Examining the Engendered Body: Exploring the Body in Five Parts

click on the titles to skip to those chapters Forethought: by Penelope Scott-Doherty The Public Body: by Giana Moloian The Private Body: by Jocelyn Foye The Idealized Body: by Gene Zazzaro The Altered Body: by Manuel Delgado The Gendered Black Body within Hip-hop Culture: by Kendell Carter ____________________________________________________________________ FORETHOUGHT We are what we think we are. We are not what we think we are. We are both what we think we are and are not what we think we are. We are neither what we think we are, nor are we not what we think we are! So what is it that we are? Human beings with bodies in a variety of shapes, sizes and sexes. Our chromosomes determine our genetic sexual identity. According to Dr. Larry Mai of the California State University, Long Beach Anthropology Department, there are five chromosome combinations that decide sex: XX, XY, X, YYY, XXY. Most of us never know if we differ from the majority XX female or XY male unless we have cause to be genetically tested. In addition, there are those of us who are heterosexual, intersexual, transsexual, homosexual, bisexual, transsexual and transvestite. Our appearance may or may not reveal either our sex, as determined by our chromosomes; we determine our gender. We arrive in the world untroubled by sexual or gender identity. What bliss! As we grow older and slowly become acculturated, a process of categorization begins to make specific demands on the development of our identities and how they merge with others. Traditional models for sex and gender used to be held up as clear-cut roles to emulate, however inadequate they were in describing the realities of the lives of many women, men and those who do not fall neatly into either group. The discourse of postmodern theories on these topics recognizes the necessity of moving beyond binary models in order to locate significance in the body and its representation. The resultant new ideas and models for gender, sex and sexuality form layers of intersecting axes that allow for multiple meanings and serve to destabilize simplistic category and explanation. We have come to discover that there is no one system that can neatly capture and describe the spectrum of expression and experience within the gendered body. Faced with the reality of a highly complex system, the only genuine contribution to the discourse must be based on speaking truth to any given aspect of what is, in fact, an open ended system that cannot be so neatly outlined. What follows represents the inquiry by five artists and writers into elements that factor within the gender-sex question as it relates to the body. Perspectives include public and private bodies, ideal and altered, as well as gendered bodies within the African-American Hip-Hop moment. Mass-media portrayals, issues of identity, historical appropriations, hybridization, gender ambiguities and new aesthetic categories are explored and deconstructed. This work is not necessarily intended to offer new definitions, but rather, as Rosalind Krauss says, to “expand the field.” In rejecting the traditional binary paradigm, we scan our surroundings for new meaning, and we encourage our readers and viewers to instigate their own investigations, as well. In this present moment, what is it that we signify when we use the term, “The Engendered Body?” ____________________________________________________________________ THE PUBLIC BODY Most of us at some point in our lives have undressed someone with our eyes. We ascertain that beneath an attractive woman’s skirt lies a well-formed sex, which beneath that fabulous gabardine suit there are glorious muscles and power. . . We are a culture that is nipped, tucked, plucked, sucked and fucked so willingly that our public masquerade infiltrates our imagination and renders it powerless to think outside the binary. The parts of our body that are public have become a sort of calling card for our gender: hip-bones are a status symbol, and abs are the only fashion accessory a "real" man truly needs to get by. It goes without saying that the mass media has played a crucial role in elevating the body as sublime; in a world of entropy, Photoshop and airbrush make it seem as if beauty, in all actuality, should be ephemeral and orderly. When we fit in, we are proud. When we fail to conform, we are taught to hide and we feel shame. Our public bodies have become the media's doodle pad. It has drawn up ideal male-female contours, and we are made to think that all variations should fit inside them. If we color outside the lines, we are punished. If our 36-24-36 is sporting a 6-inch penis, we are definitely put in time out. We have learned through conditioning to hide, if not sever parts of the body that don’t match. Dove's most recent campaign uses "real women" size 10 or above for their advertisements in the name of expanding the definition of beauty. However, they are still marketing a beauty product that is supposed to create a desirable effect on a woman's body: a tight ass. Dove's "real" women are between a size 10 and a size 16 at most. This is, indeed, a deviation from most advertisement; however it creates an entirely new problem. If these are "real" women, then every woman that isn't within this size range is somehow fake. A naturally thin woman is now anorexic, and a naturally large woman is simply unacceptable. This attempt to broaden the definition of beauty is so deliberate and calculated that it should be insulting; the advertisements incorporate curvaceous women of token ethnicities with ridiculously passive quotations such as, "I felt beautiful on my wedding day."1 For every attempt the media makes to undo the psychological damage it has done to our body image, it creates a new set of confines for what a body should be. Everyday many children are born with sex organs that are not considered "normal." So where do all of these bodies go? Most are altered at birth to become more acceptable according to modern medical standards in an attempt to make intersexuality invisible.2 Some are left as nature made them and spend their entire lives hiding their aberrations beneath gendered clothing and behavior. Others wear their difference like tattoos. While some of us may love our bodies as we love art, exposure does not come without a price. If we wear these “tattoos” with pride, their visibility necessarily implies pain. The media has responded to our pride and our shame. Reality shows such as “The Biggest Loser” and “The Swan” publicly try to transform “othered” bodies into something more acceptable. There has also been an emergence of late-night HBO series about the lives of people living on the fringes of society. “Hookers of Honolulu” is a series that explores the lives of transvestites that make their living as prostitutes.3 Its “real life” subjects are often inebriated so badly that they probably don’t even remember being interviewed for the show. These people are asked extremely personal and invasive questions, yet somehow the overall tone of the show tries to prove that these people love their lives. When the media tries to portray the “other” that it has created, it becomes a freak show. Stereotypes are reinforced by hyperreal examples of the unacceptable, thus widening the gap between the viewer and the person being viewed. The media has trapped the "other" beneath lucid glass, both literally and metaphorically. In reality, nobody conforms to all of these impossible standards, which is why the body has become so shameful to us; our public bodies may correspond to our gender quite nicely, but most of us have slippage that we hide. From cellulite to an extra sex organ or two, our public bodies are never really truthful about our private domain. I’ve been under your microscope from the beginning of this essay, just as you will be examined until the day you die. If you want to break the glass between you and the rest of the world, use questions for a hammer. On this note, I will humbly arm you. What are you hiding? What do you do to your public body to normalize? What parts of you feel unnatural? What price are you willing to pay to fit in? ____________________________________________________________________ THE PRIVATE BODY How identity is constructed and seeing that outward façade from one person to the next is a fickle issue. Society judges our exterior and how we adorn ourselves as who we are, The possibility, indeed, the probability that what we look like may be different than from what we think is too often overlooked or falls under the radar. In fact, our current socio-political system is set up to re-enforce the system of judgment based on looks. Take my driver’s license, for example. How does a photograph along with a taxonomic designation differentiate me from another with the same set of arbitrary features? This system exposes stereotypes and arbitrariness as a method in identifying an individual. Use my taxonomic designations. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - California Drivers License Number D422222 Jocelyn Anne Schneider Foye Long Beach 90801 Sex: Female Hair: Blond Eyes: Blue Height: 5’ 7” Weight: 180 lbs. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - What if identification cards were to use more private and unsocialized physical traits to distinguish a person’s identity? It might read more like this: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - California Gender License Number D4588524 Jocelyn Anne Schneider Foye Los Angeles 92120 Gender: soft-butch, Female Number of Scars: 2, knees Birth Marks: belly, small & circular Shoe Size: 9 Ridge # on L Thumb: 53 Earlobe Status: unattached - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - There is little question that designing a set of more visually invasive questions would constitute more unique identifiers within the culture. French philosopher Michel Serres poses this question: “What can the common monster, tattooed, ambidextrous, hermaphrodite and cross-bred, show to us right now under his skin? Yes, blood and flesh.”1 From that undifferentiated lump of flesh, I seek a way of defining a more visually private gendered identity by turning to the artist Orlan and NPR radio commentator Susan Straight. They explore examples of places that are “hidden”and support the unsocialized parts of the body as the tools in constructing what it means to be embodied in the 21st century. Most people turn to mass culture to define their identities. Western culture programs small children to look at others comparatively in order to judge themselves. There is an implied development in this process that can teach us to find the negative before the positive, such as finding awkwardness or “unacceptable” parts like unruly hair, cellulite, wrinkled skin or excess weight as deficiencies that could be viewed as evidence of moral weakness. 2 However, what if we reshape the societal instilled assumptions of these “weaknesses” and make them the locations that could sustain the only differences we have? Aside from clothing and adornment, contemporary culture leaves little to distinguish our particularity, to foreground our personhood. Beyond the unruly and excessive, it is the inadequacies and unsocialized elements commonly covered that force the moments where one’s personhood gets distinguished as identity signifiers (or markers). What if we use the areas of difference, such as excess weight, to signify in a sensual rather than abject way? Philosophy shows that we have defined ourselves as rational human beings who privilege mind over matter, but history shows we are emotionally bound to elusive, impossible ideals of beauty manifested in the physical body.3 Take, for example, our belly, a location given to perpetual negative connotations: could it be used as a way to focus the sensual in any gender? Could the belly be a signifier that distinguishes us? In astonishment due to the inhibitions surrounding the exposure of this sometimes-awkward body part, National Public Radio’s commentator Susan Straight shared4 her visit to Disneyland with her three teenage daughters. She was amazed how the exhibited belly has become the new icon of what she called “sexual allure.” Many examples of private body parts throughout western cultural history have been considered taboo until excessive exposure brought them to the forefront of the acceptable, even trendy. Some examples were the turned ankle (1840) or thighs (1940); today it is the belly. To her surprise, Straight found herself wondering whether or not current society had actually lost its appeal for big breasts or, in her words, how society had become so “ordinary that allure has traveled south to the belly.” Walking around this theme park she noticed hundreds of exposed midriffs, including many that did not flatter the individual. She remarked, We saw Christina Aguilera, Paris Hilton and Olsen Twin types, blond and preternaturally thin. We saw girls and women who were not Paris Hilton but who still wore low-rise jeans and skirt the size of manila envelopes. Shining lengths of skin with stretch marks of age, with the angry red of sunburn, with tattoos and elastic marks from where shorts rode up. I saw wanting and desire and the shrugs of defiance. Who cares if it trembles when I walk? I’m still sexy. Some women, my age, had bellies hung over their waists, like some men’s beer bellies do when their shirts ride up unexpectedly. The belly is the absolute repository of our species. 