Thank You The Visual Arts Department of Western University The Arts and Humanities Faculty of Western University Kirsty Robertson Julia Krueger Kimberly Barton Ana Čop Dana Bruschette Kerstin Maciuk Rene Vandenbrink Christian Hegele Jason McLean Jesjit Gill and Colour Code Printing John Hatch James Reaney Tony Lima Adela Talbot Judith Combe Megan Hamilton Dan Sich David Murphy Western Archives Librarian: Bev Brereton Western Law Librarian: Elizabeth Bruton Philippa O’Brien Joanne Gribbon Andrea Purvis Neil Klassen Dorothy White Daisy Mitches, and her niece Mary Kienapple Rose Dimitrick Bud Medland Marianne Dupuis Douglas Flood Linda Vandusen Debbi Harris And Bev Stainton Generously Supported by the Student Donation Fund, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Western University.
List of Figures: Cover: From the archives of Judith Purdy, Date Unknown Courtesy of Debbi Harris, Her mother Ilona Livingstone Unknown, Marie Prevost, google search, c.1920 Ana ﾄ経p, Untitled, 2007-8 Dana Brushette, Untitled, c.2011 Kerstin Maciuk, Motel, 2013 From the archives of Judith Purdy, Date Unknown From the archives of Judith Purdy, Date Unknown Cecille B. DeMille, The Godless Girl, Screen-shot, c.1929 Courtesy of Bev Stainton, Teasdale Hosiery Picnic, 1922 Ana ﾄ経p, Scriptease, 2007 Dana Brushette, Untitled, c.2011 Kerstin Maciuk, Motel, 2013 Courtesy of Paddy Jane, Paddy Browne Courtesy of Paddy Jane, Paddy Browne Courtesy of Paddy Jane, Paddy Browne Paddy Jane, Mel Light Cig Kamillo, c.2011 Paddy Jane, Stella, Paddy Jane, Happiness is a Warm Parasol, Paddy Jane, Jen, Unknown, Marie Prevost, c.1920 From the archives of Judith Purdy, Date Unknown Courtesy of Paddy Jane, Paddy Browne Courtesy of Paddy Jane, Paddy Browne Unknown, Movie Weekly-Marie Prevost, google search, c.1920 Unknown, Marie Prevost, google search, c.1920 Unknown, Marie Prevost, google search, c.1920 Unknown, Las Vegas Showgirl, google search, c.1940 From the archives of Judith Purdy, Date Unknown Unknown, Drawn Stockings, google search, c.1930 Unknown, Marie Prevost, google search, c.1920 Unknown, Marie Prevost, google search, c.1920 Unknown, Dorothy Dandridge, google search, c.1930 Unknown, Creamed Stockings, google search, c.1930 From the archives of Judith Purdy, Date Unknown Courtesy of The London Free Press, James Reaney, Holeproof Hosiery, date unknown Courtesy of The London Free Press, James Reaney, Holeproof Hosiery, date unknown From the archives of Judith Purdy, Date Unknown
Courtesy of Debbi Harris: Her mother Ilona Livingstone attended HB.Beal Secondary, and at 17 or 18 began to work for Holeproof Hosiery and would model the stockings.
Beauty and Ugliness in the Girly Picture Jennifer Lorraine Fraser
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
To Begin The Female Refuges Act of Ontario and its place in history Woman as an Embodiment of the Sublime: Marie Prevost and the allure of Hollywood to London: The Hosiery Mills of London Ontario To End is to Begin Anew
This discussion further leads me to explore the Hollywood Allure of the 1920s. Finally, I tie the history From May-June 2013, I worked with the Spencer of London’s hosiery mills to the historical evidence of Gallery in the D. B. Weldon Library at Western University them providing a livelihood for women and a stepping stone into public life. Women, Freedom and Hosiery to install an exhibition on hosiery, the history of London, Ontario, and the exploration of female sexual identity. I be- is not a concrete investigation, for it would take a few gan with several images that I had found of young women, more years of intense study to find the missing stories posed provocatively in stockings. As I began to research the of the women themselves. Rather, it is a basis on which history of hosiery production in London, Ontario, however, to build empirically sound evidence regarding the tremendous impact of women’s stockings in society and the tale became both more interesting and darker. Over how they have been created, used and displayed. time, the exhibition came to be about self-representation as shown through the inclusion of the work of a number As I begin to write this, I glace over to Twitter and of contemporary artists, and the Female Refuges Act of see a post called “Naked Female Bodies That Are Not Ontario, which had sent a number of women, possibly Pornified.[1] ” I wonder to myself, what exactly is the including Londoners, into hosiery mills where they worked difference between nakedness and pornography, and punishing hours. My investigation also led me into the how can that be mapped onto the previous hundred allure of show business, and particularly the connection years of photography of women and deviance? Why are that London had with Hollywood during the early part of the lines, between pornography and presentations of the twentieth century. Touching on a small fraction of this sexual identity, completely blurred? At the outset, I history, I discovered that the beginnings of girly images want to mention that this will not be an investigation in North America stem from the work conducted by Mack into pornography at all. However, bringing up the topic Sennett and his Bathing Beauties series of pictures begun is needed to clarify what I consider deviance in pictures in 1915, which had involved Sarnia born actress, Marie and how this had been considered throughout the past Prevost. 100 years. In this catalogue, I explore the eclectic and tangled The images in question – the ones I will present histories leading up to the production of Women, Freedom within the exhibition walls and display cases of the and Hosiery. I begin with a discussion on the nature of imSpencer Gallery – are those that show women flirtingly ages of women in art, and popular culture. This is followed revealing their legs, adorned with silk stockings. The by a description of the Female Refuges Act of Ontario. historical images are predominantly from the era of the Next, I present an interpretation of the idea of Beauty and Parisian burlesque, where photography was being used the Ugly as posited by Umberto Eco, in which I conclude as a means for documenting reality and life in general. that society’s worry over images of women was not only Some images in the exhibition were taken from the precedent to how women conducted themselves outside of mass cultural practice of collecting Hollywood pin-ups, the home, but also that these images had an effect on the and are primarily from the archives of Judith Purdy. general morality of the time.
1.
To Begin:
They display screen stars, such as Marie Prevost, Dorothy Dandridge, and others, juxtaposed with little-known or unknown women who present themselves as deviant women to be gawked at and admired. In exhibiting the historical celebrity pin-up as one of many images of women, I am commenting upon the grasp these images had on contemporaneous society-at-large. The contemporary images chosen for the exhibition are by three artists: Ana Čop, Dana Brushette, and Kerstin Maciuk. Čop’s images, which include Scriptease – an image of a woman crouched on a bed, in the midst of reading and looking directly at the camera through her messy hair and make-up – can be considered in relation to the raw nature of the earlier arcade cards and pin-ups of the First World War period, and its following inter-war nature.
Questions posed include: How do Čop’s images represent today’s women? Is there a self-awareness of the subject that harks back to the era of individual discovery or is something more at play? Brushette’s use of the tropes of the 50s style pin-ups reasserts the nature of women as powerful and self-confident subjects. Her Cheesecake-style image SMSSmoke shows a contemporary woman ironing, acknowledging the camera as if to say, “Yes ... and?”. Brushette’s images are used in Women, Freedom and Hosiery as a means to display women who assert their inner person and embrace their own individual sexuality regardless of who sees them. These pin-ups are created for the sitter, as opposed the images they reference from the 1950s and 60s, which were created to tantalize a male viewer. The painting by Kerstin Maciuk – showing only a close up of a boudoir scene with legs in fishnet stockings – asks the question of whether or not the mere fetishization of the stocking leg has more to do with female sexuality or, considering the age of the artist, an appreciation and respect for the nature of the girly image in general. The representation of women’s bodies can be traced through the entire history of art: from the Paleolithic sculpture of the Venus of Willendorf created approximately in 24,000 BCE, to our present day performances such as Marina Abramovic’s dinner, “An Artist’s Life Manifesto,” held at the LA MOCA in 2011. In this latter example, naked women laid on top of the tables, acting as literal Lazy Susans, offering cake and other food stuffs on their naked flesh to the guests. Many articles, books, and manifestos have been written on the reasons why the female body has been so depicted and used in art, and how it has either been elevated and placed on a pedestal or stigmatized and degraded in step with cultural norms. The body of woman has been on display not only as a pièce de résistance, but also as a place to scrutinize the nature of humanity and how women become the Other,[2] and as a subjective vessel for prayer through the use of icons of spirituality, such as The Virgin Mary and other saints.
