Fur is in, let’s face it. And it’s controversial. With many designers and celebrities passionately advocating or denouncing it (think GaGa’s dead Kermit outfit), PETA targeting high-profile designers like Michael Kors and Isaac “All I want to do is wear fur pants!” Mizrahi, and the United States Humane Society loudly exposing the false labeling of raccoon dog hides as faux, the debate about fur has far from abated. The issue runs deeper than animal rights, however, and fur’s connotations with fetishism, feminism and functionality are pervasive and date back hundreds of years. The Cultural Politics of Fur is an academic account of the many social dimensions of this notorious commodity, a fashion as old as our species.

The book is framed by contemporary discussions of fur, covering fur-related campaigns (Diesel advertising for and Lynx protesting against), its role as the main source of income for First Nations peoples, and the symbolic implications of women wearing fur fashions. The majority of the text, however, is devoted to history, discussing sumptuary legislations about fur and its representations in fine art prior to the 19th century, as well as to the masochistic connotations of fur fetishism, especially in Venus in Furs. In these sections, Emberley frequently wanders onto topics that are barely relevant to her discussions of fur, such as object representation in fine art, the historical shift in the image-text relationship during the 20th century, and the exclusion of First Nations people from organized labour. While these topics are applicable, too much time is spent on extraneous details, and the book begins to feel long and disjointed. Specific films like The Joyless Street and Paris is Burning are used illustrate certain points, but when Emberley relays every detail and plotline I began to think her arguments would stand better on their own.

Aside from these self-indulgent ramblings, Emberley sheds light on feminist perspectives of fur’s connotations throughout history. Since commodities like fur denote decadence and wealth, affluent women seek to gain symbolic agency through conspicuous consumption, but this can also disempower the majority of women as the positions they aspire to become are increasingly associated with narcissism and compliance to social norms. She notes that “it is one of the contradictory aspects of symbolic agency that the price to be paid for symbolic power is continuing representation by cultural studies theorists and advertising agencies alike of the female bourgeois woman as passive, stupid – and spectacularly so.” Emberley argues that when women rely on material objects for power, they situate themselves and their bodies as commodities, items to be traded in a “libidinal exchange.” It is not only those who advocate and wear fur who perpetuate this cycle, but also anti-fur campaigners like Lynx that target mostly white, bourgeois women with slogans like “It takes up to 40 dumb animals to make a fur coat. But only one to wear it.” Although Lynx is now extinct, PETA has recently been using similar techniques and recruiting celebrities for their “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” and “I always fake it” campaigns.

I would have liked a bit more modern context for the arguments in The Cultural Politics of Fur, as I felt that too much of the book was spent on minor details with little contemporary relevance. Fur is a passionately divisive subject, and while skimming discussion boards for this piece it became pretty obvious that the majority of advocates for either side are misinformed (“It is a myth that the fur industry kills live animals!”). An all-encompassing text like this could be very useful if it was brought up-to-date and made more accessible.

The Cultural Politics of Fur by Julia V. Emberley, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997

Reviewed by Jenny Knoll
Photos by Todd Bolton

Imagine this: you’re headed towards a bus stop on your daily commute to work. You notice a gigantic advertisement plastered on the side of the bus shelter - a young, thin, blonde woman wearing nothing but striped socks and a pair of underwear. It’s not even 8 :30 in the morning yet, and you’re sighing at the sight of a woman objectified and hyper-sexualized, all in the name of advertising. How cliché. The problem isn’t even necessarily the fact that she’s half-naked, it’s more that you’re sick of seeing the same kind of woman sexualized in these boring, uncreative ways. What’s even worse is that the fine print of the ad tells you that this is not, in fact, a professional model but rather an every day, average gal. Just like you! Ah, American Apparel strikes again, you tell yourself. As if this speaks to my life.

