Femininity (33 page)

Life
magazine’s five pictorial features on Veronica Lake ran in the issues of March 3,
1941; April 14, 1941; Nov. 24, 1941 (the statistics celebrating her hair); March 8,
1943 (Veronica puts up her hair as a wartime safety measure); and May 17, 1943. Further
information on Lake from Veronica Lake with Donald Bain,
Veronica,
New York: Bantam Books, 1972.

Scene between Hagar, Reba and Pilate from Toni Morrison, Song
of Solomon,
New York: Knopf, 1977.

“today i’ma be a white girl” is from the play
Spell
# 7, by Ntozake Shange, 1979.

Roman hairdressing customs from Jerome Carcopino,
Daily Life in Ancient Rome,
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940.

Edith Wharton’s observation on women and hair is from Edith Wharton, “The Touchstone”
(1900),
Madame de Treymes and Others,
New York: Scribner’s, 1970.

Bernard Rudofsky,
Are Clothes Modern?,
Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1947.

Cecil Willett Cunnington and Phillis Cunnington,
Handbook of English Costume in the Sixteenth Century,
London: Faber and Faber, 1970;—,
Handbook of English Costume in the Seventeenth Century,
London: Faber and Faber, 1966;—,
Handbook of English Costume in the Eighteenth Century,
London: Faber and Faber, 1957;—,
Handbook of English Costume in the Nineteenth Century,
London: Faber and Faber, 1959.

Quentin Bell,
On Human Finery,
New York: Schocken Books, 1976.

Ernestine Carter,
20
^th
Century Fashion,
London: Eyre Methuen, 1975.

Jane Dorner,
Fashion in the Twenties and Thirties,
London: Ian Allan, 1973.

Thorstein Veblen,
The Theory of the Leisure Class
(1899), New York: Random House Modern Library edition, 1934.

Jane Trahey, ed.,
Harper’s Bazaar: 100 Years of the American Female,
New York: Random House, 1967.

James Laver,
The Concise History of Costume and Fashion,
New York: Abrams, 1969.

Biblical injunction concerning sex-distinctive garments: Deuteronomy 22:5.

A documentary history of Sumptuary Laws may be found in Frances Elizabeth Baldwin,
Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1926.

To tell the history of the suffragists and the Bloomer costume, I relied on the following
sources: Ida Husted Harper,
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony
(3 vols.), Indianapolis: The Hollenbeck Press, 1899, Vol. 1, pp. 112–117; Theodore
Stanton and Harriet Stanton Blatch, eds.,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, As Revealed in Her Letters, Diary and Reminiscences
(2 vols.), New York: Harper, 1922, Vol. 1, pp. 200–204; Vol. 2, pp. 32–50, 339; Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds.,
History of Woman Suffrage,
Rochester: Susan B. Anthony, publisher, 1881, Vol. 1, pp. 470–1, 836–844; Amelia
Bloomer, ed.,
The Lily,
a journal published during the 1850s in Seneca Falls, New York. Much of this documentary
material may be found in Aileen S. Kraditor, ed.,
Up from the Pedestal,
New York: Quadrangle, 1968.

For a short account of the later fortunes of the rational dress, written in the “improved”
spelling, see Mary E. Tillotson,
History ov the First
Thirty-Five Years ov the Science Costume Movement in the United States ov America,
Vineland, N.J., 1885.

The story of the colliery workers of Lancashire and Wigan, with pictures, is told
in Michael Hiley,
“Victorian Working Women,
Boston: David R. Godine, 1979.

For my reflections on women who have worn men’s clothes, the following books were
helpful: Andrew Lang,
The Maid of France,
London: Longmans, Green, 1908 (Joan of Arc); Joseph Barry,
Infamous Woman: The Life of George Sand,
New York: Doubleday, 1977; Theodore Stanton, ed.,
Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur,
New York: Hacker Art Books, 1976; Jane Cannary Hickok,
Calamity Jane’s Letters to Her Daughter
(1877–1902), Berkeley: Shameless Hussy Press, 1976; Frances Anne Kemble,
Records of a Later Life,
New York: H. Holt, 1884; Robert Phelps,
Belles Saisons, a Colette Scrapbook,
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978; Nigel Nicolson,
Portrait of a Marriage,
London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973 (V. Sackville-West); Meryle Secrest,
Between Me and Life,
New York: Doubleday, 1974 (Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney
et al.);
Elizabeth Evans,
Weathering the Storm,
New York: Scribner’s, 1975 (Deborah Sampson Gannett).

Virginia Woolf’s autobiographical comments on dressing: “A Sketch of the Past” in
Virginia Woolf,
Moments of Being,
ed. by Jeanne Schulkind, New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.

