Gender is but a repeated stylisation of the body..

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Androgyny and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando

Since cultural norms define the dichotomy of conventional fashion nothing feels more disturbing than androgyny.  Indeed, androgyny subverts the patriarchal roles of man and woman because it resists clinging to such static identities.  Androgyny reminds the individual that male or female designation is social artistry rather than natural impulse.  As Nancy Cervetti interprets it, gender is but “a repeated stylization of the body that congeals over time and produces the appearance of substance” (174) thereby manifesting itself as an inherent code of conduct that guides the sexes into accurate behavior.  Yet androgyny, which seeks to unite and navigate freely between the genders, “continues to hold fast to and maintain the very binary system it would seem to escape (173).”   Virginia Woolf’s Orlando begets a complex discussion of gender and androgyny.  In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf addresses the concept of the androgynous mind where “two powers preside, one male, one female” (96) with the gender of the biological sex typically dominating.  Woolf insists, though, that both sides should “live in harmony together, spiritually cooperating” (96) in order to cultivate a “fully fertilized” (97) mind in control of its creativity.  In Orlando, Woolf writes, acutely aware of gender, but her approach is more humorous and straightforward in comparison to her other fluid narratives that produce a free-formed plot through an androgynous voice.

The novel begins with “He,” (Woolf 11) an assertive proclamation of Orlando’s gender.  Furthermore, Orlando’s very action, a masculine and destructive occupation, “slicing at the head of a Moor” (Woolf 11), correlates to the prosaic representation of maleness.  However, Woolf comically undermines this opening detail by quipping “for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it” (11).  In one sentence, Woolf confirms and teases Orlando’s gender, and suggests an arbitrary designation that fluctuates with popular opinion, reinforced by fashion.  Initially, Orlando’s apparel, “crimson breeches, lace collar, waistcoat of taffeta” (Woolf 16) indicates the similarities in gender in regard to the sartorial.   Although Orlando’s regimen uses violent verbs such as “scoured”, “pared” and “thrust” (Woolf 16) and he manages to dress in under ten minutes, Orlando still demonstrates an unwavering dedication to proper dress, even for items like “shoes with rosettes on them big as double dahlias” (Woolf 16) that verge on the ridiculous.  Such foppish garments mock the overlap between and the very fickle attitude of fashion, which constantly mutates a conflicting etiquette of gender-appropriate attire.

Sasha’s introduction into the text reveals Orlando’s commitment to a heteronormative relationship and how androgyny generates a sense of obscure entrancement.  Woolf hardly camouflages the mystery of Sasha’s gender.  Her “oyster-coloured velvet” (Woolf 26), possibly an encoded reference to female genitalia and aphrodisiacs, along with a parallel of Sasha’s eyes to the sea, a feminine symbol, permits the reader to determine Sasha’s gender in advance of Orlando.  The application of the feminine pronoun, “her” (Woolf 26) functions either as an obvious admission of Sasha’s femaleness or as Orlando’s own speculation and desire for her anatomy.  After all, he stands, “ready to tear his hair with vexation that the person was of his own sex (Woolf 26), and thus ineligible as a romantic target for him, a man firmly situated in a patriarchal structure.  At this point, Orlando operates according to his ordained position.  Still, that same frustration attracts Orlando to Sasha.  The pursuit of classifying the unknown and reinstating it to its allocated space excites Orlando. Because Sasha’s dress, which customarily assists in gauging interest and formulating opinions, cloaks her gender, Orlando turns to her physical attributes.  Yet, when he disassembles her body, Orlando cannot reach a conclusion.  Instead, he wavers between delight and despair after detecting evidence of each sex.  Woolf acknowledges the biological likeness within the different sexes and the disconnect between clothing and the body.