Feminists, art historians, lay people, housewives, and white collar workers have all had their say on the nature of the female body and how ideals thereof are socially constructed. In the past, however, little was said about the matter of choice on this issue. Today, if a woman wants to use her own body as means of expressing her personal sexuality, her rational autonomy in choosing to do so is generally respected. For instance, the women paid to create Abramovic’s vision of the extremely expensive, “Art World” dinner presumably had valid reasons and purposes for exposing themselves as they did. On the other hand, it is possible for misunderstanding and ignorance to compromise one’s rational autonomy, and hence diminish personal freedom in decision making. In this way, I believe a case can be made that many women at the turn of the Twentieth Century were not truly free in deciding to represent themselves in a boudoir manner. With this project I hope to accomplish three goals: 1) to reveal some fundamental issues at stake when questioning the depiction of women in popular imagery, 2) to highlight the real injustices done to women’s bodies through incarceration and misrepresentation and 3) to celebrate the women who decided to celebrate their own bodies and express their own freedom, regardless of popular opinion. Why did I decide to begin with the issue of nudity when my topic is investigating the images of women sporting silk stockings? I chose to introduce my topic in this way because I wish to tackle an historical period in Canada, and particularly in London, Ontario, that perhaps may not have been considered in depth before. The topic of deviant images of women has been researched by scholars in the United States and elsewhere, but is under-explored in Canadian scholarship. “Discourse on sexual imagery belongs within a larger context of cultural contests over changing sexual codes,” writes historian Joanne Meyerowitz.[3] Discovering the historical connections London has with Hollywood – and show business in general – enticed me to search further. Being more educated in second-wave feminism, whose theories reveal the victimization of women through patriarchal power relations, I consciously chose to set such discourse aside in describing my understanding of the project. In gathering and curating the facts and images on display, I found that I was better able to develop my personal feminist perspective. Through this project, I have come to realize that I really speak from a place consistent with third-wave feminism of the present day. To discuss the intent and reaction one has when encountering and creating images of women in seemingly immoral positions can sometimes minimise or ignore the individual freedom of the women being depicted. I have not met the women I have chosen for the exhibition, who pose for the camera wearing their silk stockings. However, I can relate to their sense of self and their desires, for I too, have found myself wanting a visual outlet to portray my sense of self. The legitimacy of such expressions of indi-
viduality within a prescriptive, societal outlet is something I understand as characteristic of third wave feminism. There are many untold stories in the lives of women and they cannot be grouped together under one category or expectation. I believe that the initial repulsion, fear, or simply the lack of understanding as a reaction to the sexualized images of young women had more to do with what could be considered Beautiful and Ugly rather than with societal horror or even intolerance. Speaking with Art Pratten, of The Nihilist Spasm Band, on Saturday February 23, 2013, these differing views on notions of sexuality was reinforced through a discussion on reactions to teenage pregnancy. Having described my project to him, he shared that while he was growing up in south London, there was a home for pregnant teenagers in his neighborhood. Although the home existed, Art proceeded to tell me that he knew three girls, who became pregnant at this time and were not sent to this home but instead they, along with their partners, were supported by their parents. Nonetheless he would also see young women from the home walking around the neighbourhood pregnant and swollen, though he admitted knowing very little about their personal circumstances. After, describing this fragmented story he said he hoped I was not trying to explain this in a rational way, because there would be no answer. It was just the nature of the times. [4] I hope to offer a description of the times, without a value judgment. 2. The Female Refuges Act of Ontario and its place in history: As has been covered extensively in scholarship about the era, young women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries living in urban areas were often quickly (and unthinkingly) categorized as prostitutes if they were seen to be walking the city streets, regardless of whether they were going to work, out for entertainment, or even home. This was especially true if the woman were alone, or in a location where women typically did not go. In addition, if women questioned sexual and gender norms they were often accused of deviancy or prostitution. Helen Boritch, in her historical analysis of gender and criminal court outcomes, suggests that in the urban environment “Prostitution and its high visibility [were seen to be] indicative of the moral decay of cities and working class alike.” Prostitution “made sex public and was the essence that unified ‘social evil.’”[5] At the same time as it was making “sex public,” prostitution was being associated with the young women who lived more openly sexually identifiable lives. Change was occurring across North America. Before the start of the twentieth century, and throughout Ontario and the rest of Canada, women were becoming increasingly autonomous. In large urban centres, “the entrance of women into metropolitan space was a challenge to the Victorian Doctrine of ‘separate realms’ and was read as new
and indicative of the modern.”[6] While this author, Liz Conor, was referring to the UK, the same was true for Ontario women. By 1891, “women constituted 19% of employed and were in manufacturing and industrial occupations.”[7] However, as noted, such changes were not necessarily met with respect. Perhaps due to the pace of change, or to the subconscious (or conscious) urban critique to which women who worked or engaged in activities outside of the home were subject, they were more closely linked to prostitution. Working women were often accused of living lives of immoral activity and were often the focus of the police activity centered on regulating working-class recreation, morality, and lifestyles which violated conventional middle class notions of respectability and urban order.”[8] In Ontario, this led a series of new acts to be put in place, culminating in the Female Refuges Act of Ontario, which remained Ontario law from 1897 to 1958. These “reforms” were specifically designed to control the behaviours of marginalised women, often incarcerating them for behaviour that was perceived as deviant. Some years previous, by at least 1868, John Woodburn Langmuir, “the newly appointed inspector of prisons, asylums, and public charities for Ontario by the government of John Sandfield Macdonald.,[9] ” was instigating reform of prisons and asylums, including creating reformatories for women.[10] The most notorious was “The Andrew Mercer Ontario Reformatory for Females, opened in Toronto in 1880, one of the first prisons for women in North America.”[11] Alongside it was founded Toronto’s Magdalen Asylum, and in company with the asylum,[12] the Industrial Refuge For Girls. In the 1884 report for this refuge, the inspector R. Christie notes that it had a change of name in 1884 from Magdalen Asylum Toronto to that of Industrial Refuge, Toronto.[13] And by 1886, the women incarcerated there “were employed at laundry work, knitting, sewing, etc.”[14] London, Ontario too had a Magdalen Asylum, though with a much smaller population than Toronto’s or Ottawa’s. The Women’s Refuge and Infants Home, London has no mention of laundry work, so perhaps the raising and caretaking of the orphaned and ‘unwanted’ infants was the goal. I base this assumption on the inspection of the Home for The Friendless, Hamilton of the same year, which states that “laundry work has had to be given up, as the time of the adult inmates was fully occupied in the care of infants.”[15] By 1897, The Female Refuges Act (FRA) was “enacted to regulate the industrial houses of refuge.”[16] In 1919, this act was re-evaluated and amended.[17] “Any Female between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five years, sentenced or liable to be sentenced to imprisonment in a common gaol by a judge, may be committed to an industrial refuge for an indefinite period not exceeding two years.”[18]
The stories of their incarceration are now lost or forgotten in Ontario’s archives, or unable to be accessed by the public. In accordance with this, neither I nor the Law librarian at Western University could find any documents relating to their incarceration. What is known is that women had been brought in front of judges, without any formal charges, by parents, police or the Children’s Aid Society. [19] Young, single women could be incarcerated for two primary reasons: she “a) is found begging or receiving alms and/or b) is a habitual drunkard or by reason of other vices is leading an idle a dissolute life.”[20] However, as was witnessed in Montreal, Ontario’s courts also found that “the two most common issues in female delinquency cases [were] precocious sexuality and refusal to contribute to the family economy.”[21] In regulating the sexual, moral and social reform of the First World War Era, law makers and enforcers strengthened their clutches upon the working, single girl.[22] There were many fears in the minds of the middle to upper classes when it came to the displays of incorrigible behaviour by the lower classes. However, conflicting research suggests that many of the girls incarcerated actually came from the middle classes and many were educated. Women were increasingly frequenting the venues of night life in the urban environment and many of the novel experiences they had were already well known to men and prostitutes. Because of this, families and the court system felt the need to regulate the activities of these women, especially their sexual escapades, regardless of innocence. “World War I exacerbated the situation where soldiers were allegedly enticing adolescent girls into sexual encounters.”[23] The places of crime were “dance halls, restaurants and moving picture houses.”[24] Accordingly, D. Owen Carrigan begins his investigation into the period of when women won the right to vote, 1917, by stating: Many other influences challenged the moral values of women. Jazz music and the new sensuous dances, the liberated lifestyle glamourized in the movies, a new generation of sex and confession magazines, Freud’s theories suggesting sexual representation was unhealthy – all challenged women’s conventional role. Even the automobile brought new pressures on women to part with their virtue. In response women shortened their skirts, put on makeup, bobbed their hair, smoked and drank in public.[25]
Figure taken from M. Jennifer Brown Influences Affecting the Treatment of Women, Prisoners in Toronto, 1880 to 1890, 1975
The influence of immoral behaviour frightened the parents and guardians of girls, and so the decades which followed saw the peak of the reform movement, culminating in the FRA. “A fear of sexual assertiveness could still be mobilized as a metaphor for social disorder,” writes Joan Sangster.[26] During the period of the 1930s and 40s, the actions of young women were becoming more and more regulated within the courts of Ontario.[27] This was due at least in part to the “underlying fears that working class girls were in danger of becoming unruly and overly sexual, either led astray or leading men astray.”[28] For nearly a hundred years, the manner in which women conducted themselves outside the home would be legally regulated, judged, and punished. The Female Refuges Act was responsible for the loss of children and the breaking of the spirits and souls of the women incarcerated. One account describes the legal recommendation of sterilization of a single mother: “She tried to support herself and the baby by working at the hosiery mill and as a domestic issued a warrant for her arrest and the prison urged sterilization.”[29] It is notable that the FRA and similar judicial instruments for female repression are not often mentioned in the contemporary discourse of women’s rights movements and feminist theory – at least not explicitly. Most of the historical texts I found did not name the act, although some discussed the reality of similar mechanisms of female incarceration. For example, Lynn Marks, writing on the Juvenile Delinquents Act of Montreal, stresses a historical shifting of blame for social ills such as prostitution away from pimps and gangs onto young women themselves, and specifically their conduct outside of the home: “In 1910, social reformers intent on eradicating prostitution and exposing the white slave trade shifted blame for fallen womanhood from male procurers to the loosening sexual mores among young, single working class women.”[30] In sum, women in public were perceived in very specific ways, and often they were judged for their forays into the public sphere. At times, women were even incarcerated for their behaviour, and as we shall see later in the paper, these incarcerations were sometimes related directly to the hosiery industry as imprisoned women often worked by making hosiery in reformatories and Asylums. In turn, the hosiery industry subtended the myths of beauty that, if one follows this circle, led to the denial of women an agentic place in the public sphere. In the next section, I explore these myths of beauty through Umberto Eco’s understanding of the sublime.
