Bikini Ideology
A Guardian reader asks,
Do some women really suffer angst over such mind numbing trivia, or were you just pressured to write a piece on this subject?
The piece in question, by the chronically unhappy Laurie Penny, concerns the socio-political ramifications of ladies’ swimsuits. Specifically, the bikini. Ms Penny’s approach to this crushing social issue is a tad presumptuous and long on assertion. Among its gems is this:
The bikini itself has a sinister semiotic history.
See, you just don’t get that kind of thing in the Times.
Those with a stake in the mythology of the garment now focus on its namesake island as a tropical paradise, but bikini ideology is poisoned with the cultural fallout of the mid-20th century in more ways than one.
Bikini “mythology” is something of a stretch and the word “marketing” might have been less grandiose. But bikini ideology? A whole ideology? Such a thing exists? Alas, Ms Penny is much too rushed to elaborate, beyond stating her belief that,
Wearing a bikini is no longer associated with pleasure and daring, but with anxiety, dieting rituals and joyless physical performance… The bikini body is not supposed to be naturally occurring: it is a quasi-religious state of myth and artifice to which only the truly virtuous can aspire.
Curse those Special K adverts. Is there nothing they can’t ruin? Thankfully, there’s time for plenty of earnest disapproval:
This summer, women of all ages are once more being exhorted to get the perfect “bikini body” by every tabloid, gossip circular and glossy magazine. Singer Katy Perry and heiresses the Kardashian sisters are among this week’s “best bikini body” celebrities, and ordinary women everywhere are trying to emulate their fairytale lifestyles by purchasing a particular cellulite-busting body scrub or embarking on a bizarre starvation diet.
I somehow doubt that Guardian readers spend too much time following the exhortations and “cultural edicts” of Grazia or Heat magazine, as if they could hold the secret to eternal contentedness. Nor, I should think, does Ms Penny or her elevated colleagues. Perhaps the effect is limited to those ordinary women, who, one might suppose, have no minds of their own to make choices of their own, and who exist as mere flotsam on a sea of social pressures.
I, for one, will happily confess I have no idea who Katy Perry is or what her views on beachwear are, nor could I reliably identify any of the Kardashian sisters. Shockingly, I have zero interest in their “fairytale lifestyles” or preferred tanning products. Just as I remain unpreoccupied by fragrance adverts featuring this season’s favoured actor or male model, and where the message seems to be “don’t worry, you won’t smell any gayer than I do.” And here’s the thing. It’s remarkably easy not to fret about the marketing of aftershave or “cellulite-busting body scrub.” Really, it is.
I’m reminded of Guardian’s Tanya Gold, whose difficulties with alcoholism, overeating and tobacco were blamed on glossy magazines, pubic waxing and “society’s constant assault on female self-esteem.” Rather than on, say, her own choices and incontinence. At no point did Ms Gold – a grown woman – pause to ask why it is she chooses to care about trivia and be so influenced by it.
Ms Penny, whose insights have been noted here before, describes herself, at length, as “a socialist, feminist, deviant, reprobate, queer, journalist, aspiring author, freelance copywriter and sometime blogger.” One who “lives with toast-eating pagans in a little house somewhere in London, smoking and drinking and plotting to subtly re-arrange the world to suit her ideals.” When not writing about her own fascinating self, or her mental health issues and how it’s “getting harder to stay angry,” Ms Penny writes for the communist newspaper Morning Star, where she rails against the “encoding of ancient patriarchal assumptions into the economic and social structure of imperial capitalism.”
Update:
Peter Risdon notes that while Ms Penny scorns the bikini as having become a vehicle for neurosis, inadequacy and woe, she celebrates the padded bikini bra for 7-year-old girls, who are, we’re told, “negotiating the complex world of adult sexuality.”
She sounds as nutty as Bidisha. It’s hard to tell them apart. Does the Guardian buy them in bulk?
Her living arrangements have been updated, if you revisit her blog. Needless to say, they remain delightfully quirky.
“Imperial capitalism is built on the docile bodies of women.”
Wow. She just churns this stuff out –it’s almost like she’s reading it from a book written by an idiot.
Whatever you do, don’t let nutty Laurie visit the Jersey Shore, as I did last weekend. There is most definitely a “bikini ideology” there, where the rule is: no matter how weird, or aged, your body, stuff it into a bikini. Big girls, small girls, short girls, tall girls, wide or narrow, fat or thin – all wearing the smallest bikinis possible. Some looked lovely, and some looked overstuffed, but they all seemed to be having a good time.
And at the end of the day, who cares? If you’re at a locale where bathing suits are acceptable, it really doesn’t matter what you have on. There’s no semiotics or deeper meaning there. It’s not a university campus or the boardroom. You are at THE SHORE. Anything goes. Perhaps it’s the part about all those girls seeming to have a good time that Laurie really can’t stand.