As a man, Orlando thinks little of gender.  However, his bewildering transformation requires him to consider a foreign perspective.  Suddenly, Orlando’s legs, which once “moved like a stag” (Woolf 89) without hindrance of skirts and endless layers of petticoats, feel the constraint of femininity.  As a woman, Orlando reassesses her previous model of the ideal female: “obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled” (Woolf 110) as she comes to understand the difficulties in maintaining a feminine appearance.  Additionally, she discerns the danger of female sexuality, how the sight of an inch or two of flesh might mean “‘death to an honest fellow’” (Woolf 110) and she carries the responsibility of covering one of her “chiefest beauties” (Woolf 110), consequently modifying her physical and figurative motion within society.  The more Orlando wears women’s clothing, the more she becomes “a little more modest, as women are, of her brains, and a little more vain, as women are, of her person” (Woolf 131), thus as clothing envelops our form, it shapes our character.  Or, as Woolf’s narrator contends, “it is the clothes that wear us and not we them” (Woolf 132).  Furthermore, Orlando observes how anatomy dictates demeanor. During her interactions with Nell, a prostitute, Orlando adorns herself as a man, and Nell’s feigned fragility arouses a masculine desire within Orlando.  However, Orlando soon sees that Nell’s “hesitating answers” (Woolf 150) and “the droop of her wrist” (Woolf 150) were attributes displayed merely “to gratify [Orlando’s] masculinity” (Woolf 150).  Once Orlando confesses her masquerade, Nell deserts her “plaintive, appealing ways” (Woolf 151) almost instantaneously in favor of a casual attitude.  Gender is a performance cast at birth, and Orlando feels “awkward in the arts of her sex” (Woolf 128) at her rebirth, but as the centuries pass, she gradually becomes versed in the skills of womanhood. In contrast, Archduke Harry treats Orlando with excessive chivalry as he courts her and disregards Orlando’s cheating during an absurd round of Fly Loo with the excuse that she is “only a woman” (Woolf 129).

But is Orlando ever a true androgyne? At least, an androgyne in the sense of the word where she can traverse gender boundaries at whim without fear of upsetting either force, masculine or feminine.  Near the conclusion of the novel, Woolf refers to Orlando with wardrobe updates by the hour that suit her activities.  Over the course of a single day, Woolf documents Orlando:

“…spending her morning in a China robe of ambiguous gender among her books; then receiving a client or two…in the same garment; then she would take a turn in the garden and clip the nut trees – for which knee-breeches were convenient; then she would change into a flowered taffeta which best suited a drive to Richmond and proposal of marriage from some great nobleman; and so back again to town, where she would don a snuff-coloured gown like a lawyer’s and visit the courts to hear how her cases were doing… and so, finally, when night came, she would more often than not become a nobleman complete from head to toe and walk the streets in search of adventure” (Woolf 153).

While Orlando selects and sheds her genders as she pleases, she doesn’t quite transition to androgyny.  With each outfit Orlando acquires the associated posture and plays out a series of neatly compartmentalized genders in place of the overlapping harmony Woolf envisions with the androgynous mind.  Although Orlando gains a heightened awareness in terms of gender, she is never able to bypass the enduring question of male or female.  Despite that Woolf’s removed narrator notices “different though the sexes are, they intermix” (Woolf 132), other voices wondered how Orlando “is excessively tender-hearted” (Woolf 133) yet “she detested household matters” (Woolf 133) or how she was ”bold and active as a man” but “would burst into tears on slight provocation” (Woolf 133) with incessant curiosity.  In fact, Orlando herself “seemed to vacillate; she was man; she was woman” (Woolf 113) but found in both sexes guilty of “the most deplorable infirmities” (Woolf 113).  Orlando’s court case, established to verify her gender and rectify the ambiguity surrounding her inexplicable shift of sex, operates out of a fear of confusion.

Ultimately, the affirmative ruling for Orlando as a woman “indisputably, and beyond the shadow of a doubt” (Woolf 176) is shortsighted.  I am hesitant to call Orlando man, woman orandrogyne.  Cultural biases fracture her unique biological position.  Perhaps Orlando could become an androgyne, if the law permitted her to deny categorization.  If anything though, she appears to submit to femininity in the end, particularly with the reversal of her scorn and dismissal of marriage upon her quick engagement to Shelmerdine with a “wedding ring on her finger to prove it” (Woolf 182). Orlando and Shel’s relationship has a farcical chime to it, especially since Shel has undergone the inverse of Orlando’s situation, a woman mutated into a man. But Orlando’s waffling underscores her acceptance of a womanly personality that she starts to favor.  Moreover, as Archduke Harry sobs in her presence she realizes though “men cry as frequently and as unreasonably as women…women should be shocked when men display emotion…so, shocked she was,” (Woolf 127) consequently fulfilling her expected performance.  While Orlando’s feminine behavior increases, she still belongs to no one group.

