‘I Want to Wear It’: Fashioning Black Feminism in Mahogany (1975)

ABSTRACT

In this article I focus on the portrayal of fashionable clothing in the 1975 film Mahogany and connect it to the history of African American women engaging with sartorial self-representation as a means to assert their visibility in American culture. My aim is to analyse Mahogany’s emphasis on brightly-coloured highly-ornamented clothing, which has a long history of signifying bad taste and became part of accusations of racial and sexual inferiority. I want to show how Mahogany’s representation of fashion undermines the historically entrenched bias against colourful, highly adorned clothing while also revealing how this bias has played a subtle but significant role in the racism and sexism black women have encountered, further (but not finally) impeding them from the forms of recognition the category of femininity offers. Mahogany represents those impediments and repeats the sexual and racial commodification underlying them, but also resists them (albeit quite subtly) through the film’s loving display of fashion and its attention to the work of designing and making clothes. Mahogany tells a story of bright sartorial resistance that can be understood as an articulation of black feminist desires for women of colour to be able to compose the images through which their bodies are perceived.     

Texting girls: images,sounds, and words in neoliberal cultures of femininity

This introductory essay provides an overview of the arguments and premises of this special issue, Texting Girls: Images, Sounds, and Words in Neoliberal Cultures of Femininity. Situated within the recent historical conjuncture in which “girls” (and all that is suggested by the term) have an unprecedented cultural visibility, the essay argues that the figure of the girl is coerced into performing forms of symbolic work within neoliberalism that displaces and contains the corrosive effects of capitalism unbound. Drawing from recent work in Girl Studies and Feminist Theory, the introduction demonstrates that this work relies upon a long-standing conflation of girls and commodification, which supports “girlphobic” constructions in both pro-capitalist stances and anti-capitalist critiques.     

The role of procedural justice in the allocation of limited resources: A West German perspective

Following the experimental design used by Barrett-Howard and Tyler (1986), this study examines the importance given by West German university students to procedural and distributive justice allocation decision making. After reading one of eight scenarios in which there was a limited resource to be allocated, the subjects answered questions concerning the importance and meaning of justice. For the most part, the results correspond to previous U.S. findings of the importance of procedural justice and its definition across various allocation settings. However, the West German students placed greater importance on having mechanisms for correcting inadequate decisions than did their American counterparts. Beyond the design of the initial U.S. study, however, the West German students were asked in an open-ended format to discuss their concerns in making the allocation decision. Nearly half of the unprompted responses centered around justice issues.     

Developing Codes of Conduct: Regulatory Conversations as Means for Detecting Institutional Change

The introduction of a new corporate governance code in Sweden, modeled after prevailing Anglo-Saxon norms of corporate governance, offers the opportunity to investigate global regulatory convergence. Using the metaphor of regulatory space, this article analyzes the positions of the parties who submitted formal responses to the introduction of "The Swedish Code of Corporate Governance—A Proposal from the Code Group." While the globalization of financial markets might forecast unconditional acceptance of the proposed code by business and financial interests, the analysis of who made comments, and what was said, reveals three categorically distinct groups: Swedish business "insiders" connected to the existing institutional framework who opposed changes that would erode traditional division of functions, including collective responsibility for the actions of company boards; "outsiders" (i.e., foreign investors and more marginal Swedish investors) aligned with Anglo-Saxon internationalization of the markets who would change the system of corporate accountability; and the professions (i.e., auditors), who advocated for their professional interests. Of the three groups, Swedish business insiders were most successful in gaining support for their positions. Although international financial and political interests were key to the introduction of the Code in the first place, the article demonstrates how the dynamics of national (local) culture and power structures influence the transfer of regulatory law across jurisdictions.     

Utilization of paw prints for species identification in the Canidae family

In this report, the bodies of six skinned animals were submitted to the Oklahoma Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory for necropsy examination as authorities were concerned these animals were domestic dogs. Given the condition of the animals, identification of the animal species could not be based on traditional physical characteristics such as size, fur characteristics, and ear characteristics. The paw prints from these animals were characterized based on size, heel pad architecture, and claw characteristics. The length of the forepaws measured 3-3.25 in., four toes were observed and only the claws of digits 3 and 4 were identified, and the heel pad had a pronounced three-lobed rear margin. The rear margin of the heel pad of the hind foot was of circular shape with two slightly forward-pointing crescents laterally. Based on the features of the paw print it was determined that the animals necropsied were coyotes.     

The Effect of Gender of Perpetrator and Victim on Perceptions of Psychological and Physical Intimate Partner Aggression

Most studies of third-party perceptions of intimate partner violence focus on heterosexual relationships and report that male-to-female aggression is perceived more negatively than female-to-male. Since gender of aggressor and gender of victim are consistently confounded in these portrayals, it is not clear whether the gender of the aggressor or the gender of the victim accounts for the effect. The present research manipulated gender of perpetrator and victim to unravel this confound. Two hundred and fifty one participants (166 females) read scenarios involving psychological or physical aggression between two males, two females, or a male and a female. Participants reported their perceptions of the encounter and the character and emotional reactions of the individual couple members. Physical aggression was evaluated more negatively than psychological aggression. Participants evaluated the encounter and the perpetrator and victim in a manner consistent with stereotypical gender roles, revealing more concern for female than male victims and greater denigration of male than female perpetrators. These results have implications for programs aimed at the reduction of intimate partner violence and the services and programs developed for perpetrators and victims.     

The Legal Character of the Optional Clause System

In international legal writing the therm "optional clause" is construed to mean Art. 36. para. 2. of the Statue of the International Court of Justice, which allows the states parties to unilaterally declare that they recognize as compulsory, in relation to any other state accepting the same obligation, the jurisdiciton of the Court in specified categories of legal disputes. The above mentioned declarations from a special system called the system of complusory jurisdiction. The legal character of the optional clause and the system of complusory jurisdiction deserves attentionnot only because it embodies a theoretical issue, but also because it is of great practical relevance, considering that the answares to be given to a number of important matters associated with declarations of acceptance -such as the rules governing withdrawal or termination of declarations or its admissibility, the legal effects of reservation and restrictions attached to declarations, interpretation of declaration- depend on how one looks on the legal character of the clause. One trend will emphasize the unilaterial nature of the system of clause, while the other will conceive of the resultant relations as between states accepting the compulsory juridiction of the Court as a contractula relationship.