5 In exposing the belly, the Disney exhibitionists wanted to include this alluring and sensual feature as a simple definition of themselves, as an element of style and an appeal to beauty “in the expanded field.” The artist Orlan addresses the issue that there is no one ideal notion of beauty, yet we are bound to this myth that regulates how we see ourselves in relationship to others. Orlan has conducted nine, as she calls them, “aesthetic surgeries” in the interest of exposing skin as a vulnerable element with extreme shortcomings, for example, malleability. She claims that images of her surgeries make us blind to the real issues in her work, such as subjects addressing the “and”, “not” and “or.”6 Positioning her work in these raw moments is intended to force her audience to stand between the folly of seeing a truth in themselves and the impossibility of seeing that truth.7 Orlan links together issues vital to perceiving art and ourselves by inviting us to look at the way our assumptions and beliefs help mold what we think and want to perceive. 8 In a similar way of linking perception of self to others, Judith Butler acknowledges that “ . . . performativity is not just about speech acts. It is also about bodily acts. There is always a dimension of bodily life that cannot be fully represented, even as it works as the condition and activating condition of language.”9 Orlan and Susan Straight identify the belly and skin as just a few examples of locations of beauty. They speak to how western culture perceives these parts and to how we have “learned” to identify our own genders in relation to others. How we judge and expose our personhood now stems from how we have been socialized to cultural bodily norms. However, perhaps in the future we will embrace more inviting, new gender identifications to break down these socially inflicted standards. It seems one cannot talk about the private body without talking about the collective social body. Are culture norms truly body snatchers? What does it mean to live within one’s own skin? “Why should our bodies end at the skin?”10 ____________________________________________________________________ THE IDEALIZED BODY Through the evocation of the classical, the body has historically been appropriated for the promotion of propaganda and the demonstration of social hierarchy. In his treatise on the History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault proposes that the cultural discourses of ancient Greece, Rome, and especially Early Christianity are crucial to the understanding of the modern gendered body. Postmodern interests in surface and commodity factor heavily into modern conceptions of the ideal, but representations of gender are grounded in codes constructed in antiquity. An analysis of the shifting meanings within the traditionally binary system of gender identification is problematic, due to its inherently exclusionary discourse. In attempting to describe, define and understand the historical underpinnings of modern corporeal ideals, descriptive language and formative classical ideology can appear outmoded as soon as they are expressed. Yet, in spite of the necessity of moving beyond inadequate and dissipated binary models, much of the mythology of mass culture surrounding the body continues to echo classical concerns. Recognizing both the inability to adequately conjure a sustainable construction of the ideal, and the need to move away from ancient conceptions of the gendered body, toward what new somatic mythology will we now shift our gaze? Notions of the ideal are inexorably linked to visuality and objectified desire. In post-feminist Lacanian parlance, the ‘gaze,’ in part, defines the ideal body. Most Postmodern discourse indicates that the gaze is male—either specifically related to men or as the by-product of a patriarchal visual culture. According to this model, women are perceived as passive objects of the viewer’s gaze and men as active subjects of the viewer’s imagination. This dynamic has been consistently demonstrated through the imagery of mass media advertising, film and television. The assumption of the male gaze still factors, feminism notwithstanding, and the attempt to relocate the viewer’s gaze can sometimes provoke anxiety—as when men are presented as the object of desire. Regardless, there has been a continuous trend toward the objectification of men in visual mass culture since the 1980s. Not only did men’s muscular bodies begin to be appreciated for the traditionally classicizing qualities of an absolute ideal form, they were also being presented as overtly sexual. From the perspective of the assumed white, heterosexual male gaze, this development was highly problematic. Two things may have contributed to this phenomenon—the incorporation of a gay male gaze and the discovery that men’s bodies could now also be commoditized. Additionally, the changing status of women within the patriarchal power hierarchy may have significantly influenced the nature of popular culture and the images it produced. If, in this scenario, men’s muscled bodies suggest classical sculpture, what do the muscles of female bodybuilders signify? The female bodybuilder is especially troubling to dominant notions of gender and sexuality, and very difficult to position within any cultural map of the feminine. Female bodybuilders do not fit the dominant paradigm of ideal feminine beauty in contemporary Western society and instead appropriate a traditionally male physical culture. In this space, any traditional, classicizing rhetoric integrating muscles, bodybuilding and sculpture begins to break down. According to Maria Wyke, women’s bodies in antiquity are depicted as “alienated, bodies for others, that are incapable of holding power or capable of threatening social order, contained, isolated, denigrated, even assaulted, yet none the less cherished, and displayed as integral to the health of the body politic.” Men’s bodies are “permanently troubled. Only constant self-scrutiny and control can attempt to ward off threats to the stability of masculine identity.” The ancients did not define gender along the same axis that modern Western culture does—differentiating between male and female, and which of those two we choose as sex partners. This somewhat recent Western development was not shared by the ancient Greeks and Romans, “who divided acts and people on the axis of active versus passive.” The sculpted, idealized male nude of ancient times conflated athletic and military iconography, which resulted in the creation of the ‘heroic.’ Within the homoerotic milieu of ancient Greece, representations of young men were sexualized and presented as complete and coherent, while the female nude (as in the Knidian Aphrodite) merged titillation with vulnerability. In modern times, classicized images of men have maintained the heroic, but the homoerotic subtext has been displaced in favor of a consistently heterosexual vantage point. This shift in the totality of the male gaze can be construed as evolving out of the early Christian era, prior to which the nineteenth century labels of “heterosexual” and “homosexual” did not exist and did not factor. Thus, the perceived meaning of the classical ideal has become displaced—especially regarding the male body—in order to more closely map to contemporary social mores. Within this shifting landscape of definition lies the problem in assigning meaning to the idealized body: not only are the values ascribed to a classicizing influence manipulated beyond their original construct, but, in addition, notions of a classical ideal break down outside a Western, white demographic. Modern somatic mythology no longer embraces a traditional binary model; notions of an ideal body have now morphed and splintered into numerous subcategories. Many individuals now embrace a more internalized sense of the ideal, perhaps no longer clearly elaborated but intuitively understood.       It is relevant to acknowledge that the dilemma presented by the desire to move beyond limiting definitions of the gendered body is unique to Western intellectualism; sex-gender systems in other cultures have historically functioned outside of oppositional categories of representation. It is precisely because of the inability of manufactured Western conceptions of ideal bodies and ideal beauty to properly signify that this discourse has been initiated and continues to evolve. Carefully chosen symbolic references that promote a consumerist and nationalistic agenda relegate the majority of human bodies to the margins. The ancient Greeks saw marble sculptures of perfect forms as the embodiment of arete, or the pursuit of excellence. Images of the ideal in male and female bodies may yet have a place in fantasy and desire, but in terms of embracing a commonly held system of representation, a new paradigm is needed to replace outworn models that have persisted for centuries. As our cultural systems become more complex and homogeneity disintegrates, any new model for the pursuit of excellence relative to the body must no longer be outward facing, but ultimately self-referential and insistently authentic. ____________________________________________________________________ THE ALTERED BODY Whether it is the public, the private or classically idealized body, the need to match gender with mind and body in modern times has driven some to undergo radical physical transfigurations. Bodies are transformed from minor to major alterations, sometimes by choice and sometimes unwillingly, but always challenging our views of what gender ought to be. Throughout time, the altered body has met the needs of humanity to embody the rituals and status of its people through old and “primitive” civilizations. At one point in history, the altered body belonged to the freak shows of the circus and in the museums of nature’s rarities. In recent times, concerns about the altered body have shifted once again from the rigid binary views of gender to its deconstruction and further technological alterations and extensions of the body, opening up possibilities into new metaphysical inventions, like the cyborg. In matters of gender and the altered body, advancements in technology have been a blessing to some and a curse to others. These blessings have come to individuals who feel mentally and physically disconnected with their bodies and choose to use technology to their advantage. Altered bodies might be the choice of a transsexual willing to go through surgical procedures in order to change his/her birth given sex. It would be wrong to assume that transsexuals choose to change their sex because of a sexual preference, which has been the stand that some religious believers have opted to de-justify homosexuality as well as transsexuality. A sex change does not necessarily have to define one or the other of the fixed binary code. Such is the case of “Jane,” a male-to-female transsexual, who considers herself a lesbian and is married to Mary, who considers herself to be heterosexual, but has sex with Jane.1 Sometimes major alterations are done not by choice; unfortunately, this is what happens all too often to intersex children. The “fixing” of intersex children started back in the 1950s when “psychologists, sexologists, and other researchers battled over theories about the origins of sexual differences, especially gender identity, gender roles and sexual orientation.”2 Today human rights activists consider such “corrective surgery” to be acts of cruelty committed against intersex children by mutilating their existing genitalia and often keeping the covert operation secret from them. Some researchers promoted their own gender theories by offering other ways to “correct” intersex children. This was the case of psychologist John Money and his collaborators who went as far as arguing that “sex assignment and sex of rearing predicted a hermaphrodite’s adult gender role and sexual orientation more accurately than did any aspect of his/her biological sex.”3 John Money had an opportunity to prove his theory with a male child who suffered a circumcision accident at around seven month of age. His name was David, but he later became “Joan”. Money, his collaborators, and David’s parents agreed that he should lead a life as a girl. David became an experiment in gender “correction” by living a life full of painful operations and treatments, from hormone to psychological therapies. His case has become one of the most debated in the literature of gender and sexuality. After a lifetime of being physically