Women Occupying Space vs. Gilpin Faust

[purejuice]

I'm slowly uploading a bunch of pictures of courageous women who inhabit their space, and thinking about why Drew Gilpin Faust's appearance so horrifies me. Actually, it's Harvard choosing somebody who presents herself that way that really makes me feel bad.

In the meantime, please consider susanstinson's truly open-hearted vale to Heather McAllister, and look at this pic, by Leonard Nimoy, of women in their space.





Then there are these women in astronomy, who present themselves in every style from Kim Novak to Ernest Borgnine to QE2, all presentations chosen by them, and all look as if there's a light on inside, like you'd actually like to have a mai tai and some pork rinds with them. They look, in short, like they're having fun with their brains. And like they have one.
http://161.58.115.79/education/resources/womenast_bib02.html


Astronomer France Cordova

As opposed to the anorectic decades you'd endure in one minute with those Harvard clones. Who I know for a fact give out unpeeled broken chunks of organic carrots for Halloween. And pallid-to-necrotic-to-toxic scholarship.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

wow, i'd feel at home in that circle of ladies! nice. :)

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

aren't they pretty?

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

i see from the name of the graphic that that's fragonard's Bathers, but it looks more like they're erupting in a geyser. interesting imagery. *g* nice plump rump on the one babe with her back to us, too. whee!

[minniethemoocha.livejournal.com]

When you get a hot spring full of fat ladies, there is going to be lots of splashing
:-)

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

I think I've gotten so used to seeing only porn models w/o clothes that I'd forgotten that fat people have naked skin underneath too! And that they can take off their clothes. And be perfectly naked.

I'm reminded.

You know, in Eskimo culture, I'd be the BOMB. Fat chicks rule in the Arctic.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

everywhere.
actually it's just women who occupy space who rule, and there's different ways of doing it.

[aulaitcru.livejournal.com]

I have been reading with great interest your reaction to DGF and other's reactions to yours.

When I first heard of her appointment I didn't think much one way or another beyond my inital reaction of "Yay a woman leading Harvard." After reading what you had to say and after familiarizing myself with her resume and CV, it started to make sense. She's a late 60s undergraduate alum of a women's college. She looks just like what almost every other female academic from that period looks like. She looks like many of my professors at BMC - serious, asexual, boring. Trying hard to prove that the way they look and how they dresse doesn't matter. Neutral to the extreme.

I see this in a lot of female academics - that singular lack of style, panache, sexuality. Trying too hard to make it in a "man's" world. Even professors at women's colleges (where you think they'd feel more comfortable) do it. It's blah.

The blahness and neutrality is something I struggle with in myself. My mother is an indifferent dresser. Style was not emphasized in my upbringing. And as a result it's something I feel awkward about. I know that I dress dully. I don't want to and it's something I want to change. And I have be actively working on it. Taking challenges, forcing myself out of my comfortable box and shoes. I don't want to end up looking like those women or like my mother (bless her). My MIL is my current inspiration - is it her NY upbringing, her Jewishness? She's stylish and cosmopolitan in a way that I aspire to be. Someday.

Anyway, I think you're absolutely right in your criticism of DGF's physical appearance (I can't speak to her academics). She was chosen for the job in great part because she's not threatening. She looks sufficiently manly that the men who still run Harvard won't feel threatened.

One of my favorite professors (http://www.brynmawr.edu/german/faculty.htm#seyhan) at Bryn Mawr would never have been hired because she doesn't look the part. She has style and sex and brains. Way too scary. (Not that she'd ever want the job.)

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

thank you for another pic showing a human being who is an academic.
i'm not sure i'm saying we need to gussy up. for example, i noticed last year that my hang around the house and hood costume was gym clothes, and as hip as mine are (?) that's not...respectful. and for a woman of my age it's kind of ludicrous -- i'm sorry to say i think all us desperate boomers (whose gym injuries fill the ante rooms of my orthopedist, who has like the rest of us, his peers, has taken to blow drying and dying his thinning hair and wearing bicycle pants and bicycling) look stupid and vain in gym clothes, even if what we're going for is ambulatory or no heart disease.

aaaaaaaaaaaanyway, we all look shitty and are allowed to, and should be allowed to be invisible/badly dressed around the house/hood.

but i decided to look better hanging out in the hood (a little more polished, nicer cheap shoes and leggings, and better $14 jackets). i try to remember to wear blush and lipstick, which is getting to be a public service, even if i only actually comb my hair once every three months. (i wash it every couple of days).

but if i am to represent women at harvard, i would think very carefully about the messages i wanted every single garment and jewel and strand of hair to convey. since they're all symbolic, like the queen's hats, of various symbols of sexuality and/or authority.

i think i'd wind up wearing pretty much what i wear now -- "good" t shirt, soft black pull on pants or neutral flat fronts, and jacket of the season. i'd flirt with good low heeled sexy shoes and stockings. i'd probably wear a really good watch (as i don't now) as my status marker. really good pearl studs. a perfect hair cut (not a do) with movement. manicure (which i never have now). and probably a girly bag, though i hate those $2500 logo ones, i need bitch cred. though i'd prefer to carry like an inner tube bag made by grameen bank women and a messenger bag, which i do anyway. i'd have better haircuts shoes and nails, in a word, really expensive dermatology, and no jewelry but some rilly rilly good pink pearls. big ones.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

p.s. i have my cambridge spies working on a dgf dossier -- first reports congratulate me on my nose for shit and tell me she's a fraud. watch this space.

[angiereedgarner.livejournal.com]

Looking forward and watching close.

I think it is a priv to be able to look like shit.

[minniethemoocha.livejournal.com]

Aha! When you mentioned professors and BMC, I immediately thought of Seyhan! I loved her style. Hot.

confidence

[like-a-mirror.livejournal.com]

It takes a great deal of confidence to be naked and dancing, and that picture truly made me want to be shed clothes and dance with head held high and sing at the top of my lungs that I am beautiful because I am here thank you!

Re: confidence

[viedma.livejournal.com]

It also takes a great deal of confidence to keep your clothes on.

Re: confidence

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

to suit up is the hardest thing i know.

Re: confidence

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

point those toes.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

It's good to read this and the comments, and see Heather's work in the world moving forward this morning. Both the Nimoy, with her dancing there, and the Fragonard are so apt.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

can you tell us which of the bacchantes is she?

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

She, in all her tough beauty, is at 9 o'clock if the circle is a clock face.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

thanks, and ...the circle is unbroken.
xxx