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The childlike character of ideal femininity has long been critiqued by feminists, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Simone de Beauvoir. Yet, women continue to be represented as childlike in the western fashion media, despite the historical connotations of inferiority. This book questions why such images still hold appeal to contemporary women, after three, or even four, waves of feminism.
Focusing on the period of 1990-2015,
Picturing the Woman-Child traces the evolution of childlike femininity in British fashion magazines, including
Vogue,
i-D and
Lula, Girl of my Dreams. These images draw upon a network of references, from Kinderwhore and Lolita to Alice in Wonderland and the
femme-enfant of Surrealism.
Alongside analysis of fashion photography, the book presents the findings of original research into audience reception. Inviting contemporary women to comment on images of the 'woman-child' provides an insight into the meaning of this figure as well as an evaluation of theory on the 'female gaze'. Both scholarly and accessible, the book paves the way for future studies on how readers make sense of fashion imagery.
List of contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
PART I
2. Fashion Photography and Gender
3. Childlike Femininity: A History of Feminist Critique
4. Between Image and Spectator: Reception Studies as Visual Methodology
PART II
5. The Romantic Woman-child, Lost from Home
6. Fashion's Femme-enfant-fatale: Surrealism, Curiosity and Alice in Wonderland
7: Rewriting Lolita in Fashion Photography
8: Kinderwhore: From Catwalk to Slutwalk
Post-script: Looking Backwards to Look Forwards
Bibliography
Index
Appendix 1. Participant Demographics
About the author
Morna Laing is Assistant Professor in Fashion Studies at The New School, Parsons Paris, France. She is the co-editor, with Jacki Willson, of
Revisiting the Gaze: The Fashioned Body and the Politics of Looking (Bloomsbury, 2020).
Summary
The childlike character of ideal femininity has long been critiqued by feminists, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Simone de Beauvoir. Yet, women continue to be represented as childlike in the western fashion media, despite the historical connotations of inferiority. This book questions why such images still hold appeal to contemporary women, after three, or even four, waves of feminism.
Focusing on the period of 1990–2015, Picturing the Woman-Child traces the evolution of childlike femininity in British fashion magazines, including Vogue, i-D and Lula, Girl of my Dreams. These images draw upon a network of references, from Kinderwhore and Lolita to Alice in Wonderland and the femme-enfant of Surrealism.
Alongside analysis of fashion photography, the book presents the findings of original research into audience reception. Inviting contemporary women to comment on images of the ‘woman-child’ provides an insight into the meaning of this figure as well as an evaluation of theory on the ‘female gaze’. Both scholarly and accessible, the book paves the way for future studies on how readers make sense of fashion imagery.
Foreword
Picturing the Woman-Child examines the representation of women as childlike in western fashion media, and asks why this figure continues to hold appeal to women.
Additional text
Picturing the Woman-Child is an elegantly textured study of the complex history of childlike femininities, sharply observing how the concept has been centralized in contemporary European fashion media. Morna Laing offers us scholarly exploration at its finest, an analysis at once beautiful, poetic and sophisticated. This is a much-anticipated study that demystifies the cultural imagery of childlike femininities and deconstructs their allures that have long attracted artists, fashion practitioners, men, and, perhaps surprisingly, women themselves. A delightful book which will become central to our thinking on femininities.
