Daisy Shepherd-Cross
Bio
Stories (9/0)
One Shade of Wrong
It turns out that our phone screens were not the only ones glowing in 2020. A new trend emerged last year, challenging the integrity of fashion designers: the highlighter trend. Along with the arrival of more daylight in Spring time, came fashionistas who decided to take their revenge on the dark, lonely and attenion-less year they had experienced thus far. This revenge came in the shape of head to toe neon clothing. From neon shoes, coats, jumpsuits and dresses to handbags, nails and even hair extensions. Inspired by the chemincal eliment, glow sticks and car-park marshalls; these trend setters were beginning to look on the bright side of life and expressed it in their clothing.
By Daisy Shepherd-Cross3 years ago in Styled
Sexed but not Sexy
This essay will demonstrate how the pregnant body is both deeply personal whilst being subject to intense public scrutiny. The physical space that a pregnant body occupies in public, and the visibility of something that is deemed to be private, puts growing attention on the expectant mother. A sense of public responsibility for a future citizen (Luce, 1996) forces upon her unwanted opinions and expectations. For the purpose of this essay, the term ‘public’ is treated as interchangeable with the word ‘political’, because it is referring to the everyday politicisation of bodies that makes them public. (Jamie, 2020) For a more in-depth analysis, it will ignore the medicalisation of the pregnant body; the medical surveillance placed on women by midwives and other health professionals. Instead, it will focus on cultural scrutiny, in the form of prying relatives, acquaintances and strangers (Dwyer, 2006) feeling the right to place judgment on the pregnant woman. It will consider the patriarchal environment in which this right to ownership of the female body has been cultivated and worsened by the influence of the media. Drawing upon the routine sexualisation of women in the media, this essay will demonstrate the binary expectations of female sexuality. Within this narrow discourse, it will question the whereabouts of pregnant women. Why it is suddenly unacceptable and wrong for a pregnant body to be ‘sexy’, despite having been ‘sexed’ (Dwyer, 2006). How do pregnant women straddle this ‘Madonna-Whore Dichotomy’ and what implications does this have for the woman and her partner? It will also question this in the context of pornography. Lastly, there will be an examination of how some celebrities have shown both their maternal and sexual pregnant bodies, and in doing so have liberated themselves and other women from the binary categories that they could have fallen in to.
By Daisy Shepherd-Cross3 years ago in Viva