The soaring unemployment rates during The Great Depression drove Americans hunting for work all over the nation. While their need to work was primarily for survival, it also reflected the cultural sentiment to feel one’s self a large sense of purpose and inclusion. Warren Susman argues in “Culture as History” that 1930s America “was the decade of participation and belonging” (172). Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal social welfare liberalism embraced the people’s will and desire to participate through offering them government assistance programs, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) which employed them. Furthermore, the New Deal emphasized equal opportunity for all races. Two of the CCC photographs, Wilfred J. Mead’s Work Project and Negro Enrollee, Beltsville, MD 1940 illustrate that government assistance programs did enable Americans to participate in their communities through physical work, however the photos also suggest that whites and blacks do not participate nor belong in communities equally.
Roosevelt’s Commonwealth Club Address expresses his vision of national history, freedom, private property, the role of government and the mood of America in 1932. Roosevelt describes America during the Depression as having fallen under “the hand of discouragement” (Roosevelt 1). Yet the verbal phrase he uses to describe his sense of the landscape he has witnessed from Albany to the Golden Gate is that “America is new” and is in the process of change and development (Roosevelt 1). Roosevelt’s optimism expressed in the initial paragraphs of his Commonwealth Club Address speaks to the image of Americans wanting to participate, belong and to feel a larger sense of purpose by encouraging them to trust that his New Deal will get them out of the Depression. Roosevelt spoke to the notion of community and collective action in his Commonwealth Club Address by both acknowledging his appreciation to those who thought in terms “beyond the immediate present, beyond their own immediate tasks, beyond their own individual interests,” and by considering the relationships between government and the economic lives of individuals and corporations (Roosevelt 2).
His belief that the “function of government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens” (Roosevelt 4) paved the way for the New Deal social welfare liberalism which relied on government assistance to ensure that all citizens had the resources necessary for individual opportunity and self-development. This idea cultivated programs like the CCC which would encourage civic participation through employment and would help improve the economic situation individually and collectively.
The CCC, which employed almost three million young men over a 10 year period on projects such as soil conservation, disaster relief, reforestation, flood control, and building parks and park facilities created a sense of community and belonging amongst those who participated. Between 1933 and 1943, the CCC and other government agencies under the New Deal hired hundreds of photographers, artists, writers, musicians, and actors to create documents and images that would spread New Deal ideals throughout the country (Palmer 2/17/09). All of these artistic mediums could effectively disseminate cultural ideals of the time and served as a means for people to feel more connected, again reflecting the desire for participation and belonging. According to Susman, these mediums “created a novel kind of community, breaking down barriers, creating often new common experiences for millions,” (161). One of the ideals that the New Deal claimed and attempted to showcase in photographs was the idea that it would treat all races equally. While many of the photographs produced during this time did feature more diversity, two of the CCC photos, both of men (one white, the other black) working in what appears to be rural farmlands, presented the two races as being treated unequally.
The CCC photograph Work Project by Wilfred J. Mead presents a young, white man standing tall and erect with a tight grip of a sledge-hammer. The young man appears healthy, strong, and overall physically fit. This is illustrative of one of the main objectives of the CCC, building strong bodies (Mead). He is wearing pants that appear to be middle-class work pants and they are held up to his bellybutton tightly by a belt. He is not wearing a shirt; instead, the sunlight is radiating off of his chest and face. His skin is clean and glowing and his head is protected from the sun by a hat. He appears to be gazing at something in the distance, not making eye contact with the viewer. The sledge-hammer he is holding gives him authority, power, and control. He is holding the sledge-hammer right below his hips and its’ direct, sturdy placement on his legs create balance in the frame. The young man’s placement in the foreground of the photograph makes him dominate the scene. The only thing in the background is the edges of a tree; the lack of elements in the background of this photograph further emphasizes the subject as the dominating force. The frame itself is rather small which makes the young man appear even more gigantic and god-like than he actually is. His attitude appears to be serious and determined and the description below the photo says that another print has the caption “The slogan of the Civilian Conservation Corps is ‘We can take it!’” (Mead). The photograph is in black and white which further symbolizes the hard work, serious attitude, and no play this young enrollee in the CCC faces.
