Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse

     While Kaja Silverman accused Quentin Bell of failing to “address the psychic consequences of [the elimination of sumptuousness in male dress] or their implication for sexual difference”, she herself only touches upon the psychological concerns which arise due to the modesty of male dress as it pertains to man and ignores the mental repercussions relevant to woman. Silverman cites Quentin Bell who explains why the wife is now the representative for both herself and her husband when it comes to displaying wealth through clothes and elaborates as herself on how the change in male dress allows new insight into the male psyche, but Silverman never elaborates on how this shift places a great pressure on woman when the matter at hand concerns clothing or even physical appearance in general. This can be observed in Sylvia Path’s poem, "Mirror". The speaker of the poem is a mirror, mirror hanging on the wall. The looking glass, after describing its likeness and expounding the opposite wall and how “faces and darkness separate us over and over” in the first stanza, finishes the poem by talking about a woman:

A woman bends over me.

Searching my reaches for what she really is.

Then she turns to those liars, the candles, or the moon.

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully

She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
            I am important to her. She comes and goes.

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

The woman in question is frustrated: she believes that she is not attractive enough (for society’s standards through which she observed via commercials and popular culture such as television shows or magazines) but she continues to religiously check her reflection, anyways. She is devout in this practice, which is emphasized by the concluding lines in which the mirror reveals that the woman has spent her youth being obsessed with her exterior looks and that old age is inevitable despite the woman’s emotional efforts which have continued since childhood. Her fixation on semblance is due to the narcissistic and exhibitionistic desires common to most people, but these yearnings have gone unchecked, unlike the male, and in fact have been heightened. Pop culture is filled with urges for beautification as seen in commercials, but these advertisements are directed primarily toward females and typically involve a woman claiming that a certain product manages to give her confidence/power/comfort/etc. which is enough to get her through her day/situation/etc. Women are thus constantly exposed to the notion that looks determine a significant portion of individual worth and that such goods are mandatory for daily use, which makes for a shallow and superficial society.

               

     Another compelling argument listed in the essay was that scopophilia is “a defense against castration anxiety, and a means of mastering the female subject”. Janet A. Kourany, the author of Philosophy in a Feminist Voice: Critiques and Reconstructions, states that scopophilia can be traced to “a prearticulate level of consciousness and the experience of the infant looking at the mother while suckling” (i.e. scopophilia starts at a very young age and before one can reason). As one is forming an individual identity, one also realizes “that one is not a part of the maternal body and is forever separate from that experience of primal unity,” which leads to castration anxiety, an anxiety about “loss, separation, and absence.” Kourany then continues to write that while the image of woman instills castration anxiety since woman represents the lack of union with the maternal body and the lack of phallus, they also alleviate castration anxiety since they serve as an unconscious remembrance of the maternal body, which designates women as “objects of fetishistic pleasure”. By looking at women, men thus allay castration anxiety via scopophilia, which has developed into pleasure derived from looking at another. This explains the male gaze, the inclination of works to present female characters as “subjects of implicity male visual appreciation.” The objectifying stare can be seen in media such as films or literature. For example, in the film version of George Orwell’s 1984, Julia, who was resting in the room that is on top of an antique shop with Winston, rises and walks around entirely undressed for several minutes and the camera captures her whole body. Meanwhile, the camera, when shot at Winston, would should only his upper body, if not just his head. The difference in treatment is explained by scopophilia and by how mainstream American cinema is an industry dominated by males, which leads to the products being tailored for males and causing men to assume the role of “the one who looks at women.” Through this sort of means and other outlets of culture, scopophilia leads to the catering of male tests and the subjugation of female status. 

-Jeremy