From @UGA.CC.UGA.EDU:owner-china-nt@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Mon Jul 4 03:10:57 1994 Date: Mon, 4 Jul 1994 00:12:03 EDT Reply-To: Bo Peng Sender: China-Net From: Bo Peng Subject: Chinese Community Forum (#9436) Comments: To: china-nt@uga.cc.uga.edu To: Multiple recipients of list CHINA-NT ==+==+==+== C h i n e s e C o m m u n i t y F o r u m ==+==+==+=== Sunday, July 3, 1994 (No. 9436) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Chinese Community Forum (CCF) is an e-journal published on China-Net. CCF is dedicated to the discussion on the issues related to the Chinese community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Editorial Board of CCF. Contributions to the discussions and suggestions of new topics are very much appreciated. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= # of Table of Contents Author | Lines ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== -*- Cloth Shopping: No Small Talk -*- 1. Passion for Clothes: Variations on the Same Theme........Yingyin Xu 358 ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== -- From the Editor -- This is definitely one of the most unique issues of CCF, both in form and in content. There is only one article in this issue; it is about women's passion for clothes. Hold it, don't be so quick yet. Read on and you'll find it not nearly as trivial as it might seem to you at the first glance. In this one-lady orchestra, Yingyin Xu presented a surprisingly rich and in- depth panorama on women's psyche towards cloth and cloth-shopping, much of which perhaps transcends different cultural and ethnic backgrounds while some aspects are uniquely Chinese. Through the seemingly trivial, strictly personal act of dressing and cloth-shopping, women constantly enrich and update our culture and daily life. It is a must-read for you guys, if you are a husband, a boyfriend, or just planning to be one in the future. You may be surprised how rich a mental process it is for a woman shopping for clothes, a process during which men often play the role of idle as well as idiotic spectators, and come to the appreciation of the pain and cruelty of a slow death. If you still cannot comprehend the passion after reading the article, hopefully the infinite waiting after your wife/girlfriend disappears behind the fitting-room door could be made, at least in theory, finite by knowing the overwhelming joy and fun going through her fanatic little mind, as she tries on a blouse that she has never thought of buying from the first moment on. For you ladies out there, make your hubby/boyfriend read it by all means necessary. Hopefully, the close-minded, selfish guy who never understands anything about you could manage to keep his mouth shut the next time you two spend the long- weekend vacationing in the mall. By the way, don't forget to send us a thank-you note after the vacation. This issue saved your marriage. ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1. Passion for Clothes: Variations on the Same Theme........Yingyin Xu 358 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Overture Clothes are as much real as imaginary. When you look into the mirror you see more of an illusion sustained by clothes than the clothes themselves or the person beneath them. The "emperor's new clothes" is paradoxically a daily drama in everyone's life. For thousands of years women's craze for clothes has been diagnosed as the foremost manifestation of their vanity and irrationality, to cure which they have to be admonished, chastised, and disciplined. Today, when we are aware of how much clothes contribute to gender demarcation in our culture, the question of what is "essentially" feminine or woman-like is hardly the relevant question to ask any more, because it is not easy to tell what is "essential," or "natural" about woman from what is culturally constructed. As many feminist theorists observe, "woman" is a product of stylization and performance in every minute of every day; in the act of dressing "woman" is momentarily, though precariously, realized. Dressing is one of the most personal, intimate ways we participate in the making of culture and the process of socialization. I like to think of myself not as the doped consumer blissfully blind to the capitalist exploitation, but as a social, cultural agent making conscious choices, helping to generate wealth for some, providing daily necessity for some others, creating employment opportunities for still others. To refuse to succumb to consumerism, to parade the Henry Thoreau kind of non-conformity, is a selfish choice that betrays the fear and the loath of social interaction and cooperation. I often wonder why the clothing market is never saturated, despite of the constant feeding of new clothes from all over the world. And I wonder where all those old, discarded clothes end up. How are clothes recycled? Every year church-sales everywhere duplicate the junkyard of clothes. What happened to those "junkyards"? The Carnivalesque On a dismal, drizzling Saturday afternoon in May, on our way back from the Westside Market, a friend and I walked into Dillard's, a department store in downtown