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Reading Woman: Displacing the Foundations of Femininity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Wendy A. Burns-Ardolino
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Abstract

I offer here an analysis of contemporary foundation garments while exploring the ways in which these garments encourage, reinforce and protect normative femininity. In examining the performatives of contemporary normative, ideal femininity as they perpetuate inhibited intentionality, ambiguous transcendence, and discontinuous unity, I look to the possibility for subversive performativity vis-à-vis the strengths of women in order to proliferate categories of gender and to potentially displace current notions of what it means to become woman.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 18 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Women, Art, and Aesthetics , Fall 2003 , pp. 42 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by Hypatia, Inc.

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