The Woman as an Embodiment of the Sublime: 3.
The communication of a sense or feeling of the sublime has long been considered an aesthetic norm by artists and aestheticians alike. The sublime can be found in the embodied experience of light shining through stained-glass windows in Mediaeval churches, dark clouds gathering on the horizon in Renaissance landscapes, nineteenth century photographs of the vast and monumental landscape of the United States. Photographers would travel to unknown areas of the United States and create constructed and detailed images of the vast and monumental landscape.[31] The experience of the sublime, as I have come to understand it, is a physical reaction to a visceral overstimulation of basic nature. Typically, the sublime has been used to describe an overwhelming experience of landscape or natural phenomena. When the sublime is used to describe female imagery, according to philosopher Umberto Eco, it is an exploration of the idea of “Jugendstil, in which beauty is a beauty of line, which does not disdain the physical dimension....the female body lends itself to envelopment in soft lines and asymmetrical curves that allow it to sink into a kind of voluptuous vortex… Erotically, ... emancipated, sensual women who rejected corsets or style to protect them from their self-confessed lack of independence.”[32] The previous was my own application of Eco’s idea of the sublime in beauty and early twentieth century art.
By the 1920s, a new movement in art had begun which echoed concurrent rapid industrialization and changing social norms: Art Nouveau, a movement which Eco signified as “the reconciliation of art and industry.”[33] By applying the philosopher and political scientist Dolf Sternberger’s thought that, “Art Nouveau enveloped a singular imagining of the world that dealt with universal and extreme contrasts of both positive and negative aspects: motifs such as youth, spring, light and health contrasted with dream, longing, fairytale, obscurity and perversion”[34] to the imagery women experienced on a daily basis, Eco concludes that the 1920s “saw the reduction of all objects to the level of goods – New Beauty can be reproduced – and lost the “aura” of singular importance.”[35] But how does this idea of the “New Beauty” manifest itself in deviant images of women of the era? The provocative images in question were taken during a period of cultural upheaval and with an emphasis upon the investigation into the individual as a sublime and existential being. The practice of recognizing chance as being the main fuel for social interaction, as premised during the period of Surrealism, and the notion of woman as a new citizen of the urban environment was key in how she and others were to navigate this new city space.[36] When attached to human sentiment, the Sublime becomes a battle for personal freedom regardless of the perceived outcomes – the chatter of repression.[37] The problem is not only manifest in the representations of women, but also in their underlying character – the individual mind of the woman being depicted. That a model has made the conscious choice to project her sexual identity into the visual sphere can serve as an expression of her autonomy – a prospect which, perhaps, threatens more traditional views of how a woman should conduct her private and public affairs. In deliberately depicting themselves as sexually free, these women provoked something in those who feared such change and who sought to punish this freedom of spirit. Transgression of the line traditionally drawn between a discrete and temperate moral and sexual identity and its overt display is an act of breaking down the barriers of repression, and as such can inspire fear both in the subject and in those around her. As Eco explains, it is a way of “looking at things from a distance,”[38] as “the struggle between the beauty of provocation and the beauty of consumption.”[39] This struggle occurs in context of the issues of chance as encountered in the Surrealist Manifesto by Andre Breton, “to teach us to interpret the world through different eyes”[40] – a new way of seeing – “experiencing the universe of dreams, fantasies of the mentally ill, and unconscious drives.”[41] To look at the girly images with a different set of eyes, ignoring the intent of the sitter or photographer to portray woman as object of desire, is to forgive the history of repression and control over the female subject and view the situation anew – not as the depiction of
women’s bodies qua objects, but as beautiful subjects deliberately displaying their sublime beauty, no matter the consequences. The sublime can be beautiful in a romantic, tragic and life-altering way. It can allow us to experience empathy and compassion – compassion being the goal for how to look and experience the ugly, according to Eco.[42] “Ugliness is defined as the opposite of beauty.”[43] It is “a lack of equilibrium within the parts of the whole.”[44] Ugliness stems from the unknown, the deformed, and the deviant. When juxtaposed against the presentation of the beautiful, the ugly stands out all the more for its polar opposition. I believe that the shock that some people had when viewing the deviant images of women was a shock of viewing something they thought to be ugly – or that is, not ugly in form, but ugly in thought or principle. It created an outlook for people challenged by their own basic needs and desires, needs and desires which have been categorized as being morally bad. In this sense, the girly images could be seen as ugly in the sense of the “opposite of good - not only repellent – obscene.”[45] It is no surprise, then, that those women who chose to portray their sexual identity in front of the camera were often considered lacking in good moral judgment, perhaps even mentally ill. In reality, I believe that their images urged men and women alike to look at their own situations anew. These images excited a visceral experience of the sublime, confronting offended viewers with the question of what it was their putatively moral sentiments were supposed to be sheltering them from. To reiterate, the ugliness in question is not a physical ugliness that could be articulated and explained by using anatomical models of “perfected” bodies, nor is it something that can be touched directly with the senses. Rather, it is an extreme, affective release of ideas kept out of reach for so many. “The experience of beauty is defined as disinterested pleasure,”[46] it is something that one wishes to look at but not possess, and in and of itself, it is present being of itself.[47] The ugly is different, especially when it relates to women’s interiority: “Ugliness arouses emotional reactions, manifestations of ugliness in itself distinguish natural ugliness from formal ugliness. The person can be ugly but at the same time nice and lovable.”[48] With regard to the issue of how to read early twentieth century ‘bad girl’ images, a woman can be beautiful and lovable but manifest ugliness of thought in others. “Ugliness reveals their inner malice and power of seduction.”[49] I believe that this idea of the “power of seduction” is the key to understanding the power of the girly image, as it highlights the idea of the girly image as one representing the ugly in the beautiful.
Seduction can come from many different sources. However, when a girlnext-door figure takes it upon herself to represent herself as a sexual subject, this unsettles the heterosexual male gaze. The woman who lived her life as a New Woman, who presented herself as a single working woman within the urban setting of the city, was constantly associated with the prostitute. “Prostitution and its high visibility was indicative of the moral decay of cities and the working class alike,” writes Hellen Bortich.[50] Such women received harsh sentences for their ‘crimes’ occurring in public and “represented the most flagrant affront to prevailing constructions of femininity and sexuality.”[51] The sharp criticism aimed at prostitution and visible sex work amongst the lower classes often over-spilled onto lower-class women who did not work in the sex trade, and who would nonetheless be considered sexual objects. Therefore, when women would purposely show their bodies in desirable positions they were immediately thought of as sexually available and this classified them as a sex-worker, regardless of whether or not the image was initially intended for a husband going off to war or for an art project of a photographer. The intention did not matter, what mattered then and still does today is the association girly pictures have with prostitution and sex work. “The allurement of beauty always has one with the prostitution of the body. – they are condemned by their bodies – condemned by unhappiness.”[52] To view the ugly as an interiority of personal expression and freedom, not only “obliges us to provoke fear and disgust or amusement, but also is an appeal for compassion which transports us with truth and poetry to the realm of art.”[53]
4.
