Apr 15, 2010

(gender) genre














I didn't take this picture (ha); it's off'a Twitter, but I saw Aggy Deyn a couple of days ago on Irving Place looking something like this.
And I found her hair challenging....I tend to like Agyness (even though she's among those fayshunny Brit/Euro/Aussie transplants to the East Village and Williamsburg whose grasp-on-New York City is so unreal and limited by dum and ca$h, iluuuuusions, the same square foot of 20th century over and over---the CLOY), because she only started getting tons-of work when she was 24/5/6, which is how it ought to be, I think. And I like models to be famous for wearing their own clothes backstage, on the street, at parties--the real mannequin, the Kate model of model. Being Brit, Deyn's pushed punk throughout, while also acting-a-canvas of the 90s revival, a rather natural o.g. sk8terboi progression. When her hair was some inches longer and bleach blond, Deyn was playing at bent gender, working an androgyny that was mild/medium, familiar, easy. Now, dark and buzzed (and it really does make such a difference), she startles one, not because the hairdo is new stuff, but because it's severe, religious?, disinterested in male approval, um (forgive me) lesbionic. And duh the-style-of-lesbianism is a major slice of los 90s. But, though 90s revival has steamrolled out of grunge and into klub kandy kolors and next stop She's All That and curled tendrils of Prom Issue, it isn't everything; it isn't the only thing. There's also the depression-times (and Jersey Shore-times) drawing toward "traditional gender roles" (muscles, cleavage), and the way a certain kind of "differentness"--olde hipster ideas about non-belonging--has turned sameness and testy, mean-eyed, self-interested. I don't know. I'm not trying to say you can't have butch and pin-up on dial at the same time. I'm not trying to be severe or a bitch. I hate to catch myself talking about what other people shouldn't look like.
***
I guess, I'm most interested in why a pretty, straight girl with a buzz cut throws me off so much.
It's where I come from, Memphis and girls' school and los actual 90s (not their redux). I remember how/when an earring was a DECLARATIVE SITUATION.
More recently, in art school, one girl (who had it bad for my boyfriend), with no hair on her cabeza and all kinds of hair elsewhere, really stumped me. I'd see her and think, "How do boys know you want to have sex with them?" I'm such a square, right? Though also, I think I'm put-off by gayness-as-a-lark, looking butch but not really meaning it.
Or, that aside, the monkishness, the priestly-ness, the air of sacrifice (como Sinead) is tough to swallow...
What do y'all think? I feel like I'm not saying much...

2 comments:

zbs said...

Agyness has always interested me in how she fits the model mold in terms of her image but is, in practice, a fairly horrible model. Off the bridge with you !

Able said...

yeah word