Cleveland, where a sale of clothes left over from last season at 75% percent discount was going on. We walked into a world that made us sorely aware of how much of life we'd been deprived of. All of a sudden those expensive-looking, lovely winter outfits that had seemed infinitely beyond the reach of our pockets were marked at prices that seemed too low to be true, swept us off our feet (and guard), and chiseled away all our resistance and reservation. We ended up spending a modest amount of money in exchange for all the happiness we could imagine for the moment. Shopping out of season is like being in a carnival where everything is turned upside down. You have at your fingertips the rare fortune of possessing simultaneously two incommensurable seasons. It is the contrast of the two that allows you to put each in perspective. To try on heavy, sturdy woolen or cotton sweaters in the height of summer immediately brings back to mind the memories of the sharp, razor-like wind chill and the snow drift piling on the pavement, the sense of the whole world being in torpid hibernation (or standing still), the sense that even the hands of time are frozen and won't thaw until next spring. There is also the sense of desolation that has to do with the -20F temperature and oddly makes you feel you are the sole owner of the world when you are alone on the street at night. At times the numbing cold makes your body and your own existence seem unreal. The recollection of the white mist steadily issuing from your nose and mouth makes your stomach start to churn with an insatiable longing. "The Fitting Room Syndrome" In the fitting room you have the freedom to try everything without the obligation to buy. It is a sort of pure, unadulterated joy trying different combinations, from the most conservative, non-controversial to the most flirtatious, provocative, outrageous or even suicidal. More exposure of the neck or arms often has unexpected, liberating effects and sends a fresh tremor of delight throughout your body. At one moment we felt like teenage girls taking an uncertain peep at the adult world; at another we assumed the roles of sophisticated ladies of the grand society walking into one of those balls where people wear tuxedos and drink champagne. Now in our eyes those enviable celebrities were less intimidating, for after all they were no more than movable props in a costume masque. In the fitting room we fell in love again with ourselves. We ceased to feel apologetic about our bodily defects; we felt with an intensity rarely surpassed that life was beautiful after all. It is only at another time, when we become seriously ill, that we become acutely aware of the undeniable physicality of our own body. From the fitting room our mind made a tremendous jump to the streets of New York or Paris where a gigantic, somewhat unruly fashion show was going on at every minute, where people put on clothes as much for self-exhibition as for the creation of a human landscape, and for participation in a communal ritual. Clothes seemed to give us unlooked-for license and access to what was normally beyond our reach. In those clothes that updated you to a close enough proximity to the fashion world, you felt you could do whatever you'd like to do, however extravagant, however wild. It was as if clothes granted you a kind of mobility of a different nature from spatial travel, the mobility of the mind, of the imagination. You had a sense that a door above suddenly was hurled wide open, and there you were basked in the "ultraviolet" light of heaven, or of another world. You doubted you had ever known such excitement and anticipation before, such total abandonment. In our happiness we were willing to be generous and tolerant toward all around us. We forgave the unfriendliness of the plump, stiff, snobbish custodian of this magical world of endless array of colors, fabrics, patterns, who for some reason followed us around into the fitting room, patronized us in a discomforting way, as though she suspected us of thief or something else illegal. Both of us could not help suspecting that her surreptitious way had something to do with our skin color. Yet I liked her for the solidarity she expressed for women designers when I asked her opinion about brand names:"Oh, yeah, I like Elizabeth Arden, but I don't care for Calvin Klein." Knowing that we could not afford to, nor would we ever have the occasion to wear the collarless, strapless, shoulderless, but regal evening dresses, we nevertheless gloriously dashed them on just for the once-in-a-life-time exhilaration of witnessing our own metamorphosis right in front of the mirror -- who said women put on clothes for others' eyes only? If we couldn't finally afford such indulgence, at least we would have a memory of it for keep. This is what fitting rooms are for. Sometimes it was disappointing -- the ugly duckling did not transform into a swan; but sometimes it more than answered our expectation, showing off our waist lines, our arms, our necks in the most flattering light. What a great feel- good therapy! Images of handsome, voluptuous, somewhat mysterious women wearing expensive pearl necklace and exquisite