Marie Prevost and the Allure of Hollywood to London:
To begin, a question: what does the Hollywood screen siren Marie Prevost (1898-1937) have to do with an exhibition on the hosiery mills of London and the issue of the Female Refuges act of Ontario? Firstly, London, Ontario had a well-known connection with Hollywood during the period in question. A number of the iconic Hollywood studios were founded by Londoners, and many popular Hollywood films of the time featured Londoners and other Canadians who had moved there to be involved in the movie making business. Indeed, some of the largest production houses in Hollywood were run by people who were either born in London, Ontario or came from and lived in the area. Al and Charles Christie, Jack Warner (the youngest brother of Warner Brothers) and Marie Prevost (born in Sarnia), were among the best known. London’s theatres were on the national touring circuit, and many famous for the run of their shows. Cecil B. DeMille[54] acted in London as did Sarah Bernhardt.[55]
Over the course of my research, I discovered a wellspring of show business history in London that has hitherto remained untapped; I believe that London’s direct and indirect influence on mainstream culture in the flapper era is something worthy of further investigation. During the inter-war period, Hollywood made its mark on Western culture by producing some racy, yet very revealing films, speaking to the nature of North American society and life in general. “Cinema was not the stature of art and literature, but belonged to ‘the truthless’ entertainment forms of mass culture,” writes film scholar Liz Conor.[56] It has continued in the business of revealing false “truths,” using propaganda techniques up until our present day. Hollywood creates moving images which have the allure of the psychic’s crystal ball, but the film industry is also known to damage the lives of its most favorite and revered stars. Paradoxically, the allure of Hollywood seems inexorably tied to the tragedy which follows extreme celebrity. One such performer, often considered to have had one of the most tragic falls into the clutches of the Hollywood curse, was Marie Prevost. Chronicling Hollywood’s history involves wading If one takes a glance at the IMDb archives on Prevost through deep pools of toxic gossip, hearsay, and contraand reads the titles for the films she had starred in, one diction. One aspect of this history I find fascinating, and gets the impression that the narrative of a working-class hope to research further, is the tremendous connection working girl, leaving all her wiles to the approval of Londoners appear to have had with the system. In the men and the lifestyle of the incorrigible, was a common case of Prevost’s story alone, they were Londoners who theme. Prevost starred often as a flapper, a character helped her rise to fame and they were Londoners who who “became a sexual subject by associating agency helped tear her down so tragically. The accident with with her visibility – by constituting herself as spectacle her mother was not a part of a great plan to do this at – seemed to assert that style was not merely a modern all, but knowing that Christie was driving the car makes subject but a sexual subject.”[57] From 1916 -1936, Proone want to investigate how closely they really knew vost acted in films with such titles as, Unto Those Who each other. It is said in many places online that Prevost Sin, The Speakeasy, Nobody’s Fool, Being Respectable, moved to the United States at the age of six. However, it Tarnish, The Jazz Bride, Jack Warner’s The Beautiful also states that she presented the public with a persona and the Damned, and Cecil B. DeMille’s 1929 picture invented by Mack Sennett, claiming Quebecois heritage. The Godless Girl. [63] One can never be sure of what her life was exactly – only that she was a woman who presented herself as an At age 18, Prevost was introduced to Hollywood incorrigible and sexually deviant character, free to do as producer Mack Sennett, by way of Montreal, and beshe pleased, even though it was really studio executives came one of his iconic Bathing Beauties[58] – a series who held the reigns in how she would express herself. which spawned a new genre of comedic girly images, [64] There is a thick fog of disparity and contradiction portraying playful, under-clothed women splashing surrounding Prevost herself, and yet there is in her about and acting risqué. While she started out playing story a clue into the deep connection which once existed mostly supporting roles, it was said that she knew her between London and Hollywood. For Marie Prevost, this craft so well that she always “stole the show.”[59] She connection resulted in her tragic death in 1937, having continued to achieve further success until a disagreesuccumbed to alcoholism and dying alone.[65] During ment arose between her and Jack Warner, apparently her career she was portrayed as “being streetwise, and over her adamant request to receive a payment she was desired.”[66] Before the end came, she was having due from him. In retaliation, Warner used his power – serious difficulty attaining strong female roles and was which included taking out public advertisements against constantly typecast as the mischievous characters that Prevost and effectively blacklisting her from the major launched her career.[67] Hollywood studios – to undermine her career and reach for stardom. Prevost’s career was never the same.[60] Prevost’s story exemplifies the state of Hollywood and Probably the most tragic event to befall Prevost occurred the entertainment industry of the time, in which the porwhen Al Christie, another film star, and Prevost’s mothtrayal of young women as creatures of loose morals was er were driving across country to watch her shoot a film. a common trope. Yet, as we observed in the study of the During the trip, their car crashed and Prevost’s mother FRA, those young women who unshackled themselves was killed.[61] It was then that Cecil B. DeMille offered from the restraints of chastity and home life could be her the job on The Godless Girl and she again had some incarcerated for displaying these character ‘flaws.’ short-lived success.[62]
Starlets and working women alike, in wishing to achieve a state of freedom through the depiction of themselves as flawed and fun, were also considered reprobate and viewed with suspicion. As Liz Conor describes, “The young woman who showed ambition for a screen career was typed in popular representations as the screen struck girl. Such women were characterized as ‘human derelicts’[68] and they over identified with the cinematic image which itself was viewed with suspicion as being untrue to life.”[69] Women in the period of the Female Refuges Act of Ontario were cast in the mass imagination as being sexually deviant objects, to be molded and contained. The cinema provided a vision of life for women unrestrained by traditionally sexual morality, and Marie Prevost and others of her generation embraced this potential for freedom in objectifying their own subjectivity and sexual identity through the tropes of Hollywood and the entertainment business. I believe that if these women had not had the courage to present themselves as sexual beings of independent characters, then the North American landscape of celebrity, sexual freedom of expression, and even the potential for individual lifestyle choices for women, would not be what it is. Even today, young women look to the screen for guidance in knowing how to come out of the shell society puts upon us, and it was the generation of Marie Prevost and Mack Sennett that enabled this. “Early twentieth century women’s visibility extended from their excursions into public space, the city to their iconization within the mechanized production of popular images and the conventions of display in commodity culture.” writes Conor. This is why the arcade card and other girly images are so important in the study of contemporary culture: in presenting themselves as commodities, as things to take away, these women are further presenting themselves as self-identifiable subjects, able to make strong decisions about how to express their personal character and sexual identity. Thus, we owe a debt to women like Marie Prevost for having begun this discussion in the first place. Take, for example, the image found of Prevost pulling up her stockings in a scene from The Godless Girl, 1929. Writes on blogger, “As for Marie Prevost’s bad girl, negotiating her way out of reform school, she was strung up by her wrists and beaten during one scene.”[70] In the same breath, the blogger stresses that De Mille, while attacked in the press, was only accurately portraying the reality of the time. Descriptions of the film on multiple websites serve to remind us of the reality of women being incarcerated for immoral behaviour and the realities for the nostalgic persona of the flapper. As Conor eloquently describes, “The Flapper was an international practice of modernist bodily aesthetics and a figure of nostalgia – everywhere she appeared she was marked by scandal because by constituting herself as spectacle, she was asserting her sexual agency.”[71]