By comparison, the androgynous figure has emerged at the forefront of contemporary fashion.  Fashion has a fascination with the gender-neutral figure.  And the fashion industry disorients the consumer with androgynous bodies.  Lanky women and pouty, baby-faced men often dominate the runways.  However, only women appear to own the right to androgyny.  Usually women don suits and crop their hair as tomboyish gamines.  Rarely, but with a few exceptions, do men soften themselves to the point of incorporating feminized practices and ornamentation such as long hair and nails, dresses and skirts or a noticeable face full of makeup.  Unisex, apparently to fashion, is male, not female.  Androgyny, for fashion, though, sometimes has less to do with gender and more to do with age.  Rather than a gender-equalized domain, fashion venerates the “awkwardly adolescent” (Arnold 123) phase of the body.  There is an implicit desire for the easy beauty of the form unblemished by age and a general repugnance for the developed adult body, which signifies the impending descent toward physical decline and death.  Where Woolf’s androgyny seeks to sort out the nonsensical relation of gender and sex, the androgyny of contemporary society carries with it subtle tones of ageism.

Have you heard of the femiman? In the world of high fashion couture, the androgynous look is back – in a big way. And Australia has produced one of the worlds leading androgynous models – Andrej Pejic, based in Melbourne withChadwicks Models.

Now usually when I put together a story for Glam, I pace it out for about a week, to gather quotes and content from designers and their publicists. I started writing this story on Monday, but I’ve fast-tracked it, because of a news story released on the Daily Telegraph’s website, brought to my attention by fashion blogger Patty Huntington of ‘frockwriter’ fame. This story has changed considerably overnight.

A story entitled “Hang on – dude looks like a lady” elicited over 100 intolerant and bigoted comments from the Australian public attacking this 19-year-old model and somehow turned it into a hate debate against fem-looking gays rather than what it really is about – a young successful model who embodies the current (or oncoming – depends where you are) androgyny trend.

Andrej walks internationally for John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Raff Simmons and Paul Smith

Androgyny shouldn’t be a shock. Does anyone remember the 80s?

Androgyny is the blending of male and female characteristics within a single individual, we are not talking about hermaphrodites, transvestites or any form of ‘queer’. It became mainstream and trendy in the 1980s and produced some of our greatest pop culture and glam rock icons to date, David Bowie, Boy George, Adam Ant, Annie Lennox – and yes you can even add KISS to that list.

We shouldn’t be surprised the trend is coming back – everything runs in cycles, and as the saying goes ‘everything old is new again’. Lady Gaga is the modern day Bowie, as Adam Lambert could be today’s Adam Ant. While pop stars are all razzle dazzle, the androgynous figure in the fashion realm is much more clean. Thefemiman is pure, sometimes broody.

I noticed this emerging in menswear shows during RAFW. The walls were being broken down once again – which is a great thing – although rather than it being a pure androgynous look, Oz labels still tend to add a tad bit of gothica into their styling (I currently blame the vampire craze!). Fashion is an art-form, and a model is a vessel of it.

Saint Augustine Academy

So originally, my venture into the femiman story was purely based on fashion. A few labels yet to be stocked in South Australia seemed to be getting passed over (while being stocked everywhere else in the country) because menswear stores here believe that the Adelaide customer wouldn’t go for it, that possibly it was too edgy, or too out there. Is this because we look at and read into promotional images and label styles too literally?

The other question is – are we ready to go that step further with our fashion men? I wholeheartedly believe that Adelaide males do have the balls to be fashion forward in any sense, but they just have to lose a few inhibitions. What are the inhibitions holding you back boys? Are we still blurring the lines between gender roles and sexuality and just cant get over it?

‘Oh-Jamie’ fashion writer and publicist Jamie Wdziekonski, works with Australian fashion label Trimapee, who have used very strong androgynous styling in both their current Spring/Summer campaign and coming Autumn/Winter campaign. What is the appeal of this form to designers/stylists/visual merchandisers? Jamie explains “I think if you can make a piece of clothing that looks masculine on a male but also feminine on a female then you’ve created something really beautiful. What attracted me to Trimapee was the sense of mystery and charm their clothing creates not because someone was telling me it was a trend. Style to me is about expressing yourself and how you feel – not what others are telling you to feel and wear.”

