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ZINE

ZINE

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MAKE-UP MEETING WITH PEER REVIEW PARTNER

MAKE-UP MEEINB WITH PEER REVIEW PARTNER 

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a.

No Más Bebés is a documentary based on the case Madrigal v. Quilligan. It tells a story of a little-known but landmark event in the history of reproductive justice, during which a group of Mexican immigrant women sued the LA County- USC Medical Center after they were sterilized unconsciously during the period of late 1960s and early 1970s--- The Eugenics Movement.  The potential audience for such Zine object could be anyone, from both genders, with all types of skin colors and ranges between different ages, since the subject has something to do all of us. On one hand it represents the struggles gone through by all “minority races” against “Whiteness”. On the other hand it also links to feminist movements and gender formations.

 b.

“La Cancion de mi vida ha terminado” (“My life song has ended”)

A Mexican woman said this after she realized had been sterilized unconsciously during her labor. After she lost her reproductive capability, her husband started to abuse her and soon she became nobody in this family. For her, the melody of her life song within the Mexican community she resided in was to give birth to children and her duty for her husband and her family as a Mexican woman was merely a baby machine. Such coercive sterilization deprived her reproductive rights and at the same time ended her life song. This quote from the mouth of the victim of such double hierarchy precisely expresses the complicated situation and struggle they were facing at, nothing like the struggle for a Mexican man or a white woman. Here, the quote may be inserted in the section of “intersectionality” since most of these women being described in the film were not only the direct victims of the Eugenics movement (racial project) happening in the bigger context, but also victims of gender formation inside their own communities. Together, these two overlapping subjects contributed to their final tragedies.

 c.

Throughout the entire film No Más Bebés, there were several clips of the interviews with a surgeon, who was a practice doctor working at LA County back in the times when everything described in the film happened. From his perspective, he provides the first-hand description of the true case, including the paper work back at that time, his personal confrontation with Doctor Quilligan, Doctor Quilligan’s responses and his own observations. Those couple clips, although short, were extremely informative, giving details for the surgeries from a more professional and medical aspect and helping to set up the historical background of this film. I suggest that these couple short clips could be included in the first section, in the introduction sections of the Zine.

 d.

The first image was the cover of the book The Population Bomb, which used to be a popular book inheriting the ideology of Eugenics movement, during the Zero Population Growth Movement. Like what says on the cover page: “When you are reading these words, four people, have died from starvation, mostly children”, the author of this book was advertising the ideology and reasoning behind the coercive sterilization. The second image comes from the film itself. It was a paper work, giving consent for sterilization signing by a woman during her labor. By the time she was signing this paper work, she might not even a single knowledge what terms she was giving her permission to.

 e.

From my perspective, in order to emphasize the intersectional aspects that the Hispanic females struggled with, we can talk more about their situation inside their own Hispanic community. The article La Femenista would maybe helpful to look at here. This article closely analyses the hierarchical structure of the Hispanic society, and particularly, it discusses the attitudes of the men toward their women’s struggle. For them, as it was illustrated clearly, the feministic struggles were minimal, comparing to the racial struggle against whiteness. Their priority should always be racial formation, and for them, those Femenistas can wait. This analysis fits into the entire project since it digs more into the problem those Mexican women face back in the time the film talks about, and even the problems that all of us still experiencing nowadays. These issues have never been really solved, and it would continue to be a challenge for all of us, and that’s why the intend viewers for this Zine object could be everyone.

Analysis of No Más Bebés – Notebook3

Name: Xin Ge

Section: A07

           Although the intersectionality of gender and race is one of the most significant part presented in No Más Bebés, each individual aspect of it can be analyzed more deeply in other perspectives. Therefore, instead of intersectionality, this notebook will focus on the racial aspect and the national context that I am examining is related to whiteness.

           The tragedy of coercive sterilization of Mexican women was mainly resulted from the racial formation of Mexicans. During the process of sterilization, including various ways to force the patients to sign the consent paper, all perpetrators thought they were practicing justice. The thinking behind the tragedy was manipulated by the racial formation of Mexicans. In terms of the coercive sterilization of Mexican women, the racial formation could be analyzed in cultural representation and social structure. In respect of cultural representation, it was controlled by dominant ideology of white supremacy during that period. As the ideology indicated, the race of white was at the top of the racial hierarchy where the race of Mexicans was at the bottom. One significant component of this dominant ideology was the ideology presented in eugenics, which claimed that Mexicans were inferior to whites and had worse genes so that the increase in their population would be a pollution to the gene pool. This saying was widespread in cultural representations during that period and convinced people that it was just to deprive the reproductive right of Mexican women. In respect of social structure, there was a Zero Population Growth movement funded by federal government which was supposed to be a color-blinded movement dealing with the overpopulation. However, under the influence of the dominant ideology of white supremacy, people paid more attention to the coercive sterilization of Mexican women, which resulted in a huge discrepancy between the number of sterilized whites and Mexicans due to the racial discrimination. Since the dominant ideology of white supremacy was widely-spread to the whole society, it became hegemonic in white’s perspective. In consequence, the process of racial formation of Mexicans were continued, the racial discrimination was reinforced and the racial hierarchy was stabilized under this situation.

           From No Más Bebés, we could see a small portion of how whites started the racial formation of Mexicans and then extend it to the racial formation of all races. In fact, the racial formation of Mexicans was a typical way the white supremacists used to reinforce the dominant ideology of white supremacy. Other races such as African Americans, native Americans and Chinese were all racialized in a similar way. The first step the white supremacists took was degrading other races by claiming whites were superior to other races in various ways such as taking advantage of advanced technology and making up pseudo-scientific evidence to prove the inferiority of other races. Then they spread the ideology of white supremacy and announced their privileges to dominate other races. After the ideology became hegemonic, it became simple to make institutions with racial discrimination, which would reinforce the dominant ideology of white supremacy. Finally, all other races were inserted to the bottom of the racial hierarchy and had less and less opportunity to climb up the ladder of the hierarchy.