The CCC photograph Negro Enrollees portrays the black worker in a very different light than the white man from Work Project. This man appears overheated, sweating, and tired from the work he’s been doing. His face does not have the serious, determined, god-like look that the white man possesses; his face carries an expression of utter exhaustion. There is no sunlight radiating off of his face or his chest. Rather, he is fully dressed in clothes that look a bit more raggedy than the white man’s pants. His gloves, hat, and shoes all look dirty and as if they’ve been through hard, endless work. He’s sitting in some kind of machine which is helping him do the work, making him appear weak and dependent on technology. This is strikingly different from the white man in Work Project who is holding the sledge-hammer and is in control of the work he is doing. The machine controlling the black man’s work diminishes him and makes him appear inferior to the white man who is in control of his physical labor. Unlike the white man who appears gigantic and dominating in Work Project, the black man shares the foreground of the photograph with the machine, emphasizing that he is not the sole focus nor is he independent and strong. The only feature of the black man that is exaggerated is his hand; the fact that the viewer’s eyes immediately go to his hand before his face further de-humanizes him. The description next to the photograph says he is working on road surfacing; the road extends into the background, symbolizing the work he has already done and how much he has had to do to get to where he is in the photograph. One can interpret that the CCC included the long, surfaced road in the background to symbolize two things: 1.) that the black man could not have gotten to where he is in this photograph without the assistance of the CCC and 2.) the black man should be appreciative of what the CCC has provided him with.
Both photographs utilize hard work as a symbol of Americans’ participation in what American culture prides itself in – working hard to obtain the prized “American Dream.” Even though we don’t see the white man in Work Project physically working, we see him posed, and ready to work; we can infer that he’s gone through physical workouts to reach the level of fitness he is illustrated to have. Yet the fact that he is posed as opposed to working in the photograph emphasizes the notion that work will come relatively easy for him because of his race. It’s inferable that the black man in Black Enrollees has undergone significant mental and physical work to get to where he is in the photograph; we know from history that he will continue to have to go through much more work than the white man to reach the American dream.
While Roosevelt’s New Deal ensured equal opportunity for all races and programs such as the CCC were meant to employ Americans for individual and community benefits, the evidence from the CCC photographs say otherwise. The de-humanization and the hard physical labor the black man is undergoing in Black Enrollees as opposed to the glorification of the white man standing with a sledge-hammer in Work Project, illustrates that even though both men are presented as working under the CCC, they are not participating in nor are belonging to the American way of life of the 1930s equally.
miércoles, 25 de febrero de 2009
miércoles, 11 de febrero de 2009
Draft of Paper 2
In a period when all American women were negotiating behavior and self-presentation between older ideals of domesticity and newer ideals of independent womanhood, Kathy Peiss’s “Making Faces: The Cosmetics Industry and the Cultural Construction of Gender, 1890-1930” argues that some black and immigrant women sought out cosmetics as a means of becoming culturally and socially accepted in the white, male-dominant society and as a way of expressing modernity. Yet black and immigrant women were often faced with dire poverty and didn’t necessarily have the time or money to devote toward their own physical appearance. This paper will argue that while many minority women did strive to obtain the materialistic beauty that white, American women embraced, Anzia Yezierska’s character Sara Smolinsky expressed her modernity and femininity through seeking an education, independence, and the natural, pristine beauty that she admired in her fellow college students.
In the time period of Yezierska’s novel Bread Givers, minority women struggled with re-defining themselves to fit not only the mold of the white, American woman, but also the mold of the modern woman. Peiss expresses the idea that make-up was a stepping stone towards women’s success and fulfillment (Peiss 372). According to Peiss, “women linked cosmetics use to an emergent notion of their own modernity, which included hard-work, athleticism, leisure, freer sexual expressiveness, and greater individual consumption,” (372). Futhermore, the assumption evolved that “every woman should be beautiful – as a duty to her husband and children, in order to achieve business success, or to find romance – and those who were not beautiful had only themselves to blame,” (376).
The cosmetic industry created “class,” “mass,” and “ethnic” markets so every woman had the opportunity to use make-up and reap its’ benefits, according to Peiss (372). Some, however, particularly those of different ethnic backgrounds, saw make-up as being used by what Peiss calls “disorderly women oriented toward urban nightlife and sexual pleasure,” (373). Yet the cosmetic and beauty product industry’s widespread advertising through drugstores, hairdressers, magazines, and more, eventually led to its popular use, particularly by black women.
