Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

was having her pubic hair styled, she told us that it was purely forher own self. ”The first woman is defined through age, color, and activity. Sheis old in the male value system, beyond sexual desirability. She isused, hardened, potentially dangerous yet performing a menialservice. Her proper sexual role is to prepare, to groom, a youngerwoman for sexual service. She is a woman of color, though it is notclear which color. Turban, ivory tooth, heavy silver jewelry withthe half-moon earring, Oriental characters on her robe, a gypsylikeappearance as if a fortune-teller, suggest that she is an old witchwoman filled with racial mysteries, malice, and magic—a prototypicalfemale figure in the racist imagination. Both her servility andhostility to the white woman are articulated in the activity sheperforms, menial in relation to the white woman yet also potentiallydangerous to her. This is the classic situation of the raciallydegraded servant: her literal ability to hurt the one she serves is, in amoment, absolute, but she cannot survive beyond the literal actbecause her group is powerless, she will be destroyed, and so sheserves.The white woman—Polish, in ethnic humor characterized asextremely stupid—stares into the camera with an unflinching gaze,with no hint of embarrassment, modesty, or shame. She isunafraid. She wants what she is getting. She is, in a literal sense,imperiled, at the mercy of the woman of color, but she does noteven acknowledge her. The Polish joke in the layout may be thatthe Polish woman thinks that all of this is “purely for her own self. ”The white woman is the whore, the sexual object of the moment.The woman of color is the sexual veteran. The woman of color isthe menial. The white woman is the boss. The older woman is thepreparer. The younger woman is the thing prepared. In the realmof age, the relationship parodies the mother-daughter arrangementin the male-supremacist system: the mother teaches her daughterhow to groom herself or grooms her; the mother is the carrier andenforcer of male aesthetic values vis-i-vis the female body; themother’s success is measured by the daughter’s success in becomingwhat the mother has tried to make her. The older woman has the