the public and private flesh

[rm]

Clothes used to be a lot more structured than they were today. They nipped you in, held you up, gave you shoulders and sent you on your way. With clothes like these, the body did not have to be "perfect" -- the clothes did the work of encasing us, hardening us, and creating the difference between the idea of the public and private body.

Now, the casual world has a lot of things going for it. Cheap clothes and variety. The ability to leave the house without spending hours getting ready or requiring the assistances of others. However, the increasing absence of structured clothes has eliminated the idea of a different between the public and private body and has also required our bodies to do what our clothes no longer do.

The problem, of course, is the flesh doesn't actually work like that. The fact that male clothing has remained more structured (and covering) than female clothing I think speaks a great deal to the way women get more grief about their weight. Our clothes are doing less work and revealing more. The private body is judged on a public stage and public opinion is being dictated to us from so many avenues that that opinion is no longer personal.

All this stuff really interests me. I love spending my mornings on the subway looking at people in their clothes and then thinking about how the clothes do or do not effectively create a public body. Take women's shoes! Feet don't look like that, the idea that feet, which are very different shape than most women's shoes, go into these things that are totally the wrong shape for them is seriously weird and fascinating. There was once a time when everything was like that. When a woman takes a corset off, the flesh does not stay in that arrangement. We ask our bodies to do too much now.

My body is interesting in this context because I'm so thin. Some of that is because of what I do, but most of that, as we know now, is genetic disease. Anyway, even if we lived in a society with a difference between public and private bodies, I wouldn't really be able to have that as a woman: a corset doesn't do much to me. I lack flesh to remold.

Which may, of course, be why menswear is so interesting to me (gender-identity issues aside; that's a separate post).

Here's another thing about clothes. You have to learn how to wear them. Let me tell you, standing up straight in an evening gown and standing up straight in a suit to make each of those garments look marvelous -- totally different thing. The posture is different, the center of gravity is different, where I center my weight over my feet is different, how far apart I keep my legs. It's all different. Right now I am learning the suit.

As a woman in a dress, I want my ankles and feet to be a sharp and narrow point, and I want to choose clothes that create an hour-glass. Because I am small-chested, I look for dresses that create an hourglass between hips and shoulder, instead of hips and breasts and I stand accordingly.

So this is where we get into the business of this suit and how it gets complicated. In doing this drag thing (I'm actually not entirely comfortable referring to this as drag, but let's just run with that here so I can make my point), one of the issues over and over again in my mind is my height and my slightness. The other issue is of course my hips: where a woman should be an hourglass a man should be a triangle -- broad shoulders, narrow waist and hips. I order the suit, and I talk to the pattern maker about building up the shoulders a bit to compensate for my hips. Clothes are an illusion. The suit creates a public body over my private flesh; if done well, no one has to know my shoulders aren't really there.

And lo! They did a very good job. It is so desperately pleasing to me in ways I can describe to have the possibility of existing as a straight line. But here is the thing! Because the shoulders have been built out and I'm not that tall, now, I am no longer thin in the same way I have always been. My public body in this set of illusions, must necessarily be slightly stocky.

And oh my god, is that weird. Completely goddamn bizarre. And deeply challenging to all sorts of weird internalized shit in my head that never needed to apply to me before and is even funnier, because my preference has rarely run to delicate boys. In a suit, I look more like what I desire than I would have thought, and yet, less like I always expected.

It is a strange adjustment and when you dress as many different ways as I do, a confounding one to make over and over again, because between suits and pushup bras and tight pants and trim boots and a million other little tricks, the public shape of my flesh varies nearly constantly, and it's very weird to have the difference between the public body and the private body when most people no longer bother or don't have that luxury or don't even know there was once such a distinction. It's interesting, no matter what I'm wearing, to catch people looking, because they don't know what shape I really am.

Comments

[norda.livejournal.com]

This has always been a topic of interest to me.