perfume rushed into my mind. At the same time I caught myself exercising the typical "male gaze" that is the "private eye" of classical Hollywood cinema. I realized, not without sadness, how fully our mind, our individual sensibility, is stuffed with pre-conceived, pre- existing, pre-formed values, judgments and myths from the cultural milieu we breath every minute. Yet, for however short and fleeting a moment, we dared to and did live out an alternative, indeterminate space, where we could play- act without having to commit ourselves in any way, where the pre-ethical, pre-moral paradise is not yet lost. Isn't life punctuated by such intensive, heart-crushing, mind-shattering moments of profound happiness, contentment, triumph or disappointment? I think one of the telltale sign of the post-modern sensitivity is its (sometimes excessive) emphasis on the moment. But women all along have known how it is those distinctive moments, rather than long, indiscriminate stretches of time, that sink deep into memory and subconscious. Post- modernism is not an exclusive game for the elite academia; it has always been a part of women's daily existence. The vast expanse of the basement in Dillard's, where a conglomeration of clothes from the most trendy to the most outmoded was stranded, is a perfect illustration for the post-modern predicament: you have too many strands of tradition to inherit, to come to terms with. Perhaps in that space of impasse and indeterminacy, urged on by the impulse to create anew out of the remains of yester-year, ordinary, anonymous housewives are already participating in the formation of a post-modern sensibility. A Highly Amusing Interlude The matronly saleswoman told us matter-of-factly:"The two of you can't go into the same room." With a stroke of genius, without exchanging a second word, we immediately comprehended her hint and did not offer to dispute with her. As soon as she turned her back, we burst out laughing and let fall a shower of playful ridicules at the homophobia which we knew was a curious remains of the puritanical tradition. In China it is so common, so un- noteworthy, to see two young women walking hand in hand on the streets as though they are having a hell lot of fun; no one would suspect anything. But here we have to be so careful not to be "caught," while knowing we have nothing to hide. Well, how could we comment on each other's clothes if we were locked up in separate compartments? However we managed to get around this unexpected impediment. We went into separate rooms, threw on a dress, unbolted the doors, came out to the hallway and started to examine each other from head to toe. The hallway thus became an extension of our fitting rooms, and we'd broken no law. Gossip Column We exchanged what we knew about those "trivial" aspects of American culture to find answers to all those questions that we were too embarrassed to ask our "indigenous" American friends. We discovered the secret of the obsession with those luxury goods having the mysterious-sounding name of "lady's intimate apparels." Looking at the pages of a catalogue that featured underwear made of the softest and sometimes transparent silk, my companion winked at me and whispered:"There is a direct correlation between what the mothers wear in bed and how children born out of their parents' loins will look." And she told me the story of a strikingly pretty girl, who said that her mother was obsessed with buying those "intimate apparels" right before she was pregnant with her, and it was during those days that her father was most in love with her mother. Not that I had never suspected it, but no one had ever put it so directly so as to make it beyond a shadow of doubt. Brand Name and Status Quo In the same way people defend the status quo, we zealously invented justification for a brand name's exorbitant price tag, carefully comparing the design, the texture, the color, and the substance of a Calvin Klein sweater and one of an anonymous or less well-known brand, concluding (predictably) that "brand name is after all brand name; you can't beat it." Of course we knew we were being irrational, but who cared for sober reason when we took a fancy on something and the whole of our mind was inflamed by it? We were willing to believe the best of it; how could we persuade ourselves out of it? We could think of a thousand virtues of a petite Calvin Klein turtleneck, the exquisite, luxurious feel of the fabric on the skin, the ease at every joint of the body, the color that would never go out of fashion, always look simple and elegant in all occasions, and make no quarrel with any other colors -- what a rich process analysis paper it would make! Patriotism and Cultural Assimilation We were being most decidedly and flagrantly unpatriotic when we most enthusiastically praised the judgment and taste of American or European designers. Mercilessly and indiscriminately we disparaged the poor taste of their Chinese counterparts: how insensitive they were about colors, or how erroneous and awkward their sense of colors and pattern was. It seems that our cultural assimilation cannot be completed until we've resolved to discard