5. The Hosiery Mills of London Ontario: Throughout my research on the hosiery mills of London, Ontario, I repeatedly came across seven company names – two of which were renamed factories. Of the seven, five companies stand out in the collective consciousness of present day Londoners and the ephemera from the period. These companies include: Holeproof Hosiery Company, Penman’s Limited, Richmond Hosiery (which was earlier the Teasdale Company), Supersilk Hosiery Mills, and The London Hosiery Mill. Three of these exported to South Africa, New Zealand, India, China, Australia and Peru. [72] The most information one can find on the nature of the mills and their labour practices is in a Masters of Arts thesis written by Benjamin S. Scott in the year 1930. More specifically, the librarian of the London Room, Arthur Mcclelland, gave a talk on the Holeproof Hosiery Mill on Tuesday October 11 2011 and he was kind enough to give me a copy of his work. Initially, I wanted to find specific court documents or information dealing with the Female Refuges Act and how it pertained to workers of the hosiery mills of London, and the surrounding area, including Toronto. Unfortunately, I only found a few references to women being sentenced to work in the hosiery mills and these being nearer to Toronto. One of these stories is described by Michelle Landsberg in her 2012 piece on rapeshelter.bc.ca, Plight of Incorrigible Women Demands Justice. In it, she outlines the experience of Velma Demerson. Demerson’s parents were horrified that her daughter, at the age of 17, was living with her Asian boyfriend and they immediately brought her in front of the courts.[73] Being found guilty of incorrigible behaviour, Demerson was then transported to the Industrial Refuge in Toronto,
and then to the Mercer Reformatory. Pregnant, and distressed at the Mercer Reformatory, Demerson was forced to make hosiery which was a part of the life inside the reformatory. Upon her release nine months later, she exclaimed, “When I put on my own silk stockings, then I knew I was free.”[74] Histories of women in London’s factories are seemingly non-existent; those texts which do make mention of women in the workplace usually give only a passing remark, being primarily focussed on some other aspect of factory labour in London. However, using the scraps of testimony of we have from working women of the time, as clearly outlined by Scott, we can have a clearer understanding of the plight of women during this era. While mere speculation, it nonetheless seems reasonable to believe that the clothing mills, and the hosiery mills in particular, were (despite the gross gender inequalities pervading the industry at the time) a place of chosen refuge for lower-class workers, as opposed to the ‘reformatory’ refuges women were often forced into by the judicial system. By the year of 1930, “50-70% of employees in the various hosiery factories were women and girls and 85% of the labour classed as skilled, and girls would be paid approximately $15-$18 dollars a week.”[75] From documented proof within the Sessional Papers of The Legislature of Ontario, it is claimed that, of the professions of the women incarcerated in the prison and charities system of Ontario, very few admitted that their means of survival was factory work. Up to the year 1890, it was documented that the occupations of the female inmates of asylums in Ontario were primarily in Housekeeping with 2565, and in Domestic Service as 1853 in total, whereas seamstresses accounted for 164, weavers 32, machinists 55, and spinsters 151.[76] This leads me to wonder what the state of affairs was twenty years later, when London became home to its first hosiery mill (the first documented or so far found) Holeproof Hosiery Mills. Founded in Michigan as Kalamazoo Knitting Company in 1873, Holeproof Hosiery Company was originally an American company begun by Carl Freschl.[77] Moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1890, Kalamazoo changed its name to Holeproof Hosiery by 1897, due to claims that a pair of Freschl’s stockings could withstand wear for up to six months.[78] In 1910, “London Dry goods wholesaler, J.W. Little obtained the Canadian Rights to manufacture Holeproof socks and stockings, and the first mill was built and opened by 1911.” Incidentally, 1911 was the year that Freschl passed away.[79] Beginning with socks for men, women and children, by 1927 the factory in London was making full-fashioned hosiery for women.[80] By 1938 Nylon was introduced to the market, and 90% of their products were made from this material.[81] Manufacturing a line of lingerie as well, Holeproof Hosiery was “awarded the gold medal from the fashion academy of New York.”[82] Another prominent Hosiery Company, this one fully Canadian, was Penman’s Limited 1919, originally of Paris, Ontario.[83] Once the furrier of the Queen, Penman’s was founded in 1868. By 1926, Penman’s, situated
near the forks of the Thames, was “exclusively making full-fashioned hosiery for women and underwear.”84] Depending upon the experience of the workers, women could make anywhere up to $30 a week.[85] “Women were preferred as workers for their dexterity.”[86] However, women were subject to different working regulations than men, especially during the 1930s and 40s. One worker relates: “The job (to make the foot of the stocking) had always been done by women but all the women were aged from 30 to 45 and no newcomers had been taught for years. The laws in Ontario at that time were very strict as far as women workers were concerned. There was a minimum wage and hours of work law. It was very strict on overtime and night work was prohibited.”[87] The London Hosiery Mills Limited, were situated on Adelaide street and were purveyors of seamless hosiery. [88] A call out to the residents of London was made, to share stories of the hosiery mills. An account of this the London Hosiery mill is shared by Pat Messier: “My mother, Ethel Mitchell (nee Foreman) worked at London Hosiery starting at about the age of 19 after coming from England at the age of 16 in 1929. Her older brother and an Uncle worked at Penman’s and her younger brother started at “The Hosiery” sweeping the floor and moved on to later become the Controller. I have pictures of her and her friends standing outside of the plant in about 1940 when she was about 28. There were 20 or so women from the Hosiery that formed the knitting club about 1935 or so and they continued to meet every second Monday for about 60 years. When they had children, they stopped the meetings for the summer but they met at each other’s houses the rest of the year. When I was a child my mother looped in our basement and Ray Capener (I believe that was his name) delivered bags of stuff every few days and picked up the finished product. My mother was very fast on the looper and made what she called “good money” at it. She never considered herself exploited and loved the work and the friends she made. One of these friends married into our family and one was my godmother so they were life-long friends. I think there may be 2 women who belonged to the club still living.”[89] Douglas Flood of London, Ontario had this to say about the Richmond, Holeproof, and the Supersilk Hosiery mills. The Supersilk Hoseiry Mill was located on Florence and Eleanor Streets. It was owned by Col Thompson and the building is still there. I have an old picture of the beginning of it when it was at the corner of Richmond and Piccadilly streets under the offices of the Supertest building. They owned it too. Also Richmond Hoseiry, was located on Ridout Street on the west side between King and York streets. When they closed John Parker and his brother Wilffred bought some of the machines and opened up a mill in Clinton and called it PAR-KNIT Hosiery. Several of the Parker family worked at Supersilk and at the mill in Clinton.
Holeproof had a strike in the early 1950s and the plant was closed and the machines were taken out and sent to a mill in Quebec. If you look at the East end of the building you can see where the bricks were replaced after the machines where removed. Eleanor Flood is a Parker and worked at Supersilk as a summer student.. Findley Carrol’s wife worked there too. He was an inspector on the London Police department then. He went to work in a suit and tie she went to work in overhauls. I worked the site during the strike when it was closing. They produced rayon as well as nylon hose. My father in law Jim Parker was a knitter at Supersilk and started at the Richmond Street location. There were toppers, seamers loopers, boarders, a dye house as well as people sizing and packaging the stockings. The mill worked pretty well 24 hours a day. My father in law died at the age of 39 years. He was full of silk dust. He contracted a lung disease from the silk dust. He was not the only one. They were all on piece work and made very good money. The stories of work in the hosiery mills are slowly trickling in and I believe that they will continue to do so well after my due date for this publication. Speaking with 91 year old, Mrs. Dorothy White I have come to realize that the hosiery mills of London Ontario were indeed a positive work experience for many women. Mrs. White worked for Holeproof Hosiery for 27 years, from 1955 – 1987, and began working at the mill after her lodger suggested she apply. Newly divorced and with barely any work experience outside of the hard work in being a mother and wife, Mrs. White interviewed for and attained the position.[90] Eventually, she became the executive Secretary to the Vice President of the Company,[91] regardless of the fact that she “didn’t know how to type or take short hand.”[92] What she remembers most about her time with Holeproof Hosiery, is how much fun the women had while working and how respected she felt while working for her employers. She stressed how they treated her as though she was just as smart as the rest of them, even though she believed differently.[93] With this new information, I believe that I was led astray in wanting to find negative aspects of factory work on the lives of women. However, the results of my research have begun to show that experiences within London’s mills were positive. There is still the factor of incarcerated women making hosiery in Toronto and under the FRA. I do believe that there were Londoners to have been sent to the Industrial Refuges, but without being able to find the proof, this remains as speculation.