and mentally altered, David ended his own life in June 2004 at the age of thirty-eight.4 His death can be seen as the strongest statement made against Money’s theory, that gender can be completely altered through enforced normalization as the “correction.” In recent times, the altered body has been losing its efficacy as a gender identifier among people in our society. With the ability to recreate ourselves technologically at hand, the body can be altered to “fit” the desired gendered identity when body and gender do not coincide. What such alterations point to, however, is the lack of a “natural” fit and the play of slippages and possibilities for new alliances. Most body alterations are of a minor nature. When we take tattoos as an example, it is not only Popeye the sailor man who wears them. Only a few decades ago they were viewed as a symbol of masculinity and used for the most part by bikers, jail inmates, gang members, and butch lesbians, just to name a few. Now tattoos have crossed over the “tough” masculine stigma and have become part of everyone’s gender vocabulary. More than ever, we can see women and men adorning their necks, breasts, and just about anywhere on their bodies with tattoos and motifs that speak of their femininity, masculinity, or sensuality “in the expanded field.” Piercing the ears is not just a symbol of femininity anymore, the days are gone when wearing an earring on the left ear meant someone was gay. Nowadays, piercing nipples, belly buttons, and tongues have become a code of gender ambiguity that characterizes the so-called generation x. The emergence of nightclubs dedicated to catering and accommodating the sexually ambiguous, from drags and transvestites, to transsexuals and transgenders has become more common. Binary gender rules are nonexistent inside these nightclubs where one cannot assume someone’s gender by just looking at them. These new attitudes have some worried about the integrity of gender and sexual differences in our culture, while others discuss whether this is a sign of “androgyny” or a “genderless” society. Whatever the case may be, artists are playing with the idea of gender hybridity, like musical artist Marilyn Manson and his record, Mechanical Animals. In this self-portrait cover, Marilyn looks like half-he/she human, half-animal, and half-alien. Some of the lyrics offer some insight: “the day that we lost our souls, machines that wished they were human”; I want to disappear, “look at me now I’ve got no religion . . . .I am so vacant . . . . I was a virgin, look at me now grew up to be a whore, and I want it, I believe it, I’m a million different things, and not one you know”; and “you are posthuman and hardwired.”5 These songs are sexually charged and deal with the void that is created from inescapable future transformations that humans must go through. The French artist, Orlan, has surgically added a couple of prostheses on each side of her forehead “attempting to create a new Self and Other.” 6 Lately, She has been conducting self-hybridization by digitally superimposing images of pre-Colombian and African icons on her own visage.7 To get an idea of where gender and sexuality might be going in the near future, we need look no further than the Cyborg. In her Cyborg Manifesto,8 Donna Haraway renders a captivating view where gender transcends nature, established norms, and technological advances that are taken to a metaphysical level. Haraway eloquently creates a picture of a cyborg, an altered being who problematizes and blurs the boundaries between physical and non-physical, flesh and metal, humans and animals. To some, the altered body manifests the need to express who they really are and that is not necessarily gender specific; to others, the altered body has become the medium to culturally and morally define, standardize and genderize human kind. Haraway’s exploration of gender through the Cyborg opens the possibility of a future where the battle of the genders will expand to other non-human genders, if it is not happening already. __________________________________________________________________ THE GENDERED BLACK BODY WITHIN HIP-HOP CULTURE This engendered species course has opened up an opportunity to explore and discuss issues of gender that for me have lied dormant for some time. Especially fertile is the opportunity to take these findings and research and apply them as curatorial impetus for a visual arts exhibition. As an artist, I have been exploring gender relations in my own work for a number of years. I have chosen to examine the black body within Hip-hop culture because I believe life tends to follow art in certain circumstances. Much of gender relations within the younger African-American community take cues from media driven commercial rap… a component of Hip-hop culture. The larger slice of the gendered hip-hop community exists within the usual binary heterosexual male and female categories. The ambiguous history between these two groups is, I feel, an extension of a past rooted in patriarchal disenfranchisement of African-American men as a result of integration. During integration when many African-American women entered the mainstream workforce and many men were excluded or simply refused to participate/integrate, a generation of African-American families shifted head-of- household roles. Many men left or lost their families because they could not fulfill and/or were not allowed to fulfill the responsibilities of the dominant patriarchal model. There then was created a tension between African-American men and women that involved pressures to conform to the model set forth by the dominant hegemony, as well as anger between men and women around capabilities and trust regarding abandonment issues in love relationships and the home. This tension, I feel, lies at the root of gender relations and roles in the heterosexual African-American community. Artist Lauren Hill sums up the sentiment with her verse: The second verse is dedicated to the men, The one more concerned with his rims, his Tims (Timberland boots), and his women. Him and his men, come in the club like hooligans, they don’t care who they offend popping yang. Lets not pretend, the one that pack pistol by the waist men, Drink Crystal by the case men, Still live in the basement, The pretty face men, Claiming that they did a bid men, Need to take care of their three and four kids men. They’re facing court case, when the child support’s late, Money taken, heart breakin’, now you wonder why women hate