According to Peiss, black people in the nineteenth century were constrained even more than white people by poverty and had little money for anything beyond what they needed (381). Yet Peiss describes how the beauty industry offered new employment opportunities for black women; beauty parlors could easily be opened in homes and small shops and was considered a woman’s type of work. Yet the beauty products that appealed most to black women, according to Peiss, were not cosmetics, but were hair products. Peiss writes, “For black women, hair care, including straightening, was one external marker of personal success and racial progress, signifying a response to the white denigration of black womanhood,” (383). Hence, it can be argued that the new-found beauty in hair products helped define the new, modern black woman who was trying to appear whiter.
For immigrant women, such as Yezierska’s leading character, Sara, there existed unique interpretations of what the new, modern woman was. For Sara, a great part of that was pulling herself away from the strict, traditional ways in which a woman was defined. Her father’s character is the emblem of the old world which they come from; his views on women would be perceived as sexist by today’s standards. Yet for him, they represent the ideals of the Torah. He says, “No girl can live without a father or a husband to look out for her. It says in the Torah, only through a man has a woman an existence,” (Yezierska 136-7). Thus, the driving force behind Sara’s dream of becoming the new, modern woman was independence. Not until later when she started going to school did the idea of beauty become any sort of priority for her. Her idea of modernity was not solely shaped by using make-up and other high fashion as means of improving herself and making herself more attractive to men, as it was for her sister Mashah, who stood “proud in the power of her beauty,” (145). Sara’s dedication to becoming a self-educated, hard-working American supersedes any romantic or materialistic fulfillments. This is illustrated in chapter seven when Sara says to her sister Fania, “Besides, I don’t want to get married. I’ve set out to do something and I’m going to do it, even if it kills me,” (177). Later on in the chapter when her sister asks her to accompany her to visit their mother, Sara responds with, “My work goes on Sundays and holidays. I’m like a soldier in battle. I can’t stop for visiting, even with my own family,” (178). These two quotes exemplify Sara’s work-ethic to fight for the American dream because that will make her the modern woman she wishes to become. Beauty and family, the two ideals that stereotypically define womanhood, no longer apply to Sara; they will only hinder her goals.
Yet despite her strong-will and determination, her poor, immigrant status and dirty appearance makes it hard for her to fit in and we never read of her forming any female friendships. After a catastrophic attempt to use make-up as a means of fitting in with the other girls, Yezierska illustrates Sara’s frustration and return to her initial priority; “I threw myself more desperately than ever into my studies. My one hope was to get to the educated world, where only the thoughts you give out count, and not how you look,” (Yezierska 183).
Despite the fact that minority women had access to what Kathy Peiss calls the “mass” cosmetic products, Sara sees beauty in a more natural sense, one that correlates to Peiss’s description of the “beauty culture” that is reflective of healthy and hygienic primping. Ironically enough and analogous to Sara’s perception of beauty, Peiss describes how beauty culturists of the time initially did not approve of make-up; rather, they stressed the route to natural beauty through breathing, exercise, diet, and bathing. We learn multiple times in Bread Givers, particularly when Sara goes to college, that Sara also finds natural beauty and clean appearances to be more attractive than fake, ostentatious outward displays of beauty. In the scene when she is on the train going to college, she finds the natural beauty in the landscape and people around her. Yezierska writes, “This was the beauty for which I had always longed….Beauty of houses, beauty of streets, beauty shining out of the calm faces and cool eyes of the people! Oh – too cool…” (211). Sara’s surprise at the natural beauty is only amplified when she arrives at college and first observes the college girls - “But never had I seen such plain beautifulness. The simple skirts and sweaters, the stockings and shoes to match. The neat finished quietness of their tailored suits. There was no show-off in their clothes, and yet how much more pulling to the eyes and all the senses than the Grand Street richness I knew,” (212). Even with Sara’s sister Mashah, who is notorious for being fashionable and always looking beautiful, Sara sees in her an effervescent, natural beauty that is far more impressive than any material or cosmetic products:
“When Mashah walked in the street in her everyday work dress that was cut from the same goods and bought from the same pushcart like the rest of us, it looked different on her. Her clothes were always so new and fresh, without the least little wrinkle, like the dressed-up doll lady from the window of the grandest department store. Like from a born queen it shined from her. The pride in her beautiful face, in her golden hair, lifted her head like a diamond crown,” (4).