Denunciations of women for indulging in fashion as a sign of pride, ambition and whoredom
may be found in Isaiah 3 and in Tertullian,
On the Apparel of Women
(A.D. 202).

Voice Changes In Puberty: Herant Katchadourian,
The Biology of Adolescence,
San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1977; James M. Tanner, M.D., “Growth and Endocrinology
of the Adolescent,” in Lytt I. Gardner, ed.,
Endocrine and Genetic Diseases of Childhood,
Philadelphia & London: W.B. Saunders, 1969.

Transsexual voice changes: Richard Green and John Money, eds.,
Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1969, 1975.

Pitch and range: Dennis Fry,
Homo Loquens: Man as a Talking Animal,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977;—,
The Physics of Speech,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979; Dorothy Uris, A Woman’s
Voice,
New York: Stein and Day, 1975.

The sexually dimorphic brain: Literature in this field is proliferating. One helpful
review article is Jerre Levy, “Sex and the Brain,”
The Sciences,
March 1981. The comprehensive text is Robert W. Goy and Bruce S. McEwen,
Sexual Differentiation of the Brain,
The MIT Press, 1980. The most extensive compilation of sex differences in performance,
which the authors do not claim are innate, remains Eleanor Emmons
Maccoby and Carol Nagy Jacklin,
The Psychology of Sex Differences,
Stanford University Press, 1974.

Shakespeare’s line is from King
Lear.

Rousseau’s theories of feminine education may be found in Jean Jacques Rousseau,
Emilius; or, A Treatise of Education
(1762), translated from the French, Edinburgh: A. Donalson, 1768 (3 vols.), Vol.
3. Wollstonecraft’s attack on Rousseau appears in Mary Wollstonecraft, A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(1792), New York: W.W. Norton, 1967. Kant’s definition of the feminine characteristics
and his theories on education are in Immanuel Kant,
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime
(1763), translated from the German by John T. Goldthwait, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1960, Section III.

Dorothy Parker said, “Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses,” “News Item,”
Enough Rope,
New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926.

Victorian consternation over education’s effect on the uterus is documented in John
S. Haller, Jr. and Robin M. Haller,
The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America,
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974.

Milton’s saying and his biographer’s defense are in William Riley Parker,
Milton,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968, Vol. 1.

An essay on the exemption of Orthodox Jewish women from synagogue prayer was written
by Cynthia Ozick,
Lilith
No. 6, 1979.

Paul’s command to silence in church is in
Corinthians
I, 14:34.

A discussion of the active role of women in the early Christian church may be found
in Rosemary Radford Reuther, ed.,
Religion and Sexism,
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974; and in Rosemary Reuther and Eleanor McLaughlin,
eds.,
Women of Spirit,
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979. Tyndale’s fight with Thomas More and
The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry
are reported in G.G. Coulton,
Medieval Panorama,
New York: Macmillan, 1946.

The common scold is defined in
Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England,
Book 4, Chap. 13.

Ducking stools and branks: Alice Morse Earle,
Curious Punishments
o
f Bygone Days,
Chicago: Herbert A. Stone, 1896;—,
Colonial Dames and Good Wives,
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1895; Carl Holliday, Woman’s
Life in Colonial Days,
Boston: Comhill, 1922.

Grammatical gender: William J. Entwistle,
Aspects of Language,
London: Faber and Faber, 1953; Otto Jespersen,
The Philosophy of Grammar,
London: Allen and Unwin, 1924; Willem Graff,
Language and Languages,
New York: Russell and Russell, 1964; Herman Paul,
Principles of the History of Language,
trans, from the German, College Park, Md.: McGrath, 1970.

Maxine Hong Kingston’s invention of an American-feminine speaking personality is from
Maxine Hong Kingston,
The Woman Warrior,
New York: Knopf, 1976.

Speaking in feminine: Barrie Thome and Nancy Henley, eds., Language
and Sex: Difference and Dominance,
Rowley, Mass.: Newbury
House, 1975 (contains key articles by Thome, Henley, Chens Kramerae, Ruth M. Brend
and Jacqueline Sachs); Nancy M. Henley,
Body Politics: Power, Sex and Nonverbal Communication,
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1977; Mary Ritchie Key,
Male/Female Language,
Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1975; Robin Lakoff,
Language and Woman’s Place,
New York: Harper Colophon, 1975; Sally McConnell-Ginet, “Intonation in a Man’s World,”
Signs,
Spring 1978; Pamela M. Fishman, “Interaction: The Work Women Do,”
Social Problems,
April 1978; George Steiner,
After Babel,
London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Colorblindness: Curt Stern,
Principles of Human Genetics,
San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1973.

