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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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Valerie Steele '83PhD When the singer Madonna jumped onstage ten years ago in a provocative corset—a highlight of her “Blonde Ambition” tour—many women howled in dismay at the mere possibility that this waist-cinching contraption, first made of whalebone, later of steel, might be poised for a comeback. “Today the corset is almost universally condemned as an instrument of women’s oppression,” says Valerie Steele, chief curator at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology. But in this contrarian account of what she calls “the most controversial garment in the entire history of fashion,” Steele notes that women have been lacing up, more or less willingly, for at least 400 years. And they have been doing so despite the fact that many men condemned the garment as an “instrument of torture” and a “major cause of ill health and even death.” Maybe the “Material Girl” was on to something. “Corsetry was not one monolithic, unchanging experience that all unfortunate women experienced before being liberated by feminism,” says Steele. “It was a situated practice that meant different things to different people at different times.” For some, the author points out, it was clearly an “assault on the body.” But other women, from aristocrats to members of the working class, have found in the corset “many positive connotations—of social status, self-discipline, artistry, respectability, beauty, youth, and erotic allure.” Steele traces the history of this garment from its uncertain beginning, perhaps in Minoan Crete several thousand years ago, to its heyday from the 1600s to the end of the 1800s, and from its nadir in the 20th century as physical fitness and plastic surgery took over its role to its rebirth as a high-fashion outer garment in recent years. The author also examines the fetishistic, erotic, and social aspects of corsetry. The lushly produced book is full of paintings, illustrations, ads and advertising cards for the “Cleopatra,” “Le Svelte,” and other brands, and fashion photographs that Steele uses as texts to show how various groups have seen the corset throughout time. In a chapter called “Dressed to Kill: the Medical Consequences of Corsetry,” there is even an X-ray of the midsection of Cathy Jung, a modern “tight-lacer,” a follower of the practice, best known from a scene in the movie Gone with the Wind, of cinching in the waist to a minuscule diameter. (Jung’s waist measures 17 inches, and as Steele notes, other women have achieved smaller measurements.) The author dispels the myth of women having ribs removed in the pursuit of the ideal middle, and she views much of the 19th-century condemnation of the corset by doctors as medically unfounded—more illustrative of physicians' prejudices than of scientific discoveries. Indeed, prejudice lies at the heart of many pronouncements made about this garment. “A woman in a corset is a lie, a falsehood, a fiction, but for us, this fiction is better than the reality,” wrote Eugene Chapus in 1862. As Steele shows, women were willing players in the subterfuge.
Philip
K. Howard '70 In the category of “number of lawsuits per capita,” it’s doubtful that any country can match the United States. Certainly we reign unchallenged in the size of the awards for damages. Just consider the $2.9 million cup of McDonald’s coffee, though admittedly that settlement for a burn was later reduced to a mere $640,000. Lawyer Philip K. Howard cites this and other cases, the surreal as well as the sad, in a study of American legal practices that he believes are poisoning the workplace, the schoolroom, the playground, and our race relations. As in The Death of Common Sense, his 1994 best-selling attack on government regulation, Howard’s specialty is the doomed misalliance between lofty reforms and bureaucratic rigidity. Like any pop social critic, he relishes the vivid symbol, such as the disappearing jungle gyms and swings of our liability-plagued playgrounds, and he doesn’t stint on infuriating anecdotes. Should the Little League coach be sued when a ball hits little Johnny? Should an executive’s use of the word “niggardly” be grounds for dismissal? How long will workers be protected from having to do their jobs? However, Howard stands apart from most doomsday authors, and from many of his fellow conservatives, by exploring the causes of our litigious reflexes as well as their garish effects. “The rhetoric of modern justice is individual rights,” he writes, “but its foundation is avoidance of authority. Americans can’t stand the idea of some unknown jerk having the power to make decisions.” The authority of judges, of shared values, the common good, and even common sense, says Howard, has given way to a forum for individual grievances all demanding satisfaction. A brisk history lesson traces this shift in philosophy (“from mistrust to unaccountability”), and leads to proposals for redeeming our institutions. Labor unions come in for their share of blame, especially in the schools, and there is plenty of ire for clumsy political correctness and affirmative action. While everyone will recognize the villains introduced here, readers may not draw the same moral as Howard, especially concerning race relations. But with his feisty rhetoric, you'd want him on your side in a lawsuit. “Immunity from scrutiny,” he says in a typical flourish, “is what bureaucrats live for.”