To End is To Begin Anew: To conclude I wish to leave with you the words written by one Mrs. Laura Rose Stephens of Huntington Quebec taken from her essay published in The Sessional Papers for The Province of Ontario, 1917, talk given at Western University. It is a woman’s right to possess beauty. It may not be of form or feature, although I do think we have the power
within us to greatly enhance our outward charms, if we would but give more intelligent thought to our personal appearance. It does not mean so much an outlay of money, as of thought and good taste. We might, some of us, be like the woman who went to confession and said, “I’m a great sinner. When I look in the mirror I find myself so beautiful I feel very vain.” “My dear woman,” came the reply. “That’s not a sin—only. A WOMAN’S POSSESSIONS.[94] Doubt if there ever was a time when Chas. Kingsley was right in saying: “For men must work and women must weep.” If there were such an era, it is relegated to the past, for now in almost every sphere of labour women work with a stout heart and a resolute will. In the field of useful activity, women have learned that labour is rest—rest from sorrow, from vexation, from care. [95] I began this investigation thinking that I would conclude with an Ah! Ha! moment. I thought I would find something that reasserted my initial assumptions that women were being forced into labour by working in the hosiery mills as a part of their incarceration within the regulations of The Female Refuges Act of Ontario. I have been unable to find that this was actually the case. Women incarcerated made hosiery in reformatories and the Magdalen asylums, primarily in Toronto. In London, there were young women incarcerated by the use of the statute, however I have been unable to uncover their stories. Mr. Douglas Flood, who also shared with me his story of the hosiery mills, worked as a police officer and used the statute once during the 1950s. This rule of law should have silenced the weak, and perhaps it still attempts to do so by not making the court documents easily traceable. However, through the course of my research I have come to understand that the women living in Ontario battled a severe injustice to personal expression, and won. So much more research needs to be done on the issue of the Female Refuges Act, including, research on how the statute fell away from common practice. Women today, live in a time of much greater freedom, and yet so many wish to continue to extinguish our rights of self-identity, self-personhood and expression. We have been witness to with the recent conservative attempt to criminalize abortion once again and with “the government cutting funding to over a dozen women’s groups.” This issue is not one that is to be taken lightly, and if time allowed I would continue my research into the underlying results such a rule of law held upon the citizens of Ontario. My hope is that more inquiries are made into the nature of this horrific and painful act. My hopeis that women who were incarcerated through the courts under the designation of incorrigible bad girls can one day have their voices heard. My heart aches for the parents who chose to imprison their daughters through this system of complete and utter soulful decay. I’m sure once they realized exactly what was going on their guilt knew know bounds. Next time one questions the sexual identity of a young woman, remember where this freedom has arisen from. And celebrate that she needs not to be forced into domestic labour and that she has the right to be herself.
Ana Čop was born in Zagreb, and currently lives and works in Toronto, in her beloved Parkdale, on the western side of the city. She immigrated in Canada in the early 1990s, during the Croatian post-war period. In 2007, Čop decided to completely change her career and embarked upon a transformation into a visual artist. Before entering the School of Image Arts, she secured a Certificate of Photographic Studies from Ryerson’s Chang School, where she was the 2010 recipient of the Hamish Kippen Excellence in Arts Award. Ana Čop has won numerous awards for her work in Canada, the USA and Europe. While she was finishing her BFA at Ryerson Image Arts, she won the SNAP!Star 2011 Award. In summer of 2011, as the sole Canadian winner she was nominated “Photographer of the Year, 2011” in the L’Iris D’Or Sony World Photography Awards, in London, UK, securing second place in the Fine Art-Conceptual category. Shortly thereafter, Ana Čop was selected as one of the winners of the PDN’s Annual Photography Awards in New York City. Ana Čop is a member of CAPIC (Canadian Association of Professional Image Creators). http://anacop.com/bio
Dana Brushette in a photographer working in London Ontario. A graduate of Fanshawe College, Brushette creates images that are inspired by the old allure of 1950s-60s Hollywood Glamour shots and the Pin-up from that era. http://www.danabrushette.com/ (See image on next page)
Kerstin Maciuk is a visual arts student of Western University and is currently working towards her Bachelor of Fine Arts. A graduate of HB. Beal Secondary School and a long time resident of London, Ontario. Going into her third year in the program, Maciuk has a promissing future ahead of her.
A Grandaughter’s Reflections; Paddy Jane on Paddy Browne Growing up, I knew my Grandmother and namesake was a film actress and made amazing chocolate chip cookies. But mostly, we knew her as Grandma Redhead. Loving film myself, I studied filmmaking in school but soon my photography and radio past times took over my professional life as I realized my love of telling people’s stories through image and sound. My obsession with the 1920s manifested in my first photography show, The Original Hustler, in 2006. Re-imagining the hidden world of Speakeasys, gangsters, spies and pin-up girls, the show also played with traditional power and gender roles, exploring pin-up boys, women who dressed up as men to pursue their professional goals, and The powerful Godmother in place of the traditional Godfather. Featured on Fashion Television, TVO, XTRA! and receiving critic’s pick in Now Magazine, the show was both a personal and professional success. But my fascination with the mystery and glamour of the early 20th century was not satisfied. I continued to shoot pin-ups, began burlesquing and modeling, hosted cabaret shows and concerts, and produced the radio show Sex, Outlaws and Rock n’ Roll. Deciding to dedicate my photography company FiftyTwo Pinups to my grandmother, inspired by the strength and personal conviction being an independent working woman took in the 1920s, I delved into her scrapbook to find out more about her and tell her story accurately. I was stunned by what I found. Film was just a small facet of her performance repertoire. She was a radio host and performer, a pinup girl and cabaret host. Our lives were mirrors of each other from a different era, somehow I’d become my grandmother without even knowing that’s who she’d been. It’s the first time I wondered if personality is passed through genes, just like red hair and blue eyes. My next show Mi Manchi, was inspired by her and Les Demimondes at the turn of the century. Italian for “I miss you”, Mi Manchi is a return to the mystery in sexy and strength in vulnerability. Vintage boudoir has become my personal and professional obsession, with new works posted weekly on FiftyTwoPinups.com, while I continue to discuss good love and good music on Sex, Outlaws and Rock n’ Roll (SLRRR.com.) Showcasing my work alongside my late grandmother’s, in a show that celebrates women, independence and thinking outside the box, is both a humbling and exciting experience. I’ve never felt closer to her and think she would be honoured to be part of such a wonderful community of strong women and artists from the past century. Paddy Jane
Politics of the Pin-Up: A Brief Exploration on the Evolution of the Eroticized Female Body in Popular Visual Culture Kimberly Barton Visual culture and the production of images are sites historically dominated by the male gender. As the New York based feminist art group Guerilla Girls exposed in their 1989 advertisement How Women Get Maximum Exposure, the iconic poster explains that while less than five percent of the works displayed in the Metropolitan Museum were produced by women artists, nearly eightyfive percent of the nudes shown therein are compositions of the female body. Typically veiled under the guise of history, mythology or allegory, the nudes of academic art as found in painting or sculpture would reveal highly different psychological impacts on the viewer than those images produced by photographic means.[1] The myth of photographic truth, in which the viewer is thought to accept without questioning the photographic image as objectively true, in relation to the depiction of the human body, has created a kind of dilemma in our understanding of the increasingly eroticized photograph of the female nude. These kinds of photographs invoke a sense of voyeurism that would accompany the gaze of the predominantly male photographers, as well as the male audiences for whom the images were made. While women have indeed been able to enjoy some degree of agency in the production of these images, it is important to first garner some understanding of the tradition and transformation of the erotic photograph so as to recognize the ways in which a feminist approach to what would become a pinup culture can be apprehended. While photography in the nineteenth century had at last offered a means by which the image produced by the camera obscura could be fixed with permanence, it was also to be subject to the censorship and scrutiny of the conventions of Victorian morality. As photographic processes became gradually less complex, a democratization of the image became possible, and available to all classes of society. Indeed, it was an indication of social standing particularly among middle-class women to keep photo albums containing the portraits of beloved royalty, or celebrities, serving as a means to “document the familial and social connections of the families who owned them, [and] many women went to great lengths to create impressive volumes of imagery for display in their homes.”[2] The carte-de-visit, or calling card, a small photograph measuring approximately two and a half by three and a half inches, as popularized by the image of Emperor Napoleon III (1859) would become immensely significant in the production and distribution of images in the later nineteenth century. As a cheaply produced