There are bikinis, and then there are bikinis. Padded ones for pubescent girls are good:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/15/primark-padded-bikinis-mumsnet-sexuality
mlrosty,
“It’s hard to tell them apart.”
Well, both are ostentatiously “radical” children of privilege who imagine themselves as being daringly at odds with the establishment, rather than comical features of it. And both seem prone to unargued assertion and absurd hyperbole. On the one hand, there’s Bidisha’s discovery of “cultural femicide” – a dastardly patriarchal plot whose goal is “the erasure of women from public life.” On the other, you’ve got Ms Penny’s belief that “the planet is boiling; the rivers are drying up; the human race may very well be about to tear itself apart.” I couldn’t say which is more entertaining.
Kimberly,
“You are at THE SHORE. Anything goes.”
Amen to that. It’s what the shore is for.
This post would’ve been perfect had you provided illustrations.
Just sayin’
Incidentally, the link I put in my first comment might contain the roots of Ms Penny’s feminism:
“I would have killed for a padded bra when I was in primary school, if only to give an extra boost to the wodges of toilet roll I had already begun to stuff into my crop-top. Like many girls, I was teased mercilessly for my flat chest by boys with undescended testicles who had already discovered that the best way to torture their female classmates was to mock us for not being sexy enough.”
If the boys had fancied her more, who knows what might have happened.
Peter,
Like Bidisha, she does tend to blur the customary boundaries between argument, fantasy and personal psychodrama. One might compare Ms Penny’s article above with Bidisha’s claim that the “sexualisation” of the Olympics has “brutalising” and “devastating” effects on the male psyche:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/olympics2008.gender
It is strange, though, just how often Guardian contributors insinuate that other people – people who don’t read the Guardian – are mere dupes of social pressure and dastardly advertisers. Or particularly toned pole-vaulters. And the more they bemoan this alleged cultural oppression, the more they seem to assume that no-one but themselves, or people like themselves, could possibly escape its influence. It seems to me that not being oppressed by shampoo commercials and celebrity tattle rags is remarkably easy.
Peter,
“the link I put in my first comment might contain the roots of Ms Penny’s feminism”
I don’t even think it’s feminism. She just wants to be noticed. That’s why she says it’s cool for 7 year olds to look like they’ve got tits. It’s edgy and radical!
On the other hand, I think I’ve figured out the answer to Bidisha’s dating woes. “Hard-faced hack seeks similar” indeed. Bidisha and Penny would make an adorable soft-butch couple. I wouldn’t want to be within earshot of the happy pair in a restaurant, but still.
“My mental health has taken a turn for the worse. I’m struggling to care. I’m struggling to stay angry. That terrifies me more than anything… The centre-right have taken back my country and imposed dazzlingly punitive cuts to welfare and public services. Across the pond, the American right are winning the fight for ideological control of the world’s only superpower. The planet is boiling; the rivers are drying up; the human race may very well be about to tear itself apart… That’s what clinical depression does, you see. It takes away your anger, piece by piece… When terrible things happen – like a coalition government closing down your country piece by piece, slamming the door on the young, the poor, the sick, immigrants, women – you cease to really believe that anything can be done.”
http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2010/06/public-service-announcement-another.html
Mustn’t laugh…
Ah, an elected government that’s insufficiently leftwing. The End Times must be upon us.
“My entire friendship group left London at once.”
Hmmm. Coincidence, or plan?
Ouch! I see Andrea hasn’t lost her touch…
;^)
No, as Karen suggests, we must not laugh. That sort of over-the-top delusional thinking is a clear sign of genuine mental health issues. Although Penny may be enjoying the attention, she should seek professional help.
Being laughed at is the only way she’ll learn.
“Singer Katy Perry and heiresses the Kardashian sisters are among this week’s ‘best bikini body’ celebrities, and ordinary women everywhere are trying to emulate their fairytale lifestyles by purchasing a particular cellulite-busting body scrub or embarking on a bizarre starvation diet.”
And yet, embarking on a bizarre diet and claiming it’s for the Religion of Green would probably be considered highly virtuous by the Guardian crowd.
great comment someone left at that Penny Red blog
———————————————————————————–
Anonymous said…
Idea for a post #1: Why do you feel it important to be angry all the time?
Idea for a post #2: Why do you always presume anger on the part of left wingers is always righteous and well-meaning, whereas the anger of the right is a mere manifestation of their entrenched nastiness?
Your fatigue could be some trace of your rational mind stepping in to prevent the rest of your brain collapsing under the weight of the cognitive dissonance you carry with the grace of an Anvil.
Give it a rest for a bit. Don’t watch TV. Don’t read the news, anywhere.
