Colonial Marriage and the Production of Cloistered White Femininity

2021 ◽  
pp. 63-92
Keyword(s):  
White Femininity

scholarly journals Performing Nordic White Femininity

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-70
Author(s):  
Hélène Ohlsson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
White Femininity ◽  
The U.S

This study is an intersectional investigation of how the first two international Swedish superstars, Jenny Lind (1820–1887) and Christina Nilsson (1843–1921), performed gender, race, nationalism, and class during their respective tours of the United States of America in 1850–1852 and 1870–1872. The purpose is to chart early transatlantic performances of Nordic white femininity and Swedishness as well as to discuss the symbolical values and associations that it signaled. I will argue that Lind and Nilsson set out a template of idealized Nordic white femininity in the U.S. and that they contributed to the growing identity and self-awareness of Swedish-Americans.

Bikinis and Other Atomic Incidents: The Synthetic Life of the Nuclear Pacific

2022 ◽  
Vol 2022 (142) ◽  
pp. 37-56
Author(s):  
Sunny Xiang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Global Risk ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Atomic Age ◽  
Extreme Risk ◽  
White Femininity ◽  
The Face ◽  
Synthetic Life ◽  
Sexual Promiscuity

Abstract This article examines a range of mid-twentieth-century American fashions, particularly women’s intimate wear, that went by the name of “bikini.” In doing so, it identifies the bikini as an overt but unremarkable incident of racial and colonial violence. Treating the nuclear Pacific as conspicuously incidental in mainstream atomic culture enables new insights on the visual interplay between white femininity and primitive sexuality—an interplay that, the author argues, was integral to establishing domestic virtue and modern living as atomic age touchstones of “peace.” To elaborate on this argument, this article tracks the bikini’s achievement of propriety within a broader fashion revolution spurred by the use of high-tech fibers in swim, sleep, and support garments. It shows how an atomic ideal of “nature” arose from an imperial desire for security in the face of extreme risk—both the global risk of nuclear war and the domestic risk of sexual promiscuity.

“A Ghost of the Future”: Racial (Mis)perception and Black Subjectivity in LeRoi Jones’s Dutchman

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Bunch Davis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Racial Uplift ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Black Subjectivity ◽  
The Future ◽  
White Femininity ◽  
The Right

This chapter offers a reading of Amiri Baraka's 1964 play, Dutchman, focusing on its use of race icons to engage with white liberal response to racial uplift ideology and its implications for black subjectivity. The chapter considers Rashid Johnson's restaging of Dutchman and his assertion that his project creates an opportunity to find identity somewhere between “the narrative of struggle and the narrative of Negro Exceptionalism,” noting that it resonates in Baraka's (aka LeRoi Jones) contention that the struggle is as much about “the right to choose.” The chapter challenges claims that Dutchman relies upon essentialized blackness and the degradation of white femininity in order to prop up the identity of the African American protagonist, Clay. Instead, it argues that the play unpacks whiteness's investment in uplift ideology by employing a variety of cultural genealogies and practices to sketch identity, thus exposing the vulnerabilities of the African American Freedom Struggle era iterations of uplift ideology.

Chart Chicks and Gear Girls

2021 ◽  
pp. 25-48
Author(s):  
Alexandra M. Apolloni
Keyword(s):  
Young Woman ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
White Femininity ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter situates the voices of 1960s young women pop singers in a broader landscape of representations of young, white femininity and the historiography of 1960s British pop, Swinging London, and British girlhood. Drawing primarily on music magazines and fashion and entertainment magazines produced for young women in the 1960s (including titles such as Boyfriend, Fabulous, Honey, Mirabelle, and Petticoat) it shows how music was construed as a key element of modern, youthful, white femininity and self-expression. The chapter connects stories told about girl pop singers and popular narratives about young women seeking independence and shows how these stories are ultimately about attaining access to voice. These narratives about young women’s voices shaped music industry attitudes toward young women as consumers and producers of music, in turn shaping the kinds of musical opportunities that were available to girl and young woman singers.

The Cult of First Ladyhood: Controlling Images of White Womanhood in the Role of the First Lady

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (03) ◽  
pp. 484-513
Author(s):  
Megan Handau ◽  
Evelyn M. Simien
Keyword(s):  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
First Ladies ◽  
First Lady ◽  
The Public ◽  
White Femininity ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Hegemonic Femininity ◽  
White Womanhood

AbstractIn recent decades, scholars have begun to analyze the role of the first lady in American society. Though the relationship between gender ideologies and this identity has been analyzed, little attention has been paid to how other aspects of the first ladies’ identities could shape the way the public and the first ladies themselves view their role. In this article, we offer an intersectional analysis that considers historical notions of hegemonic femininity in relation to race. We assert that the role of the first lady is a raced-gendered institution that produces a controlling image of white womanhood that simultaneously privileges white femininity and subordinates black womanhood. We conduct an analysis of the autobiographies of six first ladies: Edith Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt, “Lady Bird” Johnson, Rosalynn Carter, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Obama.

The Effects of Zero Tolerance Policies on Black Girls: Using Critical Race Feminism and Figured Worlds to Examine School Discipline

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (10) ◽  
pp. 1419-1440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothy Hines-Datiri ◽  
Dorinda J. Carter Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Identity Development ◽  
Zero Tolerance ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Figured Worlds ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Critical Race Feminism ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
White Femininity ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Identification With School

Black girls are more likely to be suspended or expelled through exclusionary discipline than their female counterparts, but continue to be overlooked and understudied. This article presents a case for using critical race feminism and figured worlds as theoretical frameworks for examining the effects of zero tolerance policies on Black girls. We use these frameworks to explore how adults’ implementation of disciplinary policies not only affects the racial and gender identity development of Black girls, but perpetuates anti-Black discipline and represents behavioral responses to White femininity that may not align with Black girls’ femininity and identification with school.

White Femininity in the Nation, the Nation in White Femininity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raka Shome
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
White Women ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
Celebrity Culture ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
White Femininity ◽  
Global North ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
New Britain

This book examines how the narrative of white femininity transformed Princess Diana into a simultaneous signifier of a national and global popular. Situating the discussion of white femininity and national modernity in the New Labor cultural scape of 1997 that promoted the rhetoric of a New Britain, the book analyzes the different facets of white femininity that the Diana phenomenon mobilized and stabilized in the production of a (new) national narrative of Britishness in the 1990s and beyond. It also considers a constellation of images of privileged white women in order to illustrate a larger formation of white femininity through which many neoliberal logics of national identity and citizenly belonging were being rewritten in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; how national identity intersects with celebrity culture, cultural politics, and global struggles over (what constitutes) modern subjectivity; and how representations, articulations, and actions of privileged white women of the Global North impact, inform, and intersect with larger geopolitics.

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