Cool Men and the Second Sex

Fraiman, Susan

doi:10.7312/frai12962

Cited by 73 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…In the case of the iPhone and BlackBerry at the time of van de Ven's (2009) study, we might instead see the underlying motivation as the pursuit of cool (e.g., Frank 1997;Pountain and Robins 2000). Although coolness may simply be another status system (Belk et al 2010), it is an alternative system that opposes mainstream status hierarchies and social class (see Fraiman 2002;Majors and Billson 1992).…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Benign envy

Belk

2011

AMS Rev

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Envy has long been held to be a harmful emotion involving the desire to deprive others of the qualities or possessions that they possess and we covet. When the various religious injunctions against such malicious envy were conceived, the consumption landscape was vastly different. There was no branding, advertising, mass media, consumer credit, or Internet; neighbors knew neighbors; social hierarchies were relatively fixed; and discretionary income was largely unknown. This conceptual synthesis suggests that contemporary consumption is driven far more by benign envy involving a desire to "level up" through consumption emulation rather than "level down" by harming others. The concept of benign envy is developed along with an analysis of the forces leading to its displacement of malicious envy and its key role as a motivator of consumption. The paper concludes with a theoretical development of forms of envy and being envied and derives implications for theory and research.

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confidence: 98%

Benign envy

Belk

2011

AMS Rev

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“…Maybe this is everyday sexismthe cool women are just routinely ignored. But some critical analyses of cool and 'proto' cool figures, such as the dandy and the flâneur, have suggested that it just was not possible for women to be cool because their social position was much more precarious and tied in to biological and social roles of childrearing and familial responsibility (Fraimen 2003). Given that popular characterizations of cool are often anti-heroes, villains, profoundly anti-social and pathologically detached (no matter how 'desirable' they might otherwise appear to be) we cannot simply see this absence of women as negative.…”

Section: Male/female Coolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cool, sunglasses and the modern woman: Icons of the 1960s

Brown

2018

Film, Fashion &Amp; Consumption

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This article considers the enduring appeal of certain iconic images of (sub)urban/e women of the 1960s: Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffanys (1961); Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver; and 'Lolita' as depicted in the promotional poster for Kubrick's 1962 film. These are considered in relation to the idea of 'coolness', an attribute explored as problematic, yet generally desirable. Frequently perceived as a male attribute, even a male pathology, this article explores cool specifically in relation to iconic images of women, and their potential meanings both at the time of their creation and in the present day. It demonstrates how connections between coolness and modernity are articulated in imagery of women by the wearing of sunglasses, a material and embodied practise that allows acts of gazing to be nuanced in a variety of ways. At first sight, these images may have multiple, ambiguous and apparently contradictory meanings (from 'nymphet' to patriarchal refuser) but I will argue that viewing them through the use of sunglasses and the lens of 'modern cool' helps to refocus their power and continued, broad appeal as current benchmarks of still desirable, modern femininities, and therefore, their presence in a plethora of pastiches, consumer products and style discourses.

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“…Queer theory's anti-statism and anti-moralism risks not only reinforcing right-wing ideology, but also infusing that ideology with energy from renewed identity politics. Susan Fraiman (2003) analyzes how queer theory (along with other prominent developments in left academics and culture) tends to construct left resistance as a radical individualism modeled on the male "teen rebel, defined above all by his strenuous alienation from the maternal" (p. xii).…”

Section: B From Egalitarian Politics To Renewed Conservative Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

How Queer Theory Makes Neoliberalism Sexy

McCluskey

2008

SSRN Journal

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Conservative economic ideology lurks below the surface of the current tension between gender and sexuality in some prominent strands of queer legal theory. By exploring this underlying politics of economics, I aim to show how queer theory has tended to adopt and reinforce an uncritical perspective on questions of law and intimacy similar to conservative strands of "liberal" political theory. This new queer flirtation with liberalism is particularly problematic because queer theory claims a position more rigorously critical of liberalism than feminist theory. Queer theory offers an important critique of feminist politics and progressive justice by warning of the limits of a project of identity-based quest for rights and recognition (Weigman, 2004). Nonetheless, the tendency in some queer theory to separate rather than complicate the relationship between economic politics and identity politics, and between market, state, and family, ironically can serve to reinforce the rigid identity conventions and intimacy regulations this queer theory aims to unsettle.. I. Choosing the Right's Sides: Economic and Social Conservativism A. Feminist Theory Questions Autonomy Drawing on and developing feminist theory, Martha Fineman (2004) identifies the myth of autonomy as a central obstacle to justice in contemporary U.S. law and politics. Fineman argues that, in contemporary U.S., policies promoting equality have been sacrificed to a simplistic ideology of individual self-sufficiency. This ideology masks and disparages the

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Cool Men and the Second Sex

Cited by 73 publications

References 0 publications

Benign envy

Benign envy

Cool, sunglasses and the modern woman: Icons of the 1960s

How Queer Theory Makes Neoliberalism Sexy

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