[coco-beans.livejournal.com]

I absolutely hate how shapeless and unsupportive womens clothing is nowadays. My mom teases me relentlessly "another party dress!" because some dresses are the only women's clothing that really "get" my body type. I would dress in drag, but it's not totally my style. I have an hour glass, heavy frame. I need DRESSES! I had a field day in my grandma's house finding vintage clothing that suited me when I was a size 8.
Someone who is size 10 and up with an hourglass shape, looking for a modern outfit is hard pressed to be satisfied outside of a party dress.

[franny-glass.livejournal.com]

agreed x a million

[marcmagus]

Beautifully put. Again, you take thoughts I've been having at a not-yet-in-words and even not-quite-conscious level and bring them into the light, phrasing them better than I could ever hope to.

Thank you.

[verasteine.livejournal.com]

I always read your posts and I don't always comment, sometimes because I don't know what to say and sometimes because I'm simply lazy. But I want to say this now: thank you for sharing these things, for the way you write, and for sharing them for free. Your posts, always, feel like I'm reading a magazine article in a publication that I know is really good -- something to curl up on the sofa with. You always make me think about topics, make me stop, make me get a lump in my throat just reading them. Your language and structure are amazing, too, and your choice of topic always fascinating.

As for your choice of topic today, I'm fascinated. I'm too young to know about public and private bodies, but it makes sense the way you write it. And like you, I am too thin, with small breasts, and choose my clothes the same way. It's fascinating to hear the way you look at yourself and others, and in that, teach me to look around myself more. Kudos!

[manycolored.livejournal.com]

I am always baffled by how much of the clothing available to me (a size 20) is shapelessly cut of of flimsy stuff, as if the only way to cover a large irregular shape was to put it in a stretchy bag.

[delicatetbone.livejournal.com]

not just a stretchy bag, but a stretchy bag of the cheapest, crappiest material known to humankind.

I loathe most plus size offerings with a passion.

[delicatetbone.livejournal.com]

i love this post!

I for one have always enjoyed looking at how Leigh Bowery molded his flesh with clothing to make him appear hundreds of different ways. I suppose I love that he is fat and yet used that to his total advantage.

[don-negro.livejournal.com]

This post is pretty much the platonic ideal of why I read your journal.

[neifile7.livejournal.com]

Much food for thought here. I tend to think that even when clothes don't appear to create an illusion -- when they seem to elide the difference between the public and private bodies -- they're still "performative." I think it was Valerie Steele who called them the frontier between the self and the not-self, a way of negotiating identity in space. And certainly, I'd agree that "revealing" (or at least "not-hiding") clothes put the private body in the way of public judgment, especially for women. But there are illusions involved in that transaction as well.

What you've written here suggests that even the "private" body is a fairly unstable entity, as much a fact of self-representation as flesh. To discover that empirically must be a fascinating process: I put on this suit, and I must carry my body and perform in it as though I am, in fact, less slight than I believe myself to be. At what point, I wonder, does this convince the self more than nudity does? We're so sold on nakedness being a kind of truth, but do our experiences actually bear that out?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Because I have a societally privileged body in the sense that I'm thin and in shape and have been professionally and respectably naked (feature film w/ Nicole Kidman) it's hard for me to know. Being comfortable nude has never been an issue for me. But certain clothes absolutely feel like truth to me, and truth is dangerous.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I really enjoy the way you write and discuss the body and clothes, so very interesting.

I have a very hour glass shape, my hip-waist ratio is very evident, curvy is the way I'm described by most. However, I once dressed up as Spike from Buffy for a costume party and I bound my chest and stuck a pair of socks down my pants and people honestly thought I was a 14 year old Buffy fanboy.

It was awesome.
As is your suit!

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Intellectually, I know that clothes for women of my proportions have existed in the past: I have purchased them. Often, these days, in second hand shops, where I know trousers of the appropriate length can still be found.

But why, why, why must they no longer exist?

We are careening towards a world where One Size Will Fit None.

