Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism - Hardcover

Scott, Linda M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1403966869 ISBN 13: 9781403966865

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

Synopsis

Fresh Lipstick shakes feminist fashion down to its Birkenstocks.

Linda M. Scott wants to put an end to the belief that American women have to wear a colorless, shapeless uniform to achieve liberation and equality.

A pointed attack on feminism's requisite style of dress, Fresh Lipstick argues that wearing high heels and using hair curlers does not deny you the right to seek advancement, empowerment, and equality. Scott asserts that judging someone on her fashion choices is as detrimental to advancement as judgments based on race, nationality, or social class. Fashion is an important mode of personal expression, not an indication of submission. She demonstrates that feminism's dogged reduction of fashion to sexual objectification has been motivated by a desire to control other women, not free them. This push for power has produced endless conflict from the movement's earliest days, hindering advances in women's rights by promoting exclusion. It is time for the "plain Jane" dress code of the revolution to be lifted, allowing all women to lead, even those wearing makeup and Manolos.

Marching through 150 years of American dress history, Scott rips down feminism's favorite positions on fashion-from the power of images to the purpose of makeup. The illustrative examples-from flappers to Twiggy to body-piercing-are often poignant, occasionally infuriating, but always illuminating and thought-provoking.

With Fresh Lipstick, Linda Scott gives women the ammunition to settle the fashion debate once and for all. She challenges feminists to move beyond appearances and to return their focus to the true mission of the movement: equality for all women everywhere.

About this title

About the Author

Linda M. Scott has spent years researching media and women's issues. She is associate professor in art and design, communications, and women's studies at University of Illinois and research associate professor, Institute of Communications Research.

Review

"Though it is pro-primping, this book might make you put down the highlighting kit and grab a highlighter, becuase it's so packed with facts and controversy. But some of its content-- like an old graphic that shows Ms. Steinem as quite the style icon herself-- is just plain (not plain-Jane) fun, much like fashion itself."--Paula Wehmeyer, BUST
 "This well-researched, enlightening, and provocative book is recommended for academic and large public libraries."--Library Journal
"Thanks to Fresh Lipstick feminism will be fashionable. For those who shun Madison Avenue as well as those who indulge their inner consumer, Linda Scott uses historical anecdotes and strong opinions to make the case for feminism to more honestly approach beauty and fashion."--Amy Richards, co-author of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future and Grassroots: A Field Guide to Feminist Activism

"This is a brilliant work that establishes Linda Scott as the leading academic commentator in the country on women, fashion, and advertising and our most perceptive thinker on the cultural understanding of advertising."-- Michael Schudson, author of The Good Citizen, Watergate in American Memory, and Professor of Sociology and Communications, UC-San Diego

"Wow! Linda Scott has written a fresh, provocative and fun look at feminism and fashion. For too long leading feminists have told women that everything from high heels to lipstick is oppressive. Linda Scott shows us how the most oppressive voice is the feminists themselves. With exemplary research she documents the puritanical and classist motives of the women's movement in their judgments of fashion, and arrives at the conclusion women have been waiting for: you can be feminine and a feminist."--Rene Denfeld, journalist and author of The New Victorians: A Young Woman's Challenge to the Old Feminist Order

"Every once in a while a book appears that separates smoke from fire. This is one of those books. Fashion and feminism have endlessly sparked polemics, but how fair and accurate were they? On every page Linda Scott shows who the smoke blowers were. Then she lights a fire of her own that will burn for generations."--James B. Twitchell, author of Branded Nation, Living It Up: America's Love Affair with Luxury, and Adcult

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1403966869
• ISBN 13: 9781403966865
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368