Making a living out of being perpetually outraged on behalf of some notional ‘other’ was always going to be a tough gig, irrespective of how uber-trendy that other is perceived to be.
———————————————————————————–
http://tinyurl.com/36yzq8k
It astonishes me how much ripe, raw, free inspiration The Guardian provides for bloggers, week after week. I hope you Brits appreciate this seemingly endless resource.
davydai nikolenko,
“Idea for a post #1: Why do you feel it important to be angry all the time?”
Quite. Though I suspect it may work the other way around. Pretending to be angry makes some people feel important all the time.
I think the basic pattern goes something like this. First learn to fixate on an unending series of personal issues and minor irritations, then inflate them to sociological scale as if they illustrated some heinous and systemic persecution, and then rail against the inflated version, thus framing oneself as righteously indignant, terribly radical and practically heroic.
Rather than, say, narcissistic and incontinent.
Someone else who revels in hate and narcissistic authoritarianism.
http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/21/liberal-journalists-suggest-government-shut-down-fox-news/
AC1,
I seem to remember Professor Juan Cole being aghast that Fox News should be *permitted* to exist. He said, “It is a highly ideological, explicitly ideological operation, and it is polluting the information environment…”
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2008/09/projection.html
Which, coming from Juan Cole, is rather funny.
“inflate them to sociological scale as if they illustrated some heinous and systemic persecution, and then rail against the inflated version, thus framing oneself as righteously indignant”
You either admire and emulate success and beauty in others or you hate it jealously.
The people in the latter camp have undoubtedly been miserable since prehistory. It’s just our bad luck that they came up with a raft of political ideologies to explain their dyspepsia.
“My mental health has taken a turn for the worse. I’m struggling to care. I’m struggling to stay angry.”
Talk about self-absorption. She even looks like a moody teenager.
“Talk about self-absorption.”
I suspect Ms Penny finds herself more compelling than her arguments. Which may explain why so many of her articles feature contradictory claims:
http://timworstall.com/2010/07/15/laurie-penny-is-confused/
Or simply beg the question…
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2008/06/hyper-indeed.html
Ms Penny’s default approach is to assert things vehemently, piling them high, with only the most fleeting and reluctant reference to reality. Which is how, for instance, we arrive at her conviction that football is nothing more than “commodified nationalism” played by “misogynist jocks” indulging in “organised sadism.” Or her claim that “US state governments compete to think up ever more cruel and unusual ways to punish women for sexual self-determination.” It’s all so overwrought, dogmatic and suspiciously humourless.
She likes to rail against things, especially things that aren’t entirely clear but are somehow taken as self-evident. She rails against the Conservative Party (or “hordes of drooling poshos”) and its “brutally intolerant moral agenda,” the details of which are somewhat vague. She rails against “the bruised superstructure of patriarchal capitalist control,” the particulars of which are – again – unspecified and mysterious. She rails against anti-war protestors “not being heard,” as if being heard must entail being agreed with and obeyed. Ours, she says, is a world “on fire.” That’s basically what she does. Or that’s what she does when not writing about herself and her unending personal and political miseries. For Ms Penny everything is political, no matter how small, self-indulgent or contrived. And the news is always bad.
Actually, the word “conviction” may be misleading. I’m not convinced she actually holds, or originates, many of the views she airs. Given the inconsistency, perversity and lack of evidence or logic, I suspect much of it is rhetorical drama and pretence. As Anna pointed out, so much of what Ms Penny writes sounds like a regurgitation of someone else’s assumptions. Perhaps these are the kinds of views she feels a radical person ought to have. Or ought to seem to have. And blimey, how radical is that?
“She rails against anti-war protestors “not being heard,” as if being heard must entail being agreed with and obeyed.”
This is why I read this blog. ;D
“Perhaps these are the kinds of views she feels a radical person ought to have. Or ought to seem to have. And blimey, how radical is that? ”
Rebel Without A Cause, anyone? Or better yet, The Wild One. “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?” “Waddaya got?”. Sit quietly through 60 years of idiocy proclaimed as role-model “cool”, well, Waddaya expect?
David, I’m surprised you have no idea who Katy Perry is and the extent of her talents. Photographing her talents seem to keep at least a couple of paparazzi from succumbing to the bruising capitalist system.
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=77Z&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&q=katy%20perry%2Bbikini&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1187&bih=647
Blimey. That’s an awful lot to take in before lunch.
Well, yes. I suppose one could indulge one’s neurotic dysmorphia, or one could just buy a one- or two-piece swimsuit with a blousy top.
http://www.womanwithin.com/Plus-Size-two-piece-swimsuits.aspx?DeptId=9293
Designed for non-perfect female forms and stuff and look perfectly fine.
But coping with reality is not nearly as much fun as getting paid to whinge incessantly, is it?