In response to this week’s discussion on the Gurlesque, I think it is necessary to discuss the concept of “cuteness,” of being cute. I take issue a bit with the definition of “cuteness” that Glenum gives us in her introduction. I had questions about this when I read it and was surprised/interested when Danielle Pafunda chose to focus on this in class. Glenum writes:
“Cuteness, then, far from being a harmless aesthetic category, reveals a state of acute deformity.” (p 16)
Glenum and Pafunda seem to agree that cuteness reflects the deformity and (insecurity, incompletion, grotesque) of the girl. I think there is something more to cuteness. I am surprised how quickly Glenum dismisses cuteness—she makes it sound like something to shun, to be ashamed of—because to me, “cuteness” contains as much potential for feminist activism as the girl.
On one level, cuteness is a “harmless aesthetic category.” As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, to be “cute” is to be:
“Attractive in a pretty or endearing way: a cute kitten.”
To me, this means that that cute means nothing at all, that it is entirely subjective. Like “girl, “cute” is that which is both extremely stereotyped—think baby animals, baby humans, dolls, pink things, little things—and completely undefined. Girls are cute. Boys are cute. Cupcakes are cute. Grandmothers are cute. Restaurants are cute.
Wikipedia defines cuteness as that which is associated with youth. I have heard this definition before: that people are naturally drawn toward the infantile—that we think puppies are cute because they remind us of babies. This definition may draw closer to Glenum’s definition of the deformity –or, at the very least, the helplessness and innocence—associated with cuteness.
My question: What is “cute”? Do you agree with Glenum and Pafunda that to be cute or to “love” cuteness is to reveal “a state of acute deformity” of the self? Are Glenum and Pafunda shunning the cute? Is the girlish love of cute things only a revelation of insecurity or, even, the grotesque. Is cuteness limited to the girl? Can cuteness be inverted and used to liberate women, to fight patriarchy? Or by trying to be cute or drawing towards cuteness, do we contribute to that which confirms our supposed or constructed subordination?
I think those are some great questions, and as I first started reading your post I placed the category of 'cute' into Pafunda's example in which she showed up to a discussion/staff meeting with the intention of performing 'girl'. As a 'girl' with plenty to say, Pafunda argues that this performace is liberating for the feminine, because it undermines the vagueness of the definition and forces her audience to no longer underestimate 'girl' as a performative identity also associated with academic intelligence and the potential to contribute. Your argument has made it possible to perform 'cute' in a similar manner, assuming that 'cute' isn't something that can only be associated with 'girl'. 'Cute' I think has even more potential because there is less of an age restriction that comes along with the word. Eventually, I expect that 'girl' can no longer be useful for grown women, yet Danielle would argue differently in that she still feels able to perform girl ( so at what age does girl stop being an effective identity to perform?). I would say that oftentimes old women and men are described as 'cute' thus giving the term a larger potential. I do however think that 'cute' as a term lends itself to underestimating the object or person that is cute, and therefore may not be as useful when inverted. As Peyton said, cute isn't associated with anything of much value, whereas 'girl' is something that has the potential to grow and change into 'woman' a much stronger term.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to elucidate something I said in class on Thursday that I didn't really have the words for at that moment. In discussing the girl, I said something along the lines of "the girl appears to be the least subjectified/objectified figure" due to her extreme fluidity in the literary and social space. My ideas weren't fully developed, and in fact what I should have said was "the girl appears to be the most objectified" in this way. It was this fluidity that got me thinking about the role of the girl, and whether it is tied down or not. Initially, my reaction was to say that "no," the girl appears to have no defined space in this system--she defies objectification because she carries so much potential. She is seen as both innocent and pervasive, both a child and a woman, etc. However, I must turn on my original notion and say that it is because of her fluidity that she seems to be the most objectified figure. Though she can hold any position, it seems, along many spectrums of understanding, she does not hold any free will in the matter of objectification. She is merely a subject, with no control as to how she will be seen/portrayed.
ReplyDeleteTo tie in with Peyton, cuteness is yet another prescription we assign young girls in their innocence and in their pre-adult-womanness. However, to say that the girl is NOT cute, to ascribe to her a different adjective is not to rid the girl of her cuteness, nor is it to release her into a newer existence free of objectification--it is instead to further objectify her by means of whatever adjective the objectifier decides.
It is extremely difficult to take a notion such as girl, which has such a depth of objectification, and attempt to shed those adjectives of which she has been prescribed literarily and socially. I find that the Gurlesque does a good job in moving towards a girl free from these constraints, but they do not succeed fully. To break out of the girl seems to be to become a woman, and to break back into the girl seems only to be further objectifying the girl from the place of a woman.