those clothes we've brought across the ocean in heavy suitcases at the dear cost of over-weight fines, the suitcases put together by the collective wisdom of the entire family who had never been to America yet all felt perfectly entitled to give us advice as to what would fit seamlessly into the fabric of American society. However, if we are still wearing clothes we brought over five or eight years ago, it is precisely because we are here in America, where we understand that whatever is odd and strange is acceptable, or even appreciated, in which regard fashion is irrelevant. Once I tried to persuade my husband to take back to China a really antique goose feather navy blue overcoat he bought in Shanghai more than ten years ago, which looked indeed quaint in comparison with the jackets out there now. But he reminded me that he would make himself a laughing stock if he wore it among his friends in Shanghai, whereas he could wear it here with absolute nonchalance, without having to blush for it. Here, the pressure to keep one's clothing style up to date does not seem to take its toll on us, especially our male folks. People expect us to be different anyway since our complexion and our hair color distinguish us as foreigners. Well, this is not strictly true; perhaps the pressure will come after we depart from school. When you've mastered the dress-codes for various occasions in the American society and learned to discern the rise and fall of fashion, you have grabbed a hard-earned key to the American culture. I was disheartened when I learned the elaborate preparations Chinese wives make to fit their Ph.D. or postdoc husbands for the job market. They shopped for designer genuine leather shoes, "interview suits," shirts with the right kind of cuffs and collars, with matching ties and other accessories such as the long dark or brown woolen "dress socks" that would not expose the ankles or the forelegs when they sit down. I wonder what all these fuss is about. Would their interviewer really take note of their meticulous observation of the unwritten dress-code and give them extra scores? From East to West: The Wind of Fashion During those absorbing hours of dizzy selection I noticed how my notions about what was beautiful and pleasing had undergone a seachange. I used to love baby-pink blouses with laces, frills, pleats, or other dainty decorations, which were strictly prohibited during the "Cultural Revolution" because they were considered among the trademarks of "petty bourgeois" decadence, liable for corrupting the healthy proletariat righteousness and honesty. Now I ignored anything that remotely reminds me of the fastidious anxiety to look soft, "feminine," and "charming," in short, to please men. I used to loath black shirts and sweaters (perhaps partly because black reminded me of all those who were by birth or by choice the hated "enemies of the people," therefore marginalized to the fringe of society and every community). Now everything I bought was either black or white, colors that would victoriously survive the flippancy of fashion. On the other hand, my companion, an older woman, casually observed how young girls nowadays refused to wear girl's clothes and disliked what was traditionally considered girlish ornaments on their clothes, but strived to imitate boys. She added with a sense of exasperation, "how can they still be girls if all they do is to imitate boys or men? They would have nothing they could call their own. I don't think this kind of mentality is normal." I was intrigued by her remark. I recalled a young Chinese neighbor of mine; while still in junior high, she talked about one of her father's striped T-shirts with admiration and said that one of these days she was going to wear it to school. I wonder whether, after decades of efforts in raising the feminist consciousness, women are feeling more secured about their gender or becoming even more vulnerable because of it. If the latter, does it partly explain why they want to have the "freedom" to dress like men? As we passed by a Gap store in the mall, we noticed, on display at prominent places, jumpers, pants, some shapeless gowns, even backpacks made of exactly the same military-green khaki that had made the streets of China so drab and monotonous to foreigners during the "Cultural Revolution." We couldn't understand why teenagers in America were crazy about what was once in vogue in the "dark age" of contemporary China. I used to like everything tight-fitting; now I looked only for sizes marked L or XXL. This seem to be the general trend: one size fits all. It could be seen as a reflection of the desire to loosen up the body, to liberate the body from the constraint of clothing. Yet on the other hand, it could also be seen as an indication of an increasing failure to make the distinction between the self and the outside world, a reluctance to define one's body clearly against the external, undifferentiated space, and a desire to hide behind, or to lose one's self behind, an amorphous blob. Or maybe it conceals an attempt to postpone the necessity to define and declare oneself, to commit one's image. Is it symptomatic of our eroding post-modern