men. Lets speak on Solomon, punk messed around with them, Quick to shoot the semen, stop acting like boys and be men. How you gon’ win when you ain’t right within? How you gon’ win when you ain’t right within? Uh, uh. Come again! -Lauren Hill Doo Wop (That Thing) The Mis-education of Lauren Hill, 1998 Many contemporary women feel as though they “don’t need a man” because they can do whatever a man can do for them for themselves, in affect taking on the kind of masculinities perceived as men’s gender characteristics. Many men, in turn, especially in the realm of hip-hop, compensate for this tension with attitudes of domination, mistrust (“…never trust a big butt and a smile”, Bell, Biv, DeVoe, from the single, Poison, 1990) and misogyny. So hip-hop, in these on-going phenomena of gender presentations, presents itself as a stage to act out and address these complex issues. I am interested in this stage and the body performances that exist therein. What is hip-hop? As stated by R.A.T Judy in his essay, “On the Question of Nigga Authenticity,” it is a kind of utterance: Hip-hop hooray ho hey ho! (Naughty by Nature, hardcore hip-hop artists of the mid 1990’s) an utterance of a habit of thought towards a rationalized and fragmented world of global comodification. It is thinking about being in a hypercommodified world. Rap is a way of this thinking that cannot itself be rigorously thought about without thinking hip-hop. To think about rap is to think about hip-hop, although not necessarily in the way of hip-hop. Thinking about rap in the way of hip-hop is to think it hardcore, to think it like a “nigga.” To think about the nigga, to put it schematically, lies at the crux of two genealogical procedures. One, which traces the origins of rap back to recognized African American rhetorical forms (toasts, shouts, and various forms of signifying or verbal games) and tropes leads to a kind of utopian historicism that is grounded in the morally legitimate tradition of African American resistance to dehumanizing comodification. This account allows for a morally legitimate form of rap that is stylistically hardcore, while still belonging to the tradition of the African American liberation struggle dating back to spirituals, a struggle characterized by the deification of “knowledge as possessing an inherent power that emancipates.” The other genealogy traces the development of gangster rap as a rupture in this morally legitimate tradition of resistance, whose origin is not in the form of rap itself but in a moral malaise engendered by the conditions of capitalism’s hegemony over all aspects of life.” 1 The gendered body within the framework of Hip-hop, broadly speaking, consists of five types: Heterosexual male – This is the dominant gender presentation. It consists of various stylistic presentations: gangster, hustler, thug, player, urban artsy, and militant. These stylized personas all reinforce a traditional patriarchal heterosexual gendered body. As this hyper-hetero phenomena does represent the prevailing gender presentation of heterosexual male MC’s it should be noted that this hyper-hetero persona exists within a context of race whose violent and sexy phantasia haunts America daily. bell hooks in her essay Representing the Black Male Body states, Our need for the understanding of the physic reality of phantasm, and its affect on the body politic is greatest. Any libratory visual aesthetics of the black male body must engage a body politic that critically addresses the way in which racist/sexist iconography refigured within the framework of contemporary fascination with the “other” continues to be the dominant backdrop framing the way images are created and talked about. Within neocolonial white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the black male body continues to be perceived as the embodiment of bestial, violent, penis as weapon hyper masculine assertion. Psychohistories of white racism have always called attention to the tension between the construction of black male body as danger and the underlying erotization of that threat that always then imagines that body as a location for transgressive pleasure. It has taken contemporary comodification of blackness to teach the world that this perceived threat, whether real or symbolic, could be diffused by a process of fetishization that takes the black masculine “menace” and renders it feminine through a process of patriarchal objectification. 2 In the “Male Nude in Contemporary Photography,” Melody Davis explains the term feminization this way: “secularized, men will lose their potency and force… they will become subject as are women to conditions, like pregnancy, beyond their control… they will become the sign for exchange value, and as is the case for women, be mere object, voids for the gaze.” In several intimate conversations with African-American men, I have repeatedly heard with annoyance men feeling as though they must present a non-threatening masculinity to diffuse their perception as a location of danger, thus feminizing their gender presentation. In my personal accounts, this feminization is a phenomenon that is countered by the availability of the hyper-masculine space allowed by the hardcore rap tradition of hip-hop culture. This space allows for “keepin it real” a place where young African-American men can say, “Fuck the police” (NWA, 1989) without fear of judgment or reprimand. This is a location of freedom where the bigger and blacker you are the more you are respected and revered, i.e. The Notorious B.I.G. The subconscious psychology that you use against me, If I loose control will send me to the penitentiary. This is Alcatraz… get shot up like El Haj Malkik Shabazz. High class gets bypassed but my ass gets harassed. And the fuzz treat the bros like their manhood never was. And if you’re too powerful you get bugged like Peter Tosh and Marley was. And my work does nothing against the Feds, So my eyes stay red as I chase crazy baldheads. Word up! -Lauren Hill “The Beast” Fugees, The Score, 1996 However, this space has also allowed the utterance, “Bitches aint’ shit but hoes and tricks” (Dr. Dre. “The Chronic”, 1992). Needless to say there is an obvious paradox at play here, a paradox that I find fertile for exploration. As many young people seek territory and strategies for libratory self-actualization, how do external forces as well as internal instincts affect gender presentation decision-making? Heterosexual female - Three basic body presentations: Fly-girl: sexy