Sara is on her way to becoming the independent modern woman she aspires to be when she leaves home to live on her own and seek a college education. She finds a dismal but affordable place to live, works as an ironer, and attends night school so she can get in to college. And here, even though she is living in the darkness of poverty and loneliness, she is inspired by Mashah’s natural ability to make things look more beautiful than they initially appear. Sara’s attempt to make her dismal living quarters more furnished and pretty is another expression of how she is turning herself into this new, modern woman. Yezierska writes:
“Against this heart-choking dinginess flashed Mashah’s shining little palace. Her place was once worse than this, and she polished it up. Why can’t I? A pot of paint, a little white oilcloth with brass tacks, a scrubbing brush with soap… I don’t ask for fancy furniture, but only a little light for the eyes…” (162-3).
Yezierska’s character Sara found her own modernity and re-defined herself as a new woman by the end of the novel. She is independent, college-educated, and beautiful by her own natural standards. When she finally has overcome poverty and goes to shop for her new clothes, she makes it clear that she doesn’t choose anything too fancy; “Plain serge only! Yes. But more style in its plainness than the richest velvet,” (239). When she furnishes her new room, she does it very simply:
“A table, a bed, a bureau, a few comfortable chairs. No carpet on the floor. No pictures on the wall. Nothing but a clean, airy emptiness. But when I thought of the crowded dirt from where I came, this simplicity was rich and fragrant with unutterable beauty,” (240-1).
While cosmetics did open the door to culture acceptance and modernity for many black women as described by Peiss, the natural beauty coupled with independence and education was what led other minority women, such as Sara Smolinsky, to finding their own new womanhood.
In the time period of Yezierska’s novel Bread Givers, minority women struggled with re-defining themselves to fit not only the mold of the white, American woman, but also the mold of the modern woman. Peiss expresses the idea that make-up was a stepping stone towards women’s success and fulfillment (Peiss 372). According to Peiss, “women linked cosmetics use to an emergent notion of their own modernity, which included hard-work, athleticism, leisure, freer sexual expressiveness, and greater individual consumption,” (372). Futhermore, the assumption evolved that “every woman should be beautiful – as a duty to her husband and children, in order to achieve business success, or to find romance – and those who were not beautiful had only themselves to blame,” (376).
The cosmetic industry created “class,” “mass,” and “ethnic” markets so every woman had the opportunity to use make-up and reap its’ benefits, according to Peiss (372). Some, however, particularly those of different ethnic backgrounds, saw make-up as being used by what Peiss calls “disorderly women oriented toward urban nightlife and sexual pleasure,” (373). Yet the cosmetic and beauty product industry’s widespread advertising through drugstores, hairdressers, magazines, and more, eventually led to its popular use, particularly by black women.
According to Peiss, black people in the nineteenth century were constrained even more than white people by poverty and had little money for anything beyond what they needed (381). Yet Peiss describes how the beauty industry offered new employment opportunities for black women; beauty parlors could easily be opened in homes and small shops and was considered a woman’s type of work. Yet the beauty products that appealed most to black women, according to Peiss, were not cosmetics, but were hair products. Peiss writes, “For black women, hair care, including straightening, was one external marker of personal success and racial progress, signifying a response to the white denigration of black womanhood,” (383). Hence, it can be argued that the new-found beauty in hair products helped define the new, modern black woman who was trying to appear whiter.
For immigrant women, such as Yezierska’s leading character, Sara, there existed unique interpretations of what the new, modern woman was. For Sara, a great part of that was pulling herself away from the strict, traditional ways in which a woman was defined. Her father’s character is the emblem of the old world which they come from; his views on women would be perceived as sexist by today’s standards. Yet for him, they represent the ideals of the Torah. He says, “No girl can live without a father or a husband to look out for her. It says in the Torah, only through a man has a woman an existence,” (Yezierska 136-7). Thus, the driving force behind Sara’s dream of becoming the new, modern woman was independence. Not until later when she started going to school did the idea of beauty become any sort of priority for her. Her idea of modernity was not solely shaped by using make-up and other high fashion as means of improving herself and making herself more attractive to men, as it was for her sister Mashah, who stood “proud in the power of her beauty,” (145). Sara’s dedication to becoming a self-educated, hard-working American supersedes any romantic or materialistic fulfillments. This is illustrated in chapter seven when Sara says to her sister Fania, “Besides, I don’t want to get married. I’ve set out to do something and I’m going to do it, even if it kills me,” (177). Later on in the chapter when her sister asks her to accompany her to visit their mother, Sara responds with, “My work goes on Sundays and holidays. I’m like a soldier in battle. I can’t stop for visiting, even with my own family,” (178). These two quotes exemplify Sara’s work-ethic to fight for the American dream because that will make her the modern woman she wishes to become. Beauty and family, the two ideals that stereotypically define womanhood, no longer apply to Sara; they will only hinder her goals.