In my reality, all kinds of people are sexy and sexual: People who identify as queer, as disabled, as trans, as fat, and generally, as awesome. But in this world of American Apparel and various other “real beauty” ad campaigns making claims of representing the “average woman,” I never see myself or the kinds of people I know. It still doesn’t speak to my reality, and I’m sure it doesn’t speak to a lot of other people’s realities as well.

Luckily, if Holly Norris and Jes Sachse have anything to do with it, that reality might slowly be changing. This May, riders of the TTC in Toronto will bear witness to the critical sass created by photographer Holly Norris who teamed up with her then-roommate and poet/photographer/pornographer Jes Sachse to satirize the notorious American Apparel ad campaings in a witty, sex-positive way. Their spoofs of the ads, titled American Able, will be shown on television screens in subway stations across the city as part of the Contact Toronto What’s the Hype? Exhibition.

One of the most effective ways for feminists to constructively criticize the fashion industry and their problematic ad campaigns is with humour. Many of us have seen Sarah Haskins’ Target Women videos, which are probably the best known contemporary examples of criticizing the rampant stereotyping and sexism that goes on in advertising while simultaneously making you laugh your ass off. Holly and Jes’ thoughtful and witty takeup of American Apparel’s notorious ad campaigns is just another way to think about how (and which) women are presented and sold to us in the advertising industry.

To talk a bit about why a photo series like American Able is needed, I caught up with these old friends to ask them a few questions.

Tell me a bit about your goal with this project and how you came up with it.

Holly: Originally, it was just a project for a Women and Pop Culture class at Trent University in 2008. While working on the assignment, I saw a photograph on Facebook of the Fat Femme Mafia in a change room wearing tight, shiny American Apparel tracksuits. It got me thinking about how different bodies look in clothing, and how we only see one specific kind of body in advertisements. I had been living with Jes that summer, and we had started talking about disabilities and difference. She does a bit of modeling so I asked her if she could model for this little ad thing I was doing for class and it just grew from there.

Jes: Holly was taking Women and Pop Culture I think? We’d lived together during the summer of 2008 and had some shitty experiences that got us talking about disability politics. Holly was relatively new to critical dis theory, and would ask me lots of questions, which got us into great conversations. The shoot was Holly’s idea, but the actual process was collaborative. The second set was all my own clothing, much of which was American Apparel. The poses were all me, some of the ideas, and the general attitude was mine. But Holly is the genius behind the lens.

There are so many sexist ad campaigns out there. Why single out American Apparel?

Holly: First off, on their ads there are often little blurbs like “Sarah is a student in New York…”, so they are positioning their models as representative of ‘regular people.’ However, they all fit into a specific idea of what a “regular woman” is. More practically speaking, for me as a photographer, it is easier to spoof their advertisements because they have that notable style with on-location shoots, simple cotton basics (which is half of my closet anyway), and helvetica font. It is a lot easier to recreate their ads as there is no need for a studio or for high fashion.

Jes: God. American Apparel is sexy. I dunno about Holly but I love their style. Its andro and ‘basic’ and hipster. Lots of lyrca, lots of ‘your body as is’ type clothing. However, model and sales-clerk wise? Tall, skinny, white people. The usual. The fact that AA is hyper-sexual appeals to me. The fact that the lens isn’t really on an empowered body, is less appealing. Sexy sells. But why does sexy always seem to intersect with misogyny? Ultimately, AA is a popular brand of choice for hipsters, many of whom are educated and/or are familiar with the provocative nature of their ads. American Able doesn’t mock from the outside. It mocks from the inside. I like that.

What do you hope people will take away from the American Able series?

Holly: I’m really interested in where it will be seen. It is showing on digital screens that are typically ad space, and has the potential to make people do a double take and question what they are seeing and how it differs from a regular ad. I think the realization that it’s a spoof makes people question and critique why - why do they only ever see able-bodied people in fashion advertising? People with visible disabilities are rendered invisible by mass media, and I think the reactions to American Able really highlight that. Even when there are claims of ‘diversity’ it is usually really lacking, to say the least. One rarely sees people with disabilities in advertising, unless it’s in a group photo and then it often seems more tokenizing than anything else.

