers and Barbed Flesh......Page 159 Masquerade Balls and the ‘Green Fairy’......Page 169 The Mind as Magical Fairground......Page 180 Now you see me…......Page 189 …And now you don’t......Page 195 Notes......Page 203 Bibliography......Page 223 Index......Page 235