attire, fit physique, very femme: The Fly-girl highlights aspects of Black women‘s bodies that are considered undesirable by American mainstream standards. Through performance, groups like Salt and Pepa are “flippin da script“ (deconstructing dominant ideology) by wearing clothes that accent their full breasts and rounded buttocks and thighs, considered beauty markers of Black women by Black culture. Artists to look at would be: MC Lyte, Salt and Pepa, Foxy Brown, Missy Elliott and Lauren Hill. Queen Mother: Maternal demeanor and posture usually with a full figure. The Queen mother is modeled as a caregiver, a “strong” and “competent” (masculine gender characteristics) role model for young women to emulate. In a sexist culture, one that continues to socialize women to worship the thin female figure, full figured women whose bodies will never conform to this model go against the cultural norms to develop a positive body esteem. As dominant gender pedagogy exists these women can be said to possess masculine tendencies, as they are defiant of these sexist models of ideal female beauty. Artists to look at would be: Queen Latifah, Ms. Melodie and Lauren Hill. Sista with Attitude: In general, Sista with Attitudes comprises female MC’s who value attitude (tude’) as a means of empowerment and present themselves accordingly. Many Sistas have re-claimed the word Bitch, which can be used both pejoratively and non-pejoratively depending on context. These females tend to present a body that is hardcore, no-nonsense and at times militant. Artists to look at would be: Trina, Da Bratt, BWP(Bitches With Problems), Yo-Yo, Sista Soldier and Lauren Hill. Very rarely has there been occasion where a female MC embodies the characteristics of all three types…the Flygirl, the Queen Mother and the Sista With Attitude but this exception is made with Lauren Hill. Lauren Hill as a solo act and as a member of the multi-platinum selling group, The Fugees, which consists of two other MC’s who are men; it has been said by Wyclef Jean (Fugee member) in verse “…The magazine said the girl shoulda’ went solo, guys should stop rappin’, vanish like Munudo (Fugees, from the song “Zealots”, The Score, 1996) that Hill is an incredible lyricist, conscience social activist and a beautiful stylish woman. Homosexual male - These men tend to present (in public) similar bodies as their hetero male counterparts. The term homo- thug (an MC who blends in with Hip-hop normative visual presentation) seems to be the prevailing vernacular within this ever-expanding genre. The perception of “street cred” I think out weighs the desire to embellish with any degree of camp for homosexual hip-hoppers. Homosexual female - Lesbian female rappers have been able to coexist within the larger field of the commercial Rap industry. Artists like Queen Pen, Queen Latifah and Da Bratt have all been able to achieve platinum selling status by remaining within the visual archetype that has become recognizable as a Hip-hop aesthetic. Bi-sexual female - Recently in hip-hop culture there has been an emerging female bisexual tendency. I have not been able to determine whether this bi- sexuality has emerged as an extension of black female sexual liberation, black male sexual liberation, or as a result of monetary opportunity (gay for pay) seized by women hoping to maintain a “hustle” on income possibilities outside the strip club, as many commercial rap acts hire dancers and adult film actresses to make guest appearances in their music videos. This apprehension leads me to several questions that lie deep beneath the stylings of hip-hop. Is hip-hop an alternative that is not by definition alternative? As a culture that has its roots in the defiance of mainstream social constructs, how can exclusion and discrimination be tolerated within hip-hop? Does the safe space carved out by the heterosexual hip-hop community for young African-Americans not apply to homosexual, bi-sexual and transgender hip-hoppers? Is there a place for homosexuality, bi-sexuality and transgender in hip-hop? Is the hip-hop genre a proper location for a non-heterosexual agenda? Have there not been any prominent (openly) gay hip-hoppers because of lack of quality rhyme skills, or is there too much pressure from mainstream culture to reject homosexual and bi-sexual content and behavior? Does the hip-hop community, in part, mimic the model created by the dominant patriarchal culture? Has this young culture not yet evolved, or is the culture simply uninterested in embracing homosexual content? Is the fact that the black male body remains essentially the objectified “other” and is still perceived as a location of danger in American culture a factor that disallows a sensitive and open (versus a closed, black rage) identity to emerge? Do the pressures of American patriarchal dominance outweigh the pressures from within hip-hop to allow a homosexual, bi-sexual or transgender voice to take the “mic”? In hip-hop, does “maleness” trump race and sexuality? Is hip-hop a culture that adheres to a hierarchy despite its radically defiant platform? Should homosexual and bi-sexual hip-hop remain in the “underground”? Is it safer there? Is it (the music and lifestyle) qualitatively better on a non-commercial stage? Does “coming out” mitigate artistic freedom, thus forcing artists to present a dishonest homosexual or bi-sexual self? When life follows art, does quantity or quality become the public priority? How could hip-hop and its audience benefit from the saturation of homosexual and bi-sexual content within the genre? So what conclusions can we draw? The body outside the binary has made itself seen, and it cannot be unseen. How do we go about making changes that work better for everyone? There really is no simple answer. The ways in which the body will manifest are infinite. In a series of works done late in his life, Michelangelo carved the bodies of giants struggling to break free from their marble masses. Michelangelo believed that form existed within mass, and that it was only a matter of liberating it. Like the artists’ tortured giants, we writhe, we push, and we experience agony to emerge as our beautiful, individual selves. In a system that functions solely on binaries, masterpieces are omitted from the canon. The body will never break free unless we chisel away its two-dimensional surface. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ FOOTNOTES THE PUBLIC BODY 1 http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/downtown_girls/ 2 Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing The Body. New York: Basic Books, 2000, 37. 