[byzantienne.livejournal.com]

Having spent all weekend in cosplay, this post is (as so many of your considerations of presentation and image are) extremely interesting to think about. Especially the ideas about learning how to wear clothing -- one of the things I was in was a backless gown and a lot of very heavy, very restrictive jewelry, and learning how to move in that made me acutely conscious of what clothing is supposed to do to your body -- reshape, sculpt the way you appear to the world. My posture was exquisite in that thing. It had to be.

(And of course, the other costume I was in was a military uniform and boots, and that was an entire new physicality to learn...)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I just heard about Exelnt-- they only do bathing suits, but they have the concept of making the clothes to fit the body.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's just fascinating and thought-provoking to read. I've just started to do the drag thing myself...learning lead in ballroom has given me the kick I've needed to do something I've always wanted but been far too shy...and it's neat to read from someone who's also doing and thinking about it.

Such complicated emotions and reshapings of identity. I'm not certain I have the slightest idea what I'm doing yet.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I loved ball room dancing when i was well enough to do it. it's great fun.

[erin-trying.livejournal.com]

I think the gradual loss of structure and tailoring to clothing has many sources--but I think one of the most important is class. Really well structured clothing has only ever belonged to the ones who can afford it, both in terms of its price point and bodily restrictions. (And there's something to be said that this is parallel to your statements about public vs. private bodies as the well-to-do are often also the only ones that can afford privacy [uncrowded dwellings and private baths, for example]). However, the general affordibility of better fitting clothing has improved over time (partly technology, partly "advances" in outsourcing) eventually leading to our contemporary bursting closets of "reasonably" fitting cheap clothing--thus the class distinction shifts partly to well-fitting unstructured clothing: one part having the money/time to eat well and get sufficient physical activity, the other part affording well-draped knitwear, etc. which can be as pricey as a good wool suit. The demise of the corset, for example, is linked to expanding leisure activities--something you could participate only with the time and money to do so.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

Yes, and this applies to couture.

I'm a devoted fan of TLo, who've recently shifted their blog from Project Rungay to a broader blog about fashion in general. I've learned a lot from their comments on red carpet fashion about fit and couture and the way a given body wears clothes. They often show photo of an actress in a particular dress next to the runway photo, and it's fascinating to see the difference between the two.

Speaking of the corset, it wasn't something a woman could get into by herself. She needed someone else to lace her in, a lady's maid being yet another class marker.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

This stuff fascinates me, too. :)

My weight has fluctuated wildly over the past few years, also due to ill health. I currently weigh 150; I've been down as low as 85. (I'm 4'11".) Anti-seizure drugs will do these things to you.

I started out at 130, which is already too much weight for me to carry. The first medication dropped me 30 pounds in two months, at which point I started to get the you're-too-thin looks. And I altered my style of dress accordingly, to camouflage my weight loss as much as I could.

Thing is, everyone said I didn't look overweight before. I undeniably *was*, and am now - but I spent quite a lot of time and energy building a wardrobe that made me look the way I wanted to look. When I am heavy? Things that minimize my belly and emphasize my bust, draw the eye upward. Special attention is paid to colors and fabrics. Shoes. The cut of jeans - when you're short and heavier than you ought to be, it's easy to look stumpy. Wrap dresses are good - I do have a waist! '40s- and '50s-style dresses give me a great silhouette.

I weary of people saying I'm not overweight; I am, and I feel it in my joints. What I would rather have said is that I know how to dress to flatter my body.

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

My mother is big-boned, and that's not a euphemism; her wrists are far larger than mine, and well-defined. In fact, most of her is well-defined, with a cushion of fat that looks fantastic on her. Unfortunately, what's out there tends to shroud all of those beautiful curves (including, and I weep, her hourglass middle!). For her sake, I wish fashion for the masses would go back to structure, because she has some serious gifts that need showing off!

(shadesong is probably a mini-version of her, to give you some idea.)

