Looking Good: The Lesbian Gaze and Fashion Imagery

This paper is concerned with the different forms of pleasure and identification activated in the consumption of dominant and subcultural print media. It centres on an analysis of the lesbian visual pleasures generated through the reading of fashion editorial in the new lesbian and gay lifestyle magazines. This consideration of the lesbian gaze is contrasted to the lesbian visual pleasures obtained from an against the grain reading of mainstream women's fashion magazines. The development of the lesbian and gay lifestyle magazines, in the context of the pink pound, produces a situation in which an eroticized lesbian visual pleasure is the overt remit of the magazine, rather than a clandestine pleasure obtained through a transgressive reading of dominant cultural imagery. In contrast to the polysemic free-play of fashion fantasy by which readers produce lesbian pleasure in the consumption of mainstream magazines, responses to the fashion content in the lesbian magazine Diva suggest that in a subcultural context readers deploy a realist mode of reading that demands a monosemic positive images iconography. The article uses the concept of subcultural competency to consider the different ways lesbians read mainstream and subcultural print media and suggests that the conflict over Diva's fashion spreads may be linked to changing patterns of identification and the use of dress for recognizability.     

Reviews

Christopher Saunders (ed.), Eastern Europe in Crisis and the Way Out. London: Macmillan, 1995, ix + 525 pp., £50.00.

Bernard Chavance, The Transformation of Communist Systems: Economic Reform since the 1950s, trans. Charles Hauss, Boulder: Westview Press, 1994, xi + 225 pp., £13.50.

Paul J. J. Welfens & Piotr Jasinski, Privatization and Foreign Direct Investment in Transforming Economies. Aldershot, Brookfield, Singapore, Sydney: Dartmouth, 1994; xix + 295 pp.

Geoffrey Pridham, Eric Herring & George Sanford (eds), Building Democracy? The International Dimension of Democratisation in Eastern Europe. London: Leicester University Press, 1994, viii + 224 pp., £37.50

M. Steven Fish, Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. x + 300 pp., $39.50, £30.00.

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Mark Galeotti, The Age of Anxiety: Security and Politics in Soviet and Post‐Soviet Russia. London: Longman, 1995, xi + 219 pp., £29.99 h/b, £10.99 p/b.

James G. Richter, Khrushchev's Double Bind: International Pressures and Domestic Coalition Politics. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, xi + 263 pp., £37.00.

Jon Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, xi + 343 pp.

Robert Zuzowski, Political Dissent and Opposition in Poland: The Workers’ Defense Committee “KOR”. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1992, ix + 293 pp. $65.00.

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Robert J. Brym with the assistance of Rozalina Ryvkina, The Jews of Moscow, Kiev and Minsk: Identity, Antisemitism, Emigration. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan in association with the Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1994, xvi + 142 pp.

Allan Laine Kagedan, Soviet Zion: The Quest for a Russian Jewish Homeland. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994, xii + 157 pp. £30.00.

Erich E. Haberer, Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth‐Century Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, xv + 346 pp. £40.00, $59.95.

Mary Buckley, Redefining Russian Society and Polity. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993, xvii + 346 pp., £13.50.

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Book reviews

Michael Cox, US Foreign Policy After the Cold War; Superpower Without a Mission?, (Pinter, London 1995). 148pp. ISBN 1–85567–221–9.

Philip John Davies (ed), An American Quarter Century: US Politics From Vietnam to Clinton, (Manchester University Press, Manchester 1995). 279pp. ISBN 0–7190–4514–2.

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John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland, (Blackwell, Oxford 1995). 535pp. ISBN 0–631–18349–3.

Jerzy Szacki, Liberalism After Communism, (Central European Press, Budapest 1995). 216pp. ISBN 1–85866–015–7 (hb), 1–85866–016–5 (pb).

Janusz Bugajski, Nations in Turmoil: Conflict and Cooperation in Eastern Europe, second edition, (Westview Press, Boulder 1995). 265pp. ISBN 0–8133–2351–7 (hb), 0–8133–2350–9 (pb).

Jeremy Lester, Modern Tsars and Princes: The Struggle for Hegemony in Russia, (Verso, London 1995). 320pp. ISBN 1–85984–039–6 (pb).     

The Clash between Security and Liberty in the U.S. Response to Terror

This study examines U.S. public opinion on civil liberties and security in response to the politically pivotal events of September 11, 2001—what shape it is in, what shapes it, and what it shapes. Public opinion is a critical restraint on political and administrative action today because so many regulators, rule makers, and law enforcers are making decisions or advocating policies that directly affect the balance between liberty and security. The general importance that is popularly attributed to terrorism is gauged by its ranking among the most important problems. The ostensibly contradictory public attitudes toward civil liberties are analyzed, as is the supposed inconsistency between perceived personal impact and the general significance attributed to the attacks. The data rebut the allegation that the public is readily disposed to restrict civil liberties as the price of security. Findings show the public does not perceive a personal or immediate threat to civil liberties. The implications for further research and good governance are laid out.     

Photo‐ and Thermal‐Degradation Studies of Select Eccrine Fingerprint Constituents

Abstract: Photo‐ and thermal‐degradation studies on eccrine fingerprint components are presented herein. Dilute distinct solutions of urea, lactic acid, and seven amino acids were deposited on steel coupons and Teflon^® disks, exposed to artificial sunlight or heat, extracted, and analyzed. This aim of this study was to determine whether the investigated eccrine components, previously determined to be Raman active for a parallel study, experienced photo‐ or thermally induced degradation, and if so, to determine the rate and identify any detectable products. Neither the amino acids nor urea exhibited photo‐degradation; however, when heated for a period of three minutes, the onset of thermal‐degradation was initiated at 100°C for the amino acids and 100°C for urea. Lactic acid, the major polymerization initiator of superglue fuming, showed photochemical and thermal‐degradation. These results could be used for future development of new latent fingerprint visualization methods, especially when lactic acid is degraded.     

A Comparison of Thresholding Methods for Forensic Reconstruction Studies Using Fluorescent Powder Proxies for Trace Materials

Image segmentation is a fundamental precursor to quantitative image analysis. At present, no standardised methodology exists for segmenting images of fluorescent proxies for trace evidence. Experiments evaluated (i) whether manual segmentation is reproducible within and between examiners (with three participants repeatedly tracing three images) (ii) whether manually defining a threshold level offers accurate and reproducible results (with 20 examiners segmenting 10 images), and (iii) whether a global thresholding algorithm might perform with similar accuracy, while offering improved reproducibility and efficiency (16 algorithms tested). Statistically significant differences were seen between examiners’ traced outputs. Manually thresholding produced good accuracy on average (within ±1% of the expected values), but poor reproducibility (with multiple outliers). Three algorithms (Yen, MaxEntropy, and RenyiEntropy) offered similar accuracy, with improved reproducibility and efficiency. Together, these findings suggest that appropriate algorithms could perform thresholding tasks as part of a robust workflow for reconstruction studies employing fluorescent proxies for trace evidence.