Casting call sheet for Trimapee – calling for “androgynous, edgy, chissled features”. Behind the scenes of the AW11 Trimapee shoot featuring Chadwicks model James Varley

The sad part is, the Daily telegraph had to close off comments last night on their article, no doubt because the majority were offensive and discriminatory slurs. So is edgy experimental designing wrong? Unisex clothing offensive? Creative styling breaking down the gender barriers incorrect? Why this reaction? Jamie continues “Reason why some Australian’s struggle with that, well that’s just beyond me. Like I mentioned in my tweets they fear anything that’s not considered normal and act out upon anything that is different, which is really sad. Androgyny isn’t about a male dressing to look like a female or a female dressing to look like a male it’s about the characteristics of the two”.

Gender identity disorder (GID) is the formal diagnosis used by psychologists and physicians to describe persons who experience significant genderdysphoria (discontent with their biological sex and/or the gender they were assigned at birth). It describes the symptoms related to transsexualism, as well as less severe manifestations of gender dysphoria.

Androgyny is a key word in fashion at the moment, but my question is: does it work both ways? I’m not trying to get into an over-inflated feminist argument the likes of Germaine Greer. But rather as

Alexander McQueen Men’s Spring 2009 Collection.

stylistic choices made by women to wear more structured tailoring. Is it ok for men to go the opposite way: floral prints and flowing lines? But they can’t get male androgyny right. In this collection (image:right) from Alexander McQueenMen’s Spring 2009 Collection, the feminine shapes don’t really work on the male models, and no one outside the designer circle would wear those sorts of clothes: ruffled, shiny and strapless in a nightclub, or walking down the street. So I think a new term should be thought up to combat this androgynous trend, a neologism that means women can dress like men but it will not work the other way round. Androgyny is supposed to be a blurring of the sexes, but it is rather more ascetically pleasing when weighted to the one side. I’ll throw a word out there: Fesculinty, a combination of feminine and masculinity. I think that fills the gap left by Androgyny a lot more nicely. So until designers starts to create a more masculine flowing line, we’ll stick to calling structured tailoring on women as a fesculine style choice. So go for it with the boxy blazers, and boyfriend jeans and big boots and I’ll see you in a weeks time, That’s all.

The Fusing of Genders in Fashion: Androgyny

The rise of media in the last century brought with itself some standards in terms of gender roles, fashion, trends and numerous different things. It put into the minds of people ideas about how men and women should look like and created stereotypical images. The greatest example would be of course Marilyn Monroe, who performed the role of the desirable and sexy woman. The first issue of Playboy features her on the cover: a woman desired by all men. She was blonde, fair tanned, wore red lipsticks and thick eyelashes, she was thin, but yet had full breasts, well-shaped hips and legs; everybody wanted to look like her and the idea of physical beauty shaped pretty much around this depiction for the next decades. But at some point, there was a shift in this standard and “beauty” was pretty much identified with being “thin”. According to a survey made by Glamour magazine, 40% out of 16,000 women struggle with their body shape and think that they are “too fat”. While we see thousands of images of attractive looking young women in advertisements, we start to feel the urge that we should look like them. But perhaps in the last few years we saw hints about that this might change.

There is another thing that media did except for stereotyping beauty, it also spread the idea of fashion around the world. Fashion is a rather hypocritical concept, because it creates stereotypes but it also creates individualism. Fashion created the idea that clothing shows more about a person that beauty and social class, it showed that clothing is a way of self expression. That is why certain brands and certain products are made for different consumer groups. And that is where advertisements become important. Usually when we look at fashion advertisements we see that the models faces are beautified and their only expression is a sexy but empty glance. The “beauty” of the model is important to show the product “attractive”. For clothes it is also the setting that is important; a club or the city, giving the message “this is the place you belong to if you wear this”. For many years our understanding of fashion was as flat as Spice Girls, until perhaps recently with the “alternative” scene rising and people trying to try all sorts of weird combinations. This perhaps confuses the marketing department a little bit. If things get so individualistic that you can wear anything together with everything, how to pick the consumer group? 