Jes: It’s Holly’s project, but personally? I hope people see these ads in the TTC, laugh, and put on something skin tight when they go home and stare at their bodies. It’s like an invitation to a healthy dose of vanity. Why does fashion necessarily have to give people complexes? I’d love to be a model. I love designers and fashion, it’s art on bodies. I guess I love modeling because I feel like I embody a piece of that stare in my own work. That “I see you lookin’ at me” stare. I know I don’t look like a stereotypical model, and I like my body, but I get stared at a lot, in a different way. So when I pose, I have the opportunity to engage with my voyeurs. Or act indifferent about their gaze. Or make them question the politics in their stare. Or seduce them. Or pierce them. It’s really fun.

The first thing I took away from the photos was a mischievous, sexy sense of humour. What do you think about the place of humour in criticizing media of an oppressive nature? Do you think it is more or less effective than, say, boycotts, or other more traditional activist approaches?

Holly: I don’t think it’s necessarily more or less effective, it’s simply a different venue for activism. I like it. The images won’t ask you to sign their petition or join them on the streets, but you can sit and look and develop your own thoughts and opinions. And then I hope it will inspire people to at the very least be more critical of the advertising they are usually bombarded with. Spoofs point out the problems with advertising that one might not otherwise identify. It’s a really interesting space. I really like looking at spoof advertisements; I love Adbusters and that sort of thing. We live in this culture where we are so bombarded by advertisements that it would be strange not to respond or react to it. I am so excited to be putting American Able in a space where we would otherwise be seeing corporate advertisements over and over again. I am hoping it will make people ask, “why am I not seeing ads like these? Why are bodies like Jes’s not seen in major ad campaigns?”

Jes: Humour is my life. On the surface, it’s easy to take me less seriously because of it, but humour also gets you in the door in a way that a rebellious placard never will (lamentably). Me boycotting AA is ridiculous. You show me a fashion line that rocks my disability politics. None of ‘em do! I’ll wear what I want to, because my body, like everything else, contradicts itself.

- Interview by Julia Caron. To hear more from Holly and Jes about American Able, stay posted on Julia’s personal blog à l’Allure Garçonnière.

A recent exhibition in Italy that includes several burqa-wearing Barbies has unleashed, of course, a wave of scandal, much of which is precisely the sort of ill-informed knee-jerk backlash about Islamic women that makes my skin crawl. Typical is Barbara Kay’s assertion, in the National Post, that these are “travesties of multiculturalism” that “make a mockery of disempowered women who have been stripped of all human dignity, women with no means of challenging their forced depersonalization.” OK, so fierce rhetoric. But let’s unpack a little, shall we?

The Barbies in question are part of a 500-piece exhibition of Eliana Lorena-dressed dolls at the Salone del Cinquecento in Florence, backed by Mattel. These one-off dolls will be displayed, then auctioned off by Sotheby’s on behalf of a charity called Rewrite the Future, which benefits children affected by war. In addition to a few fluorescent burqa-clad Barbies, we find geisha Barbies, shalwar khameez Barbies, chador Barbies, and what can only be described as slutty co-ed Barbies. In short, the collection runs the gamut of cheesy feminine stereotypes, by region. So far, I’d say we’re pretty firmly on standard Barbie territory.

Kay writes plaintively that, with this exhibition, “Barbie has shed her cultural innocence.” It seems to me a thundering irony to accuse the burqa of having suddenly rendered Barbie anti-feminist, given that the doll is based on a German hooker called Lilli and has a—shall we say—fraught history as a model for women’s self-images.

Furthermore, Kay critiques the exhibition for trivializing the plight of burqa-wearing women, a stance that I can certainly get behind. However, while she is sympathetic to those hidden women, I for one fail to see how casting any representation of them as ineluctably anti-feminist is going to help them gain exposure, nevermind political agency. If anything, the exhibition has forced the issue into the limelight, so that it becomes something we can mull over and discuss.