There's not much helping me, I'm afraid. I'm 4'11" and weigh 88 at most, which means I shop in Juniors because Petites isn't petite enough for what I can afford. Shoes are Payless or nothing, and even they've cut down on their size-5 selection. Bras are best found in children's, because I am built like a ten-year-old. (Since I don't plan to bear children, no, I don't anticipate gaining any cup sizes.) They do not make professional clothing for my shoulders and arms. You'd have to remake any blazer I sent in for alterations.

And no, I can't just put on weight. Not "won't." Can't. Physically can't eat enough and have it stick. I refuse to buy new breasts; my breasts are proportional to me. I suppose I do need to learn to sew, and sew well, because it's the only way I'm getting proper clothes that don't make me look younger than I already do.

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

I learned to sew for frugality's sake (the grandmother I lived with was the daughter of a single mom during the Depression) but kept at it because I'm short and curvy.

The only way things ever fit me properly is if I've made them to fit. I'm too weird a size for off the rack to fit anywhere near properly. (Short people aren't supposed to have hips and breasts, according to modern fashion.)

Besides sewing you should also study either draping or pattern drafting. This will show you how to create the patterns for garments you want to make. I used the text book from my costume design class by Ingram and Covey (but that was 20 years ago and it's not showing up on Amazon ;-p). A good one will explain how different types of fabrics work and how to manipulate the fabric to make it do what you want.

Good luck.

[dabhug.livejournal.com]

Interesting post. Thank you.

[valancy-joy.livejournal.com]

Oh, totally... I am always a bit saddened by the number of people I know, that when the talk turns to fashion they just look put out and say "it's just clothes... what does it matter?"

Surely I'm more attuned to what people wear with my history-lovin'/theater/costuming background... but as long as image and perception continue to be so important, what you choose to wear can say so much.

I might also be more attuned to it all being a quite heavy person, but still with an hourglass shape, who needs structure in garments to avoid looking like I do all my shopping at the tentmakers shop! :0)

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I'm 5'2 and ~200 lbs, none of it distributed in a culturally attractive way. It's all in my stomach and back - I'm oval shaped. I don't have a waistline, a bust or a butt. I look best in tailored clothing, especially highly structured and fitted women's skirt suits, which neaten my very soft figure, and hide more than any floppy sweater or oversized t-shirt can.

But those are too formal for most of my life, so I live in soft knit skirts that don't do much for my appearance but I can move in them, and they're relatively inexpensive.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

more of you, less of them

[qthelights.livejournal.com]

May I exist in your brain? It is fabulous.

I think sometimes I get frustrated in the mornings when clothes don't fit right partly because sometimes I just don't want to have to act or posture in them... I want clothes that i can just slump in, and still look good.. which is very likely not possible.

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

you know, i think i'd be happy if they could just start making women's clothes with fucking sleeves again
I NEED SLEEVES

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! Absolutely!
And to the manufacturers that keep sneaking in savings by making short 'long' sleeves.... I noticed you fuckers!

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

This is one of the most interesting things I have ever read. On so many different levels.

[timelady.livejournal.com]

I personally prefer referring to it as "crossplay" rather than drag since when drag gets mentioned I always picture guys dressing as hooker-ish women.

[roomette.livejournal.com]

I really resented that when I was pregnant, I did not have the opportunity to have a private body in modern clothes. And this lead to people touching me- my belly- or to unasked for dialogue regarding the pregnancy.

Private bodies ought to be like bedrooms- something people can invite you to but not something you have to look at or display.

I took a sewing class recently, it was filled with ladies who learned to sew in the 50's, as teenagers. They were lovely and helped me with much of my clothing and the discussion wandered to this despair- this feeling of a lack of privacy for the body- as it ages, or bears children or even as it is- that we cannot shut the door there and have that space so easily.

I truly admire Dita Von Teese. I think she has accomplished wonderful things with hair, make up, and fashion. Most notably, an incredible privacy even while in public, even while disrobing.

I always love your posts, but rarely know what to say in comment. I just wanted to say thank you for this piece.