sense of the self in the West or our indulgence in the play with indeterminacy? In the shopping frenzy that lasted for well over a week, we became to some extent self-taught critics of fashion. At the same time we thought we had acquired some aristocratic snobbishness when it came to the material a shirt or sweater was made of, titleless, nameless and penniless though we were. I remembered back in China people generally have very low esteem for cotton clothes, which are only fit for underwear; the mysterious worship for artificial fabrics hasn't seemed to subside. During the Cultural Revolution, every family had dozens of white shirts made of semi-transparent, enduring (but suffocating in hot weather) dacron or terylene nicknamed, ironically, "Di2 Que4 Lian2 (literally "Really Cool") in Chinese. Now following the trend here, we adored those labeled "100% cotton" or "100% wool," which made us feel we were getting our every penny's worth, while anything associated with polyester or nylon instantly brought to mind something rough, prickly, and artificial. Of course, such propensity for everything "natural" is an acquired taste, and nowadays it is expensive to live a "natural" life, eating "natural" food, dwelling in the out-out-skirt of the city, from where you have to drive two or three hours to work, and buying clothes made of 100% cotton, linen or wool. There is a discernible movement of "naturalizing" the culture of our time; indeed, without exaggeration, we may well call it another "cultural revolution." Passion for Clothes Or the Lack of: A Gender Divide We extended our visit to the department store infinitely, justifying our action by imagining it to be an escape from the frowning, moralistic tyranny of our husbands who "perversely" wore the obsolete clothes made in China ten or twenty years ago, and therefore prohibited our not-so-immoderate indulgence with their silent disapproval. Besides, we could not appreciate their tasteless, irrational penchant for electronic appliances, which were but heaps of lifeless mechanical parts. On the other hand, we found it inexplicable that they failed to sympathize with our love for clothes. Perhaps the spacious basement of Dillard's where the sales was going on was the equivalent of second-hand car dealer's or Radio Shack for our husbands. But how expressive, how picturesque, how sensual and richly exuberant clothes can be! After all, one needs clothes all the time! Electronic appliances? Just some accessories one can do without. Small talks about our respective husbands' "eccentricities" were exchanged, how it was always a headache to go shopping with them -- they invariably spoiled one's good mood. Not being obliged to act protectively toward them, we felt free to disparage them to our heart's content. Nevertheless, being dutiful wives, we did not forget to look into men's clothes. Of course, they could never remember the size of the shoes we wore. But we could always tell whether a pair of shoes, a T-shirt or a sweater was too large or too small for them. There, our absentee husbands' bodies rose in the space between us. We tried to decide whether a 15/32-33 cotton shirt was too small for them, and we unanimously agreed that it was so, and the one with more leeway on both sides was more stylish and in vogue. It did not matter a bit that the bodies we were trying to cloth were invisible; we gave ourselves the full authority, and the decision was final, as irrevocable as what was stamped on the receipt:"All sales final." In the shopping spree my newly acquainted friend and I became soulmates engaging in an endless, totally engrossing process of self-fashioning and self-creation, where we wanted solely to please our own eyes. The kind of contentment it offered was not purely sensual either: we'd learnt to trust our own judgment, to be confident in what we thought and did. In a sense our wardrobe is an embodiment of our dreams, fantasies, joys, and, if you like, our follies as well. Our passion for clothes thrills us while it makes men feel helpless; it sometimes makes us feel we can do without men. Our craving for clothes is the craving for a reunion with a lost paradise, where there is no more self-censoring or self-scrutiny, no more difference between how we view ourselves and how others view us. Our craving for variety, for new style belies the existence of a dark, dangerously restless and subversive energy. Our passion for clothes is one of God's eternal mysteries. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++ + Executive Editor: Bo Peng + + Executive Associate Editor: Ming Cheng + + Executive Moderator: Weihe Guan + +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + For subscription: mail "SUB CHINA-NT Your-First-Name Your-Last-Name" + + to LISTSERV@UGA (bitnet) or listserv@uga.cc.uga.edu (internet) + + For unsubscription: mail "UNSUB CHINA-NT" to the above e-address + + For back issues of CCF: + + anonymous ftp to: cnd.org[132.249.229.100]: pub/community/CCF + + gopher to cnd.org: 2. English Menu --> 13. Community --> 1. ccf + + For contribution and inquiry: mail to ccf-editor@ifcss.org + +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++