Enforced veiling—which is unquestionably sexist, offensive and demeaning—receives a lot of airtime as yet another shocking manifestation of the terrible ways that brown men treat brown women, to paraphrase Spivak. Veiling practices are systematically policed in Saudi Arabia, Iran and in Taliban-controlled territories, but elsewhere are mostly individual women’s choices, albeit ones framed by cultural habits and expectations—skipping the veil can invite unwelcome attention or even violence in places where most women cover. However, such discourses have been used to justify an ironic reversal in the West, where women in some countries (I’m lookin’ at you, Sarkozy) have been forbidden from voluntarily donning hijab or, more famously, the burqini to go about their business.

To me, this burqa Barbie “scandal” is indicative of a broader problem with how we talk about Muslim women in the West, where we start from the assumption that their cultural differences are a problem to be solved. Ultimately, I’m inclined to agree with Sadie’s Stein’s post on Jezebel, where she reminds that, “it’s a single doll. It’s not mass-produced. It’s presumably not intended for any children, Muslim or otherwise, and doesn’t seem to involve any more social commentary than Malibu Barbie does on Proposition 8.”

- Emily Raine

Nightwood is a stylish musical trio from Montreal, whose newest album, Carte Marina, is heavily inspired by all things nautical and dreamy. Amber, Jeremy, and Erin will be playing a free show at Toronto’s legendary Horseshoe Tavern on January 19, 2010. Here we talk to the girls of Nightwood about the importance of shopping local, band uniforms, and the best-dressed musicians of all time.

You’ve done some interesting alterations to garments in some of your videos. How do you feel these works fit in with your music?

Amber: The videos were fairly simple to make. We’d set up my laptop in a corner with a time-lapse application to record us while we were making stuff. It’s a bit magical to watch them afterward - we’re still pretty new to tailoring and sewing and so it’s like an extra high-five at the end of a project! We enjoy the creative control that comes with almost every aspect of being an independent band: designing album cover artwork, promoting ourselves - the whole bit. So same goes with our clothes! I must admit that a lot of why we ended up tailoring our clothes is that we can’t always afford to buy new ones- we really put almost all of our disposable income into the band and so tailoring, making, or thrifting our wardrobes is practical.

Erin: It would appear we’re somewhat obsessed with process! I tend to keep little NW mementos (set lists, scraps of paper with lyrics or song ideas, recordings of early versions of songs, etc.) and we even time-lapsed the entire making of our record, which Amber set to the song Bright Girls of Summer for the album’s first music video. I’ve found the process of making art to be artful in itself and am grateful for all the documentation!

What role, if any, does feminism play in your wardrobe choices?

Amber: Choosing what to wear so that I can do the things I want to do in my life can be considered feminist, I think. I really appreciate when independent designers add pockets to their creations in case I need carry stuff in them to pull a MacGyver move to get out of a tricky spot. In the past I used to confuse the reasons why I would dress up for a performance, for example, thinking I had to dress myself up to be more easy on the eyes of others. It’s exciting to think of stage clothes as being separate from my regular wardrobe and somehow an extension of the songs we play. I think that when I own that, I’m asserting myself as a human being and artist, and that’s pretty feminist.

Erin: Yep. Good one, Ambs! Except I find pockets in my purse to be more useful…!

Tell us a little about the process of your wardrobe selections.

Amber: I’ve recently purged a whole bunch of clothes from my closet and kept only the garments that I wear regularly, have sentimental value or are just awesome! This makes getting dressed way more fun and collage-like with all my materials spread out in front of me. Most of my stuff was thrifted sometime in the past ten years or was handed down to me from my mom or step-mother or claimed at one of the many clothing exchanges my buds have hosted. I got my sewing machine a few years ago and that’s been pretty revolutionary for me!

Erin: It’s gotta feel right. An outfit can feel right last Friday, but today it’s totally wrong. That’s why we must tour with a little variety, and why it’s totally acceptable to shake out yesterday’s outfit, disregard the smell and pull it back on.

How do outfit changes affect your live performances?