Yet despite her strong-will and determination, her poor, immigrant status and dirty appearance makes it hard for her to fit in and we never read of her forming any female friendships. After a catastrophic attempt to use make-up as a means of fitting in with the other girls, Yezierska illustrates Sara’s frustration and return to her initial priority; “I threw myself more desperately than ever into my studies. My one hope was to get to the educated world, where only the thoughts you give out count, and not how you look,” (Yezierska 183).
Despite the fact that minority women had access to what Kathy Peiss calls the “mass” cosmetic products, Sara sees beauty in a more natural sense, one that correlates to Peiss’s description of the “beauty culture” that is reflective of healthy and hygienic primping. Ironically enough and analogous to Sara’s perception of beauty, Peiss describes how beauty culturists of the time initially did not approve of make-up; rather, they stressed the route to natural beauty through breathing, exercise, diet, and bathing. We learn multiple times in Bread Givers, particularly when Sara goes to college, that Sara also finds natural beauty and clean appearances to be more attractive than fake, ostentatious outward displays of beauty. In the scene when she is on the train going to college, she finds the natural beauty in the landscape and people around her. Yezierska writes, “This was the beauty for which I had always longed….Beauty of houses, beauty of streets, beauty shining out of the calm faces and cool eyes of the people! Oh – too cool…” (211). Sara’s surprise at the natural beauty is only amplified when she arrives at college and first observes the college girls - “But never had I seen such plain beautifulness. The simple skirts and sweaters, the stockings and shoes to match. The neat finished quietness of their tailored suits. There was no show-off in their clothes, and yet how much more pulling to the eyes and all the senses than the Grand Street richness I knew,” (212). Even with Sara’s sister Mashah, who is notorious for being fashionable and always looking beautiful, Sara sees in her an effervescent, natural beauty that is far more impressive than any material or cosmetic products:
“When Mashah walked in the street in her everyday work dress that was cut from the same goods and bought from the same pushcart like the rest of us, it looked different on her. Her clothes were always so new and fresh, without the least little wrinkle, like the dressed-up doll lady from the window of the grandest department store. Like from a born queen it shined from her. The pride in her beautiful face, in her golden hair, lifted her head like a diamond crown,” (4).
Sara is on her way to becoming the independent modern woman she aspires to be when she leaves home to live on her own and seek a college education. She finds a dismal but affordable place to live, works as an ironer, and attends night school so she can get in to college. And here, even though she is living in the darkness of poverty and loneliness, she is inspired by Mashah’s natural ability to make things look more beautiful than they initially appear. Sara’s attempt to make her dismal living quarters more furnished and pretty is another expression of how she is turning herself into this new, modern woman. Yezierska writes:
“Against this heart-choking dinginess flashed Mashah’s shining little palace. Her place was once worse than this, and she polished it up. Why can’t I? A pot of paint, a little white oilcloth with brass tacks, a scrubbing brush with soap… I don’t ask for fancy furniture, but only a little light for the eyes…” (162-3).
Yezierska’s character Sara found her own modernity and re-defined herself as a new woman by the end of the novel. She is independent, college-educated, and beautiful by her own natural standards. When she finally has overcome poverty and goes to shop for her new clothes, she makes it clear that she doesn’t choose anything too fancy; “Plain serge only! Yes. But more style in its plainness than the richest velvet,” (239). When she furnishes her new room, she does it very simply:
“A table, a bed, a bureau, a few comfortable chairs. No carpet on the floor. No pictures on the wall. Nothing but a clean, airy emptiness. But when I thought of the crowded dirt from where I came, this simplicity was rich and fragrant with unutterable beauty,” (240-1).
While cosmetics did open the door to culture acceptance and modernity for many black women as described by Peiss, the natural beauty coupled with independence and education was what led other minority women, such as Sara Smolinsky, to finding their own new womanhood.
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