Barbara Howar’s advice to Luci Baines Johnson may be found in Barbara Howar,
Laughing All the Way,
New York: Stein and Day, 1973.

The Great Call of the gibbon: Joe T. Marshall, Jr. and Elsie R. Marshall, “Gibbons
and Their Territorial Songs,”
Science
(Vol. 193, No. 4249), July 16, 1976.

Expletives: Lee Ann Bailey and Lenora A. Timm, “More on Women’s—and Men’s Expletives,”
Anthropological Linguistics
(Vol. 18, No. 9), Dec. 1976.

Criticism of Margaret Thatcher’s voice appeared in
Newsweek,
May 14, 1979, and in
The New York Times,
March 6, 1981 (Op Ed piece).

The use of
kana
by Lady Murasaki and Sei Shonagon is discussed in Ivan Morris,
The World of the Shining Prince,
New York: Knopf, 1964.

Writing in Yiddish for women and unlearned men is discussed in Mark Zborowski and
Elizabeth Herzog,
Life Is with People: The Culture of the Shtetl,
New York: Schocken, 1962.

Virginia Woolf on feminine writing: Virginia Woolf, A
Room of One’s Own
(1929), and “A Sketch of the Past” in Virginia Woolf,
Moments of Being,
ed. by Jeanne Schulkind, New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.

Rachel Brownstein’s comment on Jane Austen is in Rachel M. Brownstein,
Becoming a Heroine,
New York: The Viking Press, 1982.

The university study gauging reader response to a piece of writing is reported in
Mary Ritchie Key,
Male/Female Language, op. cit.

Study of one hundred contemporary authors: Mary Hiatt,
The Way Women Write,
New York: Teachers College Press, 1977.

Southey’s letter to Charlotte Bronte is quoted in Margot Peters,
Unquiet Soul: A Biography of Charlotte Bronte,
New York: Doubleday, 1975.

Thomas B. Fitzpatrick, M.D.
et al., Dermatology in General Medicine,
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.

Fenja Gunn,
The Artificial Face: A History of Cosmetics,
London: David & Charles, 1973.

Neville Williams,
Powder and Paint,
London: Longmans, Green, 1957.

Wendy Cooper,
Hair: Sex, Society, Symbolism,
New York: Stein and Day, 1971.

Richard Corson,
Fashions in Makeup,
New York: Universe, 1972.

Report on four-year study of skin disease in the United States: Marie-Louise Johnson,
M.D. and Robert S. Stern, M.D., “Prevalence and Ecology of Skin Disorders” in Fitzpatrick,
Dermatology, op. cit.

Japanese ideal of the white powdered face: Ivan Morris,
The World of the Shining Prince,
New York: Knopf, 1964.

Michele Wallace’s observations are in Michele Wallace,
Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman,
New York: Dial Press, 1979.

Elizabeth Bennet’s summer tan is a subject of discussion in Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice
(London, 1813).

Acne, its greater prevalence in men, and the calming effects of estrogen: John S.
Strauss, M.D., “Sebaceous Glands” in Fitzpatrick,
Dermatology, op. cit.

Effects of pregnancy: Robert B. Scoggins, M.D., “Skin Changes and Diseases in Pregnancy”
in Fitzpatrick,
Dermatology, op. cit.

Her mental anguish at Oxford and her fear of growing a beard is recorded by Vera Brittain,
Testament of Youth
(London, 1933), U.SA.: Wideview Books, 1980.

Beard and body hair, follicles, comparative growth by race and sex: James B. Hamilton,
“Age, Sex, and Genetic Factors in the Regulation of Hair Growth in Man: A Comparison
of Caucasian and Japanese Populations,” in Montagna and Ellis, eds.,
The Biology of Hair Growth,
New York: Academic Press, 1958; Edith McKnight, “The Prevalence of ‘Hirsutism’ in
Young Women,”
The Lancet,
Feb. 22, 1964 (University of Wales study); P.K. Thomas and D.G. Ferriman, “Variation
in Facial and Pubic Hair Growth in White Women,”
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
(Vol. 15, No. 2), June 1957; John A. Ewing and Beatrice A. Rouse, “Hirsutism, Race
and Testosterone Levels: Comparison of East Asians and Euroamericans,”
Human Biology
(Vol. 50, No. 2), May 1978; Owen Edwards and Arthur Rook, “Androgen-dependent Cutaneous
Syndromes” in Arthur Rook and John Slavin, eds.,
Recent Advances in Dermatology, No.
5, Edinburgh, London, New York: Churchill Livingston, 1980.