and widely available medium, the carte-de-visit would offer the dominant means of distribution for increasingly eroticized images of the female nude. At the same time as the development of this influential technology, entertainment culture was also undergoing significant changes that would similarly impact the kinds of images being produced for mass consumption. The Industrial Revolution had caused the emergence of a middle class who had both new financial affluence and leisure time with which to spend it, and so popular entertainment would adapt to suit the tastes of the masses. From the legitimate theatre would emerge the era of the burlesque, a ‘leg show’ for which the focal point “was not the drama itself, but the performance of scandalously scantily clad actresses and coryphées.”[3] As the talents of burlesque actresses lent them a degree of celebrity status, the representation of an off-stage persona became increasingly acceptable for sale in the mass production of a carte-de-visit. “Early carte-de-visit photographs of bawdry burlesque actresses represented not only the earliest examples of pin-up imagery but also a space in which these stage performers could construct, control, and promote what one nineteenth century burlesque performer would call a feminist ideal of sexual ‘awarishness’ in an era of both great oppression and great strides for women.”[4] No longer were such images produced with the intention for collection in the albums of ordinary middle-class women, as these kinds of performances would have been considered taboo, rather favoring to satisfy the desires of a distinctly male audience. Thomas B. Hess describes the pin-up as “a highly stylized photograph of a star, starlet or model, produced for a male audience.”[5] The pin-up girl seems to straddle the fine line existing between subject and object. While these models and actresses may in some cases have chosen to have themselves represented in a more sexualized way, empowered by their sexuality and rejection of traditional roles of women in the public sphere, they are undeniably still feeding into the mass consciousness of male consumerism. Erotic images were featured on a great number of saleable items including prints, posters, magazines, calendars, postcards and cigarette cards. Under the influence of the burlesque era, American morality had undergone rapid transformation from its once puritanical culture, metamorphosing into one more indulgent of fantasy and desire.[6]
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were still difficult for women who wished to enter into public life where, with rare exceptions, women were often discouraged from either speaking publicly or appearing in print. “So suspicious was the public woman of the period that it was argued that a woman simply presenting herself in a public forum like the meeting-house or polling booth would compromise her femininity.”[7] Often when we think of the social place experienced by women during this period, we interpret their representation in photographs as a reflection of constructed identity. While feminist critique has typically claimed the male image to be one of “power, possession and domination, the female one of submission, passivity and availability,” we must consider that the erotic image might offer a form of expression to the female sitter that is also empowering to her sexuality.[8] Indeed, art historian Maria Elena Buszek would argue in her text Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture, that while these kinds of images were certainly made with the intention of fulfilling the desires and fantasies of a heterosexual male audience, “the genre has also represented the sexualized woman as self-aware, assertive, strong, and independent.”[9] This suggests a kind of coincidence of the Burlesque era with the emergence of women’s rights movements, where women were aware of the oppressiveness with which they were met in the public sphere, seeking ways to subvert and transgress social norms of morality, essentially overturning expectations of women in the social realm. Terms such as the “New Woman” enter popular vocabulary before 1894, as a means to describe this rebellious spirit of womanhood being explored by middle and working class women who became increasingly engaged in modern public spaces.[10] It is important to note that pin-up imagery is quite different from explicit pornographic imagery, and the two should not be confused, nor do these images seem to qualify within the realm of art. The pin-up offers a mere suggestion of sexuality, while pornography is the overt enactment of socially taboo sexual rituals, satisfying a need for “diversion, escape,[and] frivolity.”[11] The pin-up is then an increasingly complex and contradictory image of contemporary femininity. While the object of male desire, voyeurism and fetishism, it simultaneously represents for women the potential for a kind of liberated and self-aware sexuality to be explored. “The dual nature of the mass produced erotic image- the scaffolding of high-art style used as a container for dangerous (tabu) emotional communications- reappears in the pin-up.”[12] What we can then take from these kinds of images is the recognition of the potential of the vehicle. Meanings are created and changed according to the intentions of the beholder or image-maker, and as a result images become differently charged and serve different purposes. The pin-up is certainly not all innocence, despite its suggestive rather than explicit nature in representing sexuality, and offers a site of contentious debate for those seeking an explanation of the role of such images in visual culture. The pin-up, however, remains a revered icon of American visual, consumerist and celebrity culture, whose potential for subversion is tactically employed in contemporary image making, as seen in works ranging from the London, Ontario-based photographer Dana Brushette, to the politically activated stylistic applications of artists like Cindy Sherman. It seems more than ever that the depiction of these post-war Hollywood types of the iconic pin-up, as recognized in images of the enigmatic Rita Hayworth or Marilyn Monroe, serve as exaggerations of femininity, acting as sources for the development of feminist thought as both the danger and pleasure of sexualized scenarios have caught the attention of academic scrutiny.
Endnotes: Jennifer Lorraine Fraser 1. Petkovic, Mila. Twitter Post February 17, 2013 1:27pm, @milaverap accessed February 17 2013 2. De Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex, Random House Publishers India Pvt. Limited, 2010 p.301 3. Meyerowttz, Joanne, Women, Cheesecake, and Borderline material: Responses to Girlie Pictures in the Mid-Twentieth-Century U.S. Journal of Women’s History Volume 8, Number 3, Fall 1996 pp. 9-35 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_womens_history/summary/v008/8.3.meyerowitz.html Accessed February 23 2013 4. Pratten, Art, Discussion with Author, February 23, 2013 5. Boritch, Helen, Gender and Court Outcomes: An Historical Analysis in Crime and Deviance in Canada; Historical Perspectives ed. Chris McCormick and Len Green, Canadian Scholars Press Toronto, 2005p.127 6. Conor, Liz, The Spectacular Modern Woman, Feminine Visibility in the 1920s, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2004 p.47 7. Boritch. P. 126 8. Ibid 9. Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=7511&terms=grant Accessed February 28 2013 10. ibid 11. ibid 12. ibid 13. Fifteenth Annual Report of the inspectors of prisons and public charities upon the houses of refuge 1884 p.63 14. Seventeenth Annual Report of the inspectors of prisons and public charities upon the houses of refuge 1886 p.71 15. Ibid P.73 16. Sangster, Joan, Defining Sexual Promiscuity: “Race,” Gender, and Class in the operation of Ontario’s Female Refuges Act, 1930-60 in Crime and Deviance in Canada; Historical Perspectives ed. Chris McCormick and Len Green, Canadian Scholars Press Toronto, 2005, p.286 17. ibid 18. FRA An Act respecting Industrial Refuges For Females 1919 chap. 84 p.435 19. Sangster, Joan, Incarcerating “Bad Girls”: The Regulation of Sexuality through the Female Refuges Act in Ontario, 1920-1945, Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol. 7, No. 2 (Oct., 1996), pp. 239-275 p. 239 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3704141 Accessed February 23 2013 20. Act p. 438 21. Meyers, Tamara, The Voluntary Delinquent: Parents, Daughters and the Montreal Juvenile Delinquents’ Court in 1918, in Crime and Deviance in Canada; Historical Perspectives ed. Chris McCormick and Len Green, Canadian Scholars Press Toronto, 2005 p.152 22. Marks, Lynne, Railing, Tattling and General Rumour: Gossip, Gender and Church Regulation in Upper Canada, in Crime and Deviance in Canada; Historical Perspectives ed. Chris McCormick and Len Green, Canadian Scholars Press Toronto, 2005, p.148 23. Meyers, p. 151 24 ibid 25. Carrigan, D.Owen, Crime and Punishment in Canada; A History, McClelland & Stewart Inc, Toronto, 1991 p. 265 