Hey fellow Orchidians. My name is Bekka, I met many of you at Tucson
two years back, and I’m a recent graduate of the School of the
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) and Tufts’ combined degree program. I
wrote a thesis and made a twenty piece collection examining the
feminist implications of jewelry, and developed an analytical
framework for looking at how gender and jewelry interact within
societies. It’s officially PUBLISHED as a book entitled
“Gender and Jewelry: A Feminist Analysis”, available at Amazon in paperback and
kindle form
It also features the work of the incredible Keith Lewis, Kelly
Malec-Kosak, Theresa Milheiro, Sondra Sherman, Gerd Rothmann, and
Cheung Lin. I’m including a snippet, so you can get a taste of what
it’s like. If you know anyone else who might be interested, I’m not
making money off of this, just looking to get it out into the world,
I’d appreciate if you’d pass it on. Thanks so much, and thanks to the
Orchid forum as a whole for being a constant source of intellectual
and artistic stimulation (and proof of how beautifully the two go
together!)
Sincerely,
Bekka Ross Russell
Physical incapacitation through jewelry, as with the heavy anklets of
the Igbo tribes of the Niger delta, serves not only to communicate,
but indeed enforce, ownership. However, when it is bound up with
conceptions of femininity, it additionally naturalizes femininity
itself as a social disability commensurate with or even exceeding the
physical. The imposition of restrictions by the powerful (in this
case men) onto the restricted (in this case women) is erased by the
narrative that replaces femininity itself as the cause of (socially
naturalized) disability. This becomes even clearer in the examination
of the Padaung and N’Gombe tribes’ focus on the legs and neck as
locuses of imposed disability. Perceived and idealized intellectual
and experiential inferiority of women becomes a self fulfilling
prophecy, achieved through the physical restriction of ambulation,
sight, smell, and speech. The ideal of the passive, dependent woman
becomes virtually inescapable and, since the incapacitating objects
are sources of cultural pride, indeed the very markers of
‘successful’ femininity, women are co-opted into perpetuating the
very traditions that keep them subordinate. How then is it possible
to address oppression that is scaffolded and reinscribed by the
actions and beliefs of the oppressed? Does feminism’s commitment to
individual choice require a moral and cultural relativism and
preclude judgment or action?
Judith Butler addresses the issue of responsibility thus in her
work:
**"Although individual acts do work to maintain and reproduce systems
of oppression, and, indeed, any theory of personal political
responsibility presupposes such a view, it doesn’t follow that
oppression is a sole consequence of such acts. One might argue that
without human beings whose various acts, largely construed, produce
and maintain oppressive conditions, those conditions would fall away,
but note that the relation between acts and conditions is neither
unilateral nor unmediated… The transformation of social relations
becomes a matter, then, of transforming hegemonic social conditions
rather than the individual acts that are spawned by those
conditions."The choice to don anklets or lengthen the neck is not
inherently problematic in the presence of other options, but the
limitation of acceptable gender performance to acts that reduce the
ability of the female body most certainly is. When gender, and
specifically the transition to successful adulthood, is constructed
solely in terms of disability, incapacity and femininity become
synonymous.
The same dynamic applies when analyzing makers of sexual ownership
and availability. Marriage and the exchange that takes place at
weddings have long been subjects of interest for scholars. Historian
and feminist scholar Gerda Lerner observes that =93[t]he exchange of
women [through marriage] is the first form of trade, in which women
are turned into a commodity… The exchange of women, according to
Levi-Strauss, marks the beginning of women’s subordination. It in
turn reinforces a sexual division of labor which institutes male
dominance.=94 However, feminism posits that monogamous commitment or
marriage need not be a surrender to predetermined balances of power
based on gender. When seen as one of a range of options, including
successful independence, there are few rational arguments to make
against it. Again, the problem arises when submission to a particular
form of highly socially regulated relationship serves as the only
legitimate path to adulthood. Additionally, forms of the ritual which
make it clear that the power imbalance is a crucial part of the
tradition and usage rather than an individual fluke appeal to the
same logic as above: Acts of collaboration in a hegemonic context are
to be understood as reflections of the social structure rather than
reflections of uncoerced, ‘natural’ order. This can be exemplified by
the use of Turkish puzzle rings, for instance, to ensure that women
and women alone are unable to present themselves outside of the
context of their marriage. Similarly, traditions that use rings as
the barter token with which to, quite explicitly, buy their bride =96
especially without a similar marker on the opposite side =96 begin
the relationship within an inextricable framework of gendered
imbalance and ownership.
The strictly regulated system of jewelry usages advanced in Indian
marriage provides an in depth look at the ways that sexual
availability and ownership intersect with notions of value,
specifically what makes a woman valuable.
From the age of twelve, the acceptable amount and type of jewelry to
be worn is delineated through social stigma - as required or
forbidden, with little range for personal choice. As a fertile woman,
she is honored through adornment, never as a virgin or widow. The
amount of jewelry a woman wears peaks on her wedding day, when her
value to society is perceived as highest.
The narrow range of options and the elements of coercion separate
these usages from the merely culturally idiosyncratic. They are part
of a closely structured hegemony, coded external markers of societal
value. While individuals of course accept and, indeed, desire
elevation through this route, that does not equate to true freedom
of choice. Again, successful femininity is constructed only in terms
of relation to men, as a wife and mother. Jewelry resoundingly echoes
this fundamental social reality.