 

That is maybe how and why the “androgynous” look emerged. In many advertisements, fashion shows and trends we can now see this “androgyny”, the loss of the idea of gender, or rather the fusing of genders. These images look so neutral and genderless that they don’t seem to present a beauty standard or a certain group, not even a group of a certain gender. Perhaps this can be seen as a step of acceptance towards homosexuality, and towards the fact that not everybody is perfect, and that not everybody has full breasts.

  

Now let us analyze some advertisements to understand the aspects of the androgynous model. These two photographs are from the Hugo Boss Fall/winter 2009/2010 collection. For both models it is not immediately clear what their gender is. The photograph on the left is featuring a man with earrings and make up as we would expect a woman to do, and the  photograph on the right is featuring a woman with short hair combed backwards, wearing a shirt and a tie as we would expect from a man. Their skin is smooth and pale, in contrast with their dark and short hair, and the photographs are in black and white.

The first advertisement of Calvin Klein is originally not black and white, but the background is so white, and the clothes are so black that the only color is the model’s hair. Her face is very pale and contains only a little bit of pink. Her waist, thigh or breast doesn’t show any sign of femininity, her hands are covered with gloves as if hiding feminine wrists, or perhaps fingernails. The shoe that is coming under the spotlight out of the shadow is highlighted.

 In the Giorgio Armani advertisement we see the hair is covered with a pretty much unisex hat. The physique again isn’t feminine in any way. Her wrists are bony, and could belong to a thin man as well as to a woman. Her stare is blank, and the make up doesn’t signify much, except that the cheekbones are highlighted as if to deny the round feminine face. The lipstick does only as much as to add to the contrast. She is protective towards her bag, and the light at the background also highlight the bag.

 In the second Calvin Klein advertisement we see an androgyny with a unisex haircut. Her fingers are square, her wrists cannot be seen and her fingernails are short and unpolished. The model shows her sexually-insignificant hand and covers a part of her face. She doesn’t have eyebrows, her jaw is square shaped and not round in a way that would be regarded as ‘feminine’.

 An article called “Freja Beha Erichsen: a study in androgyny” that was released in the French fashion magazine Purple, we see the nude photographs of Erichsen who doesn’t wear anything but a pair of high-heeled shoes and some jewelry. Erichsen is a living statement, according to the magazine, that one can be an important model without having to hide your body or sexuality, and without having to conform to a stereotype. So we see this new movement of androgynous models giving a new perspective to the fashion industry.

In all of the advertisement examples we see that the photographs are either black & white or high contrast. Black & white and/or high contrast and pale faces are a way to ward off reality. It tells us that the androgynous models are not realistic, which means that it is not intended that one takes an example of these models. Usually the color of advertisements is picked according to the feeling the ad wants to give and the emotion it wants to provoke. This is not so with the androgynous model. They are not passionate and they are not beautiful in the standardized way. Yet they have a certain beauty and serenity. This feeling is also given by the contrast. The model’s sexuality is not stressed, but rather the brand name and the product is.

 

The androgynous model doesn’t flash at us from some huge billboard to spell us. It rather appeals to our sense of aesthetics, and maybe even attacks a little our social values. It even provokes us to challenge society. Ralph Lauren’s spring/summer 2008 collection features suits on women, his spring/summer 2010 collection features tomboys and military jackets for women. Chanel’s advertisement for the perfume “Coco Mademoiselle” features Natalie Portman nude and fairly androgynous, where she covers her little breasts with a melon hat. The magazine Madame Figaro in Turkey introduced May 2008 a makeup strategy which it called “New Generation Nudity”,  a make up that makes your face look pale and as if there is no make up, and the models there look pretty much like the androgynous model in the advertisement for Jean Paul Gaultier’s perfume “Classique”. Fall/winter 2010 Pierre Cardin brought out a three piece suit worn by an androgynous model. Designer Alessandra Colombo adopted the androgynous look, combining it with the “female dandy” style and was seen in Milan at the end of 2009. The androgynous model is not only a marketing strategy; it is an idea that is used by designers to create new fashion trends that state something new and something different from that what has been told since decades: the fashion industry is not only a device to create sex objects.