26. Sangster, Bad Girls, p.247 27. ibid 28. ibid 29. Sangster, Joan. P.269 30. Marks, Lynne, p. 148 31. Bassnett, Sarah. Dr. Lecture Notes from History of Photography VAH2282 History of Photoraphy, 2013 32. Eco, Umberto, On Beauty, Second Edition, Rizzoli International Publications, New York 2005 p.369 33. Ibid p.369 34. Ibid 369 35. Ibid 376 36. Ibid 37. Eco, Umberto, On The History of Ugliness, http://videolectures.net/cd07_eco_thu/, Accessed February 20 2013 38. Eco On Beauty, p.414 39. ibid 40. Ibid 416 41. Ibid p. 417 42. Eco, Ugly lecture 43. ibid 44. ibid 45. ibid 46. ibid 47. ibid 48. ibid 49. ibid 50. Boritch, p.127 51. Boritch, 52. Eco, Ugly Lecture 53 ibid 54 Editorial, The London Free Press Wednesday February 20, 1980 Director Cecil B. DeMille once Acted at Grand 55 The Grand Theatre Online Archive, http://dotydocs.theatreinlondon.ca/Archives/grand/stars.htm accessed March 2013 56 Conor, Liz. P. 85 57 Conor, p. 209 58 Foster, Charles, Stardust and Shadows; Canadians in Early Hollywood, Dundurn Press, Toronto 2000 p.297 59 Ibid p.294 60 Ibid p.30 61 Ibid p.307 62 Ibid p.308 63 Ibid 310 64 Ibid 65 She Blogged by Night http://shebloggedbynight.com/tag/the-marie-prevost-project/ , Accessed February 2013 66 Ibid 67 ibid 68 Conor, p. 78 69 Conor, Liz. P. 78 70 http://thebluelantern.blogspot.ca/2009/02/marie-prevost-in-godless-girl.html 71 Conor, p.211 72 Scott. P.260 73 Landsberg, Michelle. Plight of Incorrigible Women Demands Justice, Sunday Star May 6 2001 http://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/learn/news/plight-incorrigible-women-demands-justice accessed November 15, 2012 74 ibid
75 Scott, p.260 76 Sessional papers of Ontario, 1890 http://archive.org/details/n01ontariosession22ontauoft, Accessed March 15 2013 77 Mcclelland, Arthur. “A Run For The Money: Holeproof Hosiery Company, 1911 to 1989, A Forgotten Story of London, Powerpoint presentation slides from talk given Tuesday October 11 2011. P.1-2 78 ibid 79 ibid 80 Scott, Benjamin Samuel, The economic and industrial history of the city of London, Canada, from the building of the first railway, 1855, to the present, 1930 Master’s Thesis, University of Western Ontario p. 261 81 Mcclelland.p.3 82 Ibid p.5 83 Scott.262 84 Scott. P.261 85 ibid 86 Edwards, Alfred. The Mill: A Worker’s Memoir of the 1930s and 1940s, Labour/Le Travail, 36 (Fall 1995), 253-98. http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/llt/article/ view/5008/5877 accessed November 16, 2012 87 ibid 88 Scott, p.265 89 http://blogs.canoe.ca/brandnewblog/general/holeproof-hosiery-marie-prevost-dana-brushette/ accessed march 2 2013 90 White, Dorothy, Discussion with author, March 28 2013 91 White, Dorothy, Discussion with author, March 28 2013 92 White, Dorothy, Discussion with author, March 28 2013 93 Ibid 94 Sessional Papers, VOL. XLIX.—PART VII.-THIRD SESSION OF THE FOURTEENTH LEGISLATURE OF THE PROVINCE OF ONTARIO, Session 1917, Printed and Published by A. T. WILGRESS, Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty 1917 Toronto http://booksnow1. scholarsportal.info/ebooks/oca5/37/p7ontariosession49ontauoft/p7ontariosession49ontauoft_bw.pdf Accessed March 13 2013 95 Sessional Papers, VOL. XLIX.—PART VII.-THIRD SESSION OF THE FOURTEENTH LEGISLATURE OF THE PROVINCE OF ONTARIO, Session 1917, Printed and Published by A. T. WILGRESS, Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty 1917 Toronto http://booksnow1. scholarsportal.info/ebooks/oca5/37/p7ontariosession49ontauoft/p7ontariosession49ontauoft_bw.pdf Accessed March 13 2013
Endnotes: Kimberly Barton [1] Edward Lucie-Smith, Censoring the Body (New York: Seagull Books, 2007), 44. [2]Maria Elena Buszek, Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture (Durham and London: Drake University Press , 2006), 33-34. [3] Buszek, 35. [4] Buszek, 29 [5] Thomas B. Hess, “Pinup and Icon,” in Woman as Sex Object: Studies in Erotic Art, 1730-1970, ed. Thomas B. Hess and Linda Nochlin, (Great Britain: Allen Lane, 1973), 223. [6] Mark Gabor, The Pin-Up: A Modest History (New York: Universe Books, 1972), 40. [7] Buszek, 38. [8] Linda Nochlin, “Eroticism and Female Imagery in Nineteenth-Century Art,” in Woman as Sex Object: Studies in Erotic Art, 1730-1970, ed. Thomas B. Hess and Linda Nochlin, (Great Britain: Allen Lane, 1973), 14. [9] Buszek, 8. [10] Buszek, 78. [11] Gabor, 36. [12] Hess, 225.
Bibliography: Jennifer Lorraine Fraser Bassnett, Sarah. Dr. Lecture Notes from History of Photography VAH2282 History of Photoraphy, 2013
Seventeenth Annual Report of the inspectors of prisons and public charities upon the houses of refuge 1886 p.71 Scott, Benjamin Samuel, The economic and industrial history of the city of London, Canada, from the building of the first railway, 1855, to the present, 1930 Master’s
Boritch, Helen, Gender and Court Outcomes: An Historical Analysis in Crime and Deviance Thesis, University of Western Ontario in Canada; Historical Perspectives, ed. Chris McCormick and Len Green, Canadian Scholars Press Toronto, 2005 Brown, M. Jennifer. Influences Affecting the Treatment of Women, Prisoners in Toronto, 1880 to 1890, Univeristy of Toronto Thesis, 1975 http://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=2576&context=etd Accessed February 2013
She Blogged by Night http://shebloggedbynight.com/tag/the-marie-prevost-project/ , Accessed February 2013 The Grand Theatre Online Archive, http://dotydocs.theatreinlondon.ca/Archives/grand/ stars.htm accessed March 2013
Carrigan, D.Owen, Crime and Punishment in Canada; A History, McClelland & Stewart Inc, Toronto, 1991
White, Dorothy, Discussion with author, March 28 2013
Conor, Liz, The Spectacular Modern Woman, Feminine Visibility in the 1920s, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2004 p.47 De Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex, Random House Publishers India Pvt. Limited, 2010
Bibliography: Kimberly Barton
Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e. php?&id_nbr=7511&terms=grant Accessed February 28 2013 Eco, Umberto, On Beauty, Second Edition, Rizzoli International Publications, New York 2005 Eco, Umberto, On The History of Ugliness, http://videolectures.net/cd07_eco_thu/, Accessed February 20 2013 Editorial, The London Free Press Wednesday February 20, 1980 Director Cecil B. DeMille once Acted at Grand, Found clippings in The London Room at The Central Library Edwards, Alfred. The Mill: A Worker’s Memoir of the 1930s and 1940s, Labour/Le Travail, 36 (Fall 1995), 253-98. http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/llt/article/view/5008/5877 accessed November 16, 2012 Fifteenth Annual Report of the inspectors of prisons and public charities upon the houses of refuge 1884 p.63 Foster, Charles, Stardust and Shadows; Canadians in Early Hollywood, Dundurn Press, Toronto 2000 FRA An Act respecting Industrial Refuges For Females 1919 chap. 84 Marks, Lynne, Railing, Tattling and General Rumour: Gossip, Gender and Church Regulation in Upper Canada, in Crime and Deviance in Canada; Historical Perspectives ed. Chris McCormick and Len Green, Canadian Scholars Press Toronto, 2005
Meyerowttz, Joanne, Women, Cheesecake, and Borderline material: Responses to Girlie Pictures in the Mid-Twentieth-Century U.S. Journal of Women’s History Volume 8, Number 3, Fall 1996 pp. 9-35 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_womens_history/summary/ v008/8.3.meyerowitz.html Accessed February 23 2013 Meyers, Tamara, The Voluntary Delinquent: Parents, Daughters and the Montreal Juvenile Delinquents’ Court in 1918, in Crime and Deviance in Canada; Historical Perspectives ed. Chris McCormick and Len Green, Canadian Scholars Press Toronto, 2005 Mcclelland, Arthur. “A Run For The Money: Holeproof Hosiery Company, 1911 to 1989, A Forgotten Story of London, Powerpoint presentation slides from talk given Tuesday October 11 2011. Petkovic, Mila. Twitter Post February 17, 2013 1:27pm, @milaverap accessed February 17 2013 Pratten, Art, Discussion with Author, February 23, 2013 Seventeenth Annual Report of the inspectors of prisons and public charities upon the houses of refuge 1886 p.71 Sangster, Joan, Defining Sexual Promiscuity: “Race,” Gender, and Class in the operation of Ontario’s Female Refuges Act, 1930-60 in Crime and Deviance in Canada; Historical Perspectives ed. Chris McCormick and Len Green, Canadian Scholars Press Toronto, 2005, p.286 Sangster, Joan, Incarcerating “Bad Girls”: The Regulation of Sexuality through the Female Refuges Act in Ontario, 1920-1945, Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol. 7, No. 2 (Oct., 1996), pp. 239-275 p. 239 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3704141 Accessed February 23 2013 Sessional papers of Ontario, 1890 http://archive.org/details/n01ontariosession22ontauoft, Accessed March 15 2013 Sessional Papers, VOL. XLIX.—PART VII.-THIRD SESSION OF THE FOURTEENTH LEGISLATURE OF THE PROVINCE OF ONTARIO, Session 1917, Printed and Published by A. T. WILGRESS, Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty 1917 Toronto http://booksnow1.scholarsportal.info/ebooks/oca5/37/p7ontariosession49ontauoft/p7ontariosession49ontauoft_bw.pdf Accessed March 13 2013
Buszek, Maria Elena. “Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture.” Durham and London: Drake University Press, 2006. Gabor, Mark. “The Pin-Up: A Modest History.” New York: Universe Books, 1972. Hess, Thomas B. “Pinup and Icon,” in Woman as Sex Object: Studies in Erotic Art, 1730-1970, ed. Thomas B. Hess and Linda Nochlin. Great Britain: Allen Lane, 1973. Lucie-Smith, Edward. “Censoring the Body.” New York: Seagull Books, 2007. Nochlin, Linda. “Eroticism and Female Imagery in Nineteenth-Century Art,” in Woman as Sex Object: Studies in Erotic Art, 1730-1970, ed. Thomas B. Hess and Linda Nochlin. Great Britain: Allen Lane, 1973.
Jennifer Lorraine Fraser