3 http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com THE PRIVATE BODY 1 Peg Zeglin Brand, “Bound to Beauty: An Interview with Orlan”, in Beauty Matters. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2000, 289. 2 Debra Gimlin, Body Work. Berkley: University of California Press, 2002, 5. 3 Brand, 311. 4 To hear the whole commentary on NPR, visit http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4765097 5 Susan Straight, “Sexualities Southward Shift: The Belly” NPR: All Things Considered. July 21, 2005. 6 Orlan lecture, OTIS College of Art, Oct. 2005. 7 “I show images which almost make us blind. My work stands between the folly of seeing and the impossibility of seeing.” – Orlan (Oct. 1998) 8 Brand, 291. 9 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge Press, 2004, 199. 10 Donna Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto” in The Haraway Reader. New York: Routledge Press, 2004, 36. THE IDEALIZED BODY i. Maria Wyke. Parchments of Gender: Deciphering the Bodies of Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 1. ii. Mary Deveraux, “Oppressive Texts, Resisting Readers and the Gendered Spectator: The New Aesthetics.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48, no. 4 (Fall 1990): 343. iii. Maria Wyke. “Herculean Muscle!: The Classicizing Rhetoric of Body Building,” in Constructions of the Classical Body, ed. by James I. Porter. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999, 375. 4. Maria Wyke. Parchments of Gender: Deciphering the Bodies of Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 4. 5. Ibid. 6. Holt N. Parker, “The Myth of the Heterosexual: Anthropology and Sexuality for Classicists,” in Arethusa 34 (2001): 314. 7. Nanette Salomon, “The Art Historical Canon: Sins of Omission”, in The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, ed. by Donald Preziosi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, 354. 8. Ibid. 9. Parker, 316. See also, Andrew Stewart, Art, Desire and the Body in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, for discussion of the sex-gender continuum of ancient Greece. 10. For more information on the body as a tool for disseminating aspirational propaganda, see Richard Dyer, “The White Man’s Muscles,” in White. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. 11. Andrew Stewart, Art, Desire and the Body in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 26. THE ALTERED BODY 1Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing The Body. (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 108. 2Ibid., 45. 3Ibid., 66. 4Judith Buttler, Undoing Gender. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 74. 5http://www.nineinchnails.net/news/articles/mech_anim_lyrics.html#14 6www.orlan.net 7Lecture and presentation by Orlan at Otis College, October 20, 2005. 8Donna Haraway, The Haraway Reader. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 7-40. THE GENDERED BLACK BODY WITHIN HIP-HOP CULTURE 1 R.A.T., Judy, On the Question of Nigga Authenticity, Routledge, New York, 2004,107. 2 bell hooks, Representing the Black Male Body, New York Press, New York, 1995, 205. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ BIBLIOGRAPHY THE PUBLIC BODY Dove, Campaign for Real Beauty, http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com Fausto-Sterling, Anne, Sexing The Body. New York: Basic Books, 2000. HBO: Hookers of Honolulu. http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/downtown_girls/ THE PRIVATE BODY Brand, Peg Zeglin. Beauty Matters. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2000. Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge Press, 2004. Gimlin, Debra. Body Work. Berkley: University of California Press, 2002. Haraway, Donna. “Cyborg Manifesto” in The Haraway Reader. New York: Routledge Press, 2004. Hatfield, Elaine and Susan Sprecher. Mirror, Mirror: The Importance of Looks in Everyday Life. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1986. Straight, Susan. Sexualities Southward Shift: The Belly. NPR: All Things Considered. July 21, 2005. Turner, Byran. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984. Weeks, Jeffrey. Modernity: The Body and Sexuality. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996. THE IDEALIZED BODY Deveraux, Mary, “Oppressive Texts, Resisting Readers and the Gendered Spectator: The New Aesthetics.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48, no. 4 (Fall 1990): 337-347. Dyer, Richard, “The White Man’s Muscles,” in White. New York: Routledge, 1997.Parker, Holt N., “The Myth of the Heterosexual: Anthropology and Sexuality for Classicists,” in Arethusa 34 (2001): 313-362. Salomon, Nanette, “The Art Historical Canon: Sins of Omission,” in The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, ed. By Donald Preziosi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Stewart, Andrew, Art, Desire and the Body in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Wyke, Maria. “Herculean Muscle!: The Classicizing Rhetoric of Body Building,” in Constructions of the Classical Body, edited by James I. Porter. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999. ________. Parchments of Gender: Deciphering the Bodies of Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. THE ALTERED BODY Buttler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004. Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Sexing the Body. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Haraway, Donna. The Haraway Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004. Mechanical Animals’ lyrics. http://www.nineinchnails.net/news/articles/mech_anim_lyrics.html#14 Orlan, Lecture and presentation at Otis College, October 20, 2005. www.orlan.net THE GENDERED BLACK BODY WITHIN HIP-HOP CULTURE Forman, Murray & Neal, Mark Anthony. That’s the Joint, The Hip-hop Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004. hooks, bell. Yearning, Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, Boston, MA, South End Press, 1990. hooks, bell. Sisters of the Yam, Black Women and Self Discovery. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1993. hooks, bell. Art On My Mind: Visual Politics. New York: New York Press, 1995. Judy, R.A.T. On the Question of Nigga Authenticity. New York: Routledge, 2004. Keyes, Cheryl L. Empowering Self, Making Choices, Creating Spaces: Black Female Identity via Rap Music Performance. New York: Routledge, 2004.