Amber: Outfit changes definitely help me mentally prepare for the stage. After sitting in the back of the vehicle for hours, schlepping gear into the venue and then soundchecking, it’s a lovely way to transition into a performance. I like to wear dark tights, little black leather boots and short vintage or vintage-inspired dresses on stage with red lipstick and my hair pinned to the side…sort of a Jane Austen-meets-riot grrrl-meets-”Gothic Lolita” thing. I like looking ultra feminine and playing up my (somewhat) small stature which makes it so much more fun to make heavy guitar sounds and belt out weirdo mystical lyrics! I definitely think that playing music with other people is profoundly human and it’s a privilege to share that with others - so dressing up for a performance (for me) is also a sign of respect for those who show up to a rock venue late at night in the middle of January.

Erin: Sometimes I leave the outfit I’ve planned in the car and don’t change from soundcheck to performance and on nights like these that’s just how I’m most at ease. But other times there is definitely something freeing in changing before a show and allowing yourself to shed a bit of your everyday identity.

On your current tour, are you doing anything interesting with clothing to match the themes of your new album, Carta Marina?

Amber: We’re not sure! We’re considering dressing up as sailors to go with our watery, ocean-y, stormy record and I am harboring not-so-secret fantasies of shouting out “swab the decks,” “beer! starboard!” and the like. But we’ll see. A lot of the lyrics on Carta Marina are dream-inspired as well so I also kind of want to dress up in this crazy, lizard-y sequin dress with lots of black eye-liner to play the part of a scaly mystic! Ha!

Erin: I’m not trying to match the album’s theme so much as I am trying to match Amber’s enthusiasm! We usually call each other before shows to make sure our outfits make sense together, like we all used to in fifth grade. We dress differently and our tastes differ, but I think our looks compliment each other somehow. I like when Amber shops for me- she can get me to try on stuff I wouldn’t dream of pulling off the rack but that winds up looking pretty fabulous on!

Bands used to frequently dress in coordinating outfits, but the practice is much less common now. What do you think about uniforms vs. street clothes in performance?

Amber: I think that it’s such a different world in pop music nowadays - a performer’s wardrobe can signal so many different things: who is backing them financially, which demographic they’re trying to target, whether they want to appear styled or unstyled. Street clothes and street style is so easily coopted by different industries including the music industry that I sometimes think of that kind of thing as a type of uniform, for example, “singer song-writer garb.” So it’s complicated. However, I do appreciate when performers make an effort with their appearance, especially folks whose music and performance is about spectacle, for example Lady Gaga, Gwar and M.I.A. It’s just fun! On the indie level (touring bands in Canada), I also appreciate it when folks have fun with their appearance and make an effort to entertain, for example folks like Gobble Gobble or tUnE-yArDs.

Erin: I wouldn’t oppose a uniform!

Do you think shopping locally is important?

Amber: Montreal is such an amazingly creative place - a bustling island city! - with so much local talent that I don’t feel like I need to look elsewhere for shopping. Also, we’re all a bunch of artists so supporting one another across disciplines just makes sense - it’s about creative solidarity.

Erin: We love shopping at Lustre for show outfits & accessories. The designer Yasmine Wasfy is really friendly and is always open to altering stuff for us on short notice! Angie Johnson’s Norwegian Wood designs are staples on our blog and I even got to wear one of Angie’s Elastic Harnesses in some of our recent press photos! Good friend and neighbour Lara Kaluza is a professional thrifter and has started selling her own designs as well. We’ve been thrift shopping with this lady and we envy her skills! We’re also big fans of complexgeometries!

Top ten best-dressed musicians, from past or present?

Marianne Faithfull
Natasha Kahn (Bat For Lashes)
David Bowie
Kazu Makino (Blonde Redhead)
M.I.A.
Betty Davis
Shirley Manson
PJ Harvey
Jimi Hendrix
Stevie Nicks

- Interview by Stephanie Fereiro
- Photography by Mike Rollo and Marilis Cardinal