Sweet as a Little Pie
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Sweet as a Little Pie |
| Creator: | Eshva |
| Date(s): | 2001 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | The Phantom Menace |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | here |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Sweet as a Little Pie is a 2001 essay by Eshva.
"This mini-essay thingie came out of a list discussion about the attraction of depictions of the Jedi guys in traditionally feminine clothing."
The essay uses this image as an example.
Excerpts
I'm in the "I don't get it" camp - in fact I actually find it slightly squicky. I love 'androgynous' looks, on men or women. For instance, the description of Regency men's clothing that was given during the discussion - high heeled shoes, silk stockings, long, full-skirted, bright satin coats, puffy knee-length breeches, shirts frothing with lace etc - had me drooling :) But the pic of Qui-Gon in a little maid's outfit just leaves me cold. (the pic being discussed can be found here)
One of the discussion participants talked about her attraction to guys wearing women's clothing, because it looks like a statement of confidence, sensuality and freedom from gender stereotypes; a guy who is not reliant on traditionally masculine clothing to feel like 'a man'. And I can see what she means - I have seen guys who look fabulous in drag - not just how they look, but the whole persona they project.
However I feel there is a difference between the interpretation of a real guy who has *chosen* to wear women's clothes, and characters who we the slashfans have *put* in women's clothes - the dressed up dolls, the cute pics of schoolgirl Obi, Qui-Gon in an evening dress etc.
At this point, I'm not trying to work out why many slash fans do find it attractive - that would be silly since they're in a much better position to know than me - but why I don't. As ever when I'm stumped, I resorted to the library :)
A while ago I read a nifty book discussing pornography (focussing on soft-core porn mags). I found it fascinating, especially since the author wasn't polemically either pro or anti porn, but interested in getting to the bottom of how the magazines work and what's going on in them and how this affects the reader/viewer/wanker (sorry, couldn't resist :) ). The book, in case anyone is interested is "The Reader, The Author, His Woman and Her Lover" by Simon Hardy (1998).
One of the things he discusses is the significance of the stockings worn by the women in the majority of the photos in these magazines. To quote: "stockings might act as an arbitrary sign that what one is looking at is sexy and not simply a picture of someone's body".
I'd say that it's not just stockings that have this meaning - there are a bunch of 'looks' which are coded as sexy - French maid's costumes are sexy, cheerleader costumes are sexy, schoolgirls are sexy etc etc. That is, a woman dressed up in this gear is to be looked at as sex, rather than any of the other possibilities (colleague, friend, antagonist... ). Now I have to admit that I have a squick reaction to this (possibly I'm just puritannical, or got infected by a particular brand of feminism).
Quite a few of the Qui-dressed-as-a-woman and Obi-dressed-as-a-woman pics I have seen seem to be this kind of thing - the Qui-maid pic being a perfect case in point. Now there are a couple of potential ways I could react to this - I could see it as cleverly-subversive-of-gender-paradigms and get a kick out of it. Hey, lets make the guys wear the "I'm a sex object" gear for a change :) However, my brain just doesn't seem to work that way - if I don't like it on women, then I won't like it on a man.
So, as best I can tell, that's why I'm really not keen on this kind of pic.
Perhaps I should note at this point that I don't actually own a skirt of any description, so it's possible that I just don't find "women's" clothing attractive at all on anybody :)