Jaargang 8, nommer 2 – Augustus 2011 - LitNet

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LitNet Akademies Jaargang 8(2) – Augustus 2011 “Binne ’n halfuur het ek wit geword”: Snypunte van gender, ras en klas in Suid-Afrikaanse fiksionele uitbeeldings van voorkoms Summary Jessica Murray Departement Engels Universiteit van Suid-Afrika “Binne ’n halfuur het ek wit geword” (Within half an hour I became white): Intersections of gender, race and class in South African fictional representations of appearance This article explores how intersections of gender, race and class shape the evaluation of women’s appearance in selected South African works of fiction. These texts are Pat Stamatélos’s Kroes (2005),E.K.M. Dido’s ’n Stringetjie blou krale (2000), Zoë Wicomb’s You can’t get lost in Cape Town (1987), Playing in the light (2006) and The one that got away (2008), Rayda Jacobs’s My father’s orchid (2006) and Kopano Matlwa’s Coconut (2007). The novels and short stories that are analysed reveal the extent to which the different authors regard aspects of appearance, such as hair texture, skin colour and facial features, as determining the material circumstances of the female characters’ lives. In the process they construct a landscape that contains marked similarities to South African society. Gender, race and class can, however, never be regarded as wholly separate constructions. These axes are intricately interwoven and must be considered together in any attempt to understand standards of appearance. By means of a literary analysis within the framework of feminist theories about the intersections of gender, race and class, the article investigates the types of pressure that are exerted on female characters in terms of their appearance. The article illustrates that female characters often invest a great deal of time and effort in their appearance. However, it emerges that power relations in a racist and patriarchal society strongly encourage women to conform to Eurocentric standards of beauty. The article suggests that women are not engaging in trivialities when they attempt to change their appearance. On the contrary, the experiences of the characters demonstrate that this may be the only way in which women are able to exercise a limited amount of power in a context where they are oppressed – due to the intersections of gender, race and class. The values of colonial racism have left deep scars on the evaluation of beauty in the South African context and these racist aesthetic legacies have only been exacerbated by apartheid. Scholars focusing on gender challenge the assumption that beauty is either universal or constant. On the contrary, the notion of a Platonic “Ideal Woman” who represents some unassailable standard of female beauty has been exposed as a myth that is informed by Eurocentric assumptions (Wolf 1991). South African researchers perceptively argue that these assumptions about appearance are so deeply entrenched in local cultural discourses that a light complexion and straight hair continue to be regarded as markers of beauty (Erasmus 1997, De Villiers 2003). 270 ISSN 1995-5928 | Tel: 021 886 5169 | E-pos: akademies@litnet.co.za
LitNet Akademies Jaargang 8(2) – Augustus 2011 In the section titled “Facial features, hair and power” the article explores how selected texts represent the importance that is attached to having “good hair”, which tends to be defined as long and straight. The opposite of “good hair” is hair that is short and frizzy, and having this latter kind of hair is regarded by characters as a kind of disability. These texts expose the extent to which real social power accrues to women with “good hair” since they live in societies where women’s life chances are profoundly shaped by their adherence to Eurocentric standards of appearance. The construction of beauty can never be separated from gender and power relations. Wolf (1991) argues that a system of male dominance is perpetuated by determining women’s value in a vertical hierarchy according to physical yardsticks of appearance. In this system, women are placed in the unnatural position of having to vie for resources that men have claimed as their own. In the South African society of the 1960s that is depicted in Stamatélos’s Kroes, social, political and economic power were heavily concentrated in the hands of white men. Women’s appearance can constitute a vital asset in the process of accessing some of this power, and the text reveals that they can sometimes accomplish this only through their association with white men. This association, in turn, depends on their ability to approximate the Eurocentric bench mark of beauty that the male characters seem to favour. Throughout the texts that are analysed in this section, one can identify a recurring tendency to associate beauty with whiteness. Brown female characters are shown to go to great lengths, and often endure significant pain, to render their hair as straight as possible. Despite the effort, time, expense and pain, changing the appearance of one’s hair is still more feasible than changing the colour of one’s skin, which explains why these women spend such seemingly disproportionate amounts of resources on their hair. All these efforts, however, can always only be temporary, since hair that is frizzy will keep returning to its natural state. Women are thus forced to remain in a constant state of vigilance and to be ever alert to the texture of their hair. In the section titled “Stigma and shame” the article explores how these pressures affect women’s understanding of themselves and their places in society. The texts that are analysed show how characters with “good hair” flaunt this asset, while those with frizzy hair go about their straightening efforts with a profound sense of shame. The failure to conform to Eurocentric ideals of “good hair” carries a stigma. In his seminal work on shame and stigma Goffman (1963) illustrates how stigmatised people suffer from discrimination in a variety of forms and how the discriminatory attitudes of others can drastically curtail the life chances of individuals. The experiences of the female characters in the texts bear out Goffman’s findings as the reader witnesses the shame and the secrecy that surround women’s negotiations with their hair texture. The phenomenon of shame has significant gender dimensions as women appear to experience the disempowering consequences of shame more extensively than men (Bartky 1990). Indeed, in the texts under discussion the female characters’ concern about their hair texture often contrasts sharply with the nonchalance of male characters in this regard. While women’s appearance can function as a mechanism for social advancement it can also be used as a point of reference against which their existing class position can be determined. The section titled “Appearance and class” demonstrates how characters associate “niceness” with light skin and “good hair”, where “niceness” serves as a euphemism for a middleclass status. Other euphemisms for an acceptable class position, such as decency and respectability, also crop up in the texts. Regardless of the exact terminology, however, such a status is repeatedly linked to appearing white. In Stamatélos’s text the narrator, Pattie, is as explict about this as equating her stepmother’s dark skin with being common and vulgar. Mona’s dark skin and, more importantly, the symbolic currency attached to this skin colour, makes it impossible for her to stay with Pattie in an area that is designated for white people under South Africa’s now defunct Group Areas Act. Yet Pattie’s ability to conform to Eurocentric standards of appearance enables her to stay in this area with the white man who is her fiancé. 271 ISSN 1995-5928 | Tel: 021 886 5169 | E-pos: akademies@litnet.co.za
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Jaargang 8, nommer 2 – Augustus 2011 - LitNet

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