Picturing the Woman-Child: Fashion, Feminism and the Female Gaze

Description

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.

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).

This fascinating book centres on a paradox in visual culture: why do contemporary messages of female empowerment sit alongside a proliferation of images of childlike femininities? Examining magazine fashion spreads over 25 years, Picturing the Woman-Child offers a compelling analysis of four figures and the ways they are understood. * Rosalind Gill, City, University of London, UK * Morna Laing's nuanced and layered analysis of childlike femininities in fashion imagery is eye-opening. She weaves together a compelling theoretical, historical, and visual analysis, offering the reader a new perspective on and a deeper understanding of these pervasive cultural depictions of women. * Jennifer Farley Gordon, independent researcher, writer and curator, USA * Morna Laing's Picturing the Woman-Child is essential reading for anyone seeking insight into fashion photography and the politics of the gaze. * Valerie Steele, Director of The Museum at FIT, New York, USA * 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. * Masafumi Monden, University of Sydney, Australia *