John Hollander, Sterling Professor of English, and Joanna Weber, assistant curator in the department of European and Contemporary Art, editors In a book commissioned by the Yale University Art Gallery, readers are invited on a guided tour of the Gallery in the company of more than a score of renowned poets and two eminent scholars. Words for Images: A Gallery of Poems, is edited by Joanna Weber, assistant curator in the department of European and Contemporary Art, and John Hollander, Sterling Professor of English. The editors asked Yale-trained poets to write a poem inspired by a Gallery holding. In the introduction, Hollander reminds us that a flirtation between the literary and visual arts has been a longstanding tradition. He writes, “There seems to be a degree to which poem and painting or sculpture are almost erotically related, language always seeking to embrace image, its desire always thwarted.” Poet Annie Finch '79 tries her hand at such a marriage in “Conversation,” a poem of dialogue between two interlocking squash—inspired by an Edward Weston photograph—in which the vegetables lie “throat over throat, ankle to ankle.” The other poets steered towards works both famous and nearly unknown. Craig Arnold '90 reacted to the Lipstick, a legendary Yale landmark in its own time, created by Claes Oldenburg '50 . Arnold writes in “A Short History of Sex on Campus,” “How it drew us,/ dared us to make light of its silly myth.” Robert B. Shaw '74PhD, on the other hand, responded to a wooden cat that was sculpted by Alexander Calder and is currently in storage. Although Shaw releases the cat temporarily, he says it looks “too sedate to spit"; he recommends that “this cat stay in the cupboard. He’s not one/ we can imagine willing to adopt us.” Weber and Hollander follow each poem with commentary about the writing and its corresponding art. The many voices in this book’s “conversation” allow us to see—and see again—works both familiar and new.
Brief Reviews Elisha Cooper '93 Sketchpad and watercolors in hand, illustrator and author Cooper follows a dance company as it gets ready for a performance. Young children and their parents will love his fluid drawing style and the way the book’s lines of type often dance across the page.
Nancy F. Cott, Stanley Woodward Professor of History and American Studies Marriage may be a private decision between two adults, but Cott reveals that the national government has had a profound role in the institution. Jodi
Halpern,'82, ‘89MD, ‘93PhD The author, a physician and a philosopher, shows that establishing emotional ties to patients does not represent a loss of objectivity. Rather, empathy is critical in diagnosis and treatment.
Robert
H. King '60BD, ‘65PhD The author explains that although Merton and Hanh were of different religious traditions—a Christian and a Buddhist, respectively—they exemplified the relationship between contemplative practice and social action.
Mark
B. Ryan '74PhD Ryan, dean of JE from 1976 to 1996, chronicles the development of the residential college system and shows how the idea is portable;he is currently establishing a similar system in Mexico.
Rachel
Toor '84 In the college admissions sweepstakes, BWRKs—bright, well-rounded kids—are at a distinct disadvantage, says the author, an admissions officer at Duke from 1997 to last year. Toor tells why.
More Books by Yale Authors Michael Bernstein 1976, 1982PhD Edmund Case 1972 and Ronnie Friedland, Editors Harriet Scott Chessman 1979PhD William V. D'Antonio 1948 Michael Alexander Eisner 1987, 1991JD Peter Gay, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History Frederic Lawrence Holmes, Avalon Professor of the History of Medicine Evelyne Huber 1977PhD and John D. Stephens 1976PhD Alex Kerr 1974 Clifford M. Kuhn 1974 J. D. Landis 1963 Lance Lee 1967MFA Adam Lewis 1972MFA James Meyer 1984, Editor Charles Musser, Professor of American Studies and Film Studies, Jane Gaines, and Pearl Bowser Anne C. Rose 1979PhD Lawrence Schimel 1993 William Storandt, Tutor, Bass Writing Program Kirsten Swinth 1995PhD Harry G. Tolland 1944 Jonathan B. Tucker 1975 Diana Wylie 1985PhD Carl Zimmer 1987
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