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Notebook4

Modeling Pags

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The Circulation of Traditional Chinese Clothing and Chinese Design---Notebook3

Much about the role clothing played back in ancient China and the intersectional aspect of, this week let’s take our focuses back to today’s fashion industry. However, instead of looking at the artistic value of those traditional Chinese designs, this week our analysis would mainly concentrate on the relational aspects, especially in terms of “anti-Asianness”.

When doing closer research toward the circulation of the traditional Chinese designs, we can easily find them everywhere on today’s show stage and on the runways, from our fashion magazines to the fashion weeks every year in Milan, Paris and London, and then to the display windows of those luxury brands. The ancient Chinese designed travelled through time from imperial China all the way to our modern world. However, when being shown under the designers’ hand and then being presented to the public on the runways, another interesting fact to point out is their modeling. What’s interesting here is, when these Asian art, these Chinese designs are being shown and being worn by the models, almost ninety percent of the models being used by the fashion designers are white models, instead of Asian models. This phenomenon prevails in both male and female sections. Based on my own observations, there are only two Asian models (a male and a female) on average for each luxury brand, while the majority of others are all white models. It is commented by the a fashion editor that “There’s a persistent and dangerous belief that all Asian women are thin enough to be considered “boyish”, with no feminine curves to speak of.” Meanwhile, a casting agent of “Gucci” also commented on the stereotype of female Asian body in the “Daily Mail” as “more flat and less sexy, in a way. Asians, they are not curvy, so to put an Asian (who’s) very flat (with a) baby body shape in a show where normally the designer knows they love sexy, beautiful, curvy girls, it’s a bit of nonsense.” Although, it seems more reasonable using Asian models to present ancient Asian elements, the truth is Asian models are generally excluded from the runways due to the fact that their “undesirable body shapes”.

The lack of Asian models on the show stage for different fashion weeks and brands created a racial formation within today’s fashion industry. Nowadays, this stereotypical concept of modelling has already permeated among us as a hegemonic ideology dominating on the runways.

Hyprerlinks:

https://www.bustle.com/articles/79664-how-the-lack-of-asian-models-in-the-fashion-industry-created-a-divide-between-my-racial

ZINE-COVER

ZINE-COMPARISON PAGE

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The Circulation of Traditional Chinese Clothing and Chinese Design---Notebook2

Apart from what I have discussed last week, the circulations of some prevailing traditional Chinese patterns and designs like the Dragon, Phoenix, plum blossom and bamboo, combining with some very Chinese-styled colors and materials, there are indeed more traditional Chinese elements that are also circulating in our modern fashion-industry. So to start this week’s notebook, I want to first present more traditional Chinese items that are currently popping up in our fashion magazines, fashion weeks or the display windows of several brands today. 

Let’s first take a look at the Paris Fashion Week Autumn/ Winter 2013. During the “Leonard Show”, they presented a collection of embroidery designs. The designer of Leonard added the traditional Chinese embroideries on coats and dresses (which very much resemble Chinese Cheong-sam), displaying an Eastern-styled clothing collection. The designer borrowed the dragon, phoenix, and the peony designs, which are three common types of Chinese embroiders back in ancient China.  Later, the Valentino show also presented us some fascinating and innovative “art pieces”. What they used, on the other, is the prototype of a profound Chinese porcelain--- The Blue and White Porcelain.

  Leonard---Embroidery Collection.

Valentino---The Blue and White Porcelain.

Much about what’s new in today’s fashion show, now let’s travel back in time to investigate when all these traditional designs that are now circulating worldwide was originated---ancient China, more specifically from Tang Dynasty all the way to the Qing Dynasty. No matter in what time period we are looking at, although with all these brightly-colored beautiful designs, certain limitations and a plenty of complicated and strict dressing codes have always existed. Namely, not everyone was permitted to wear these boldly-designed clothes. An obvious example, like what we have already mentioned, dragon patterns were designed exclusively for the emperors and they were called the “Imperial robe”. Anyone else who dared to wear such dragon robe were potentially putting themselves in great danger, and in the worst scenario, they may face death penalties. Moreover, even other patterns such as bamboos, (which symbolizes “success” in Chinese culture), red-crowned cranes on brighter colors like yellow, red, white, gold, were limited only for those “first-class citizens”, businessmen, the royal members or government officers. While for people who were born at the bottom of this social pyramid, the farmers, butchers, and the servants, they were never allowed to have their own options. The clothes which they were “supposed to wear” were dully-colored (like old brown) cloth ones, or even cheaper materials. Not only were there “assigned” patterns, materials and colors for people of different social rankings, there were also “assigned” colors for people of different genders. For instance, a girl wearing a navy blue shirt walking on the street would definitely gain some unusually high attentions, since such colors like navy-blue were considered as “Men’s color”. On the other hand, however, a man who has always been in favor of colors like light pink, bright orange or bright red would be judged as a “social freak”, since those colors were generally accepted to deliver a sense of tenderness and femininity instead of masculinity.  The purpose of devising such strict dressing code was to make people’s socials status as well as their gender features as obvious as possible on the first sight. People coming from various classes with different genders needed to fulfill their expected social roles by putting themselves into the correct gender and class categories. A royal male officer would have a completely different dressing code as a royal princess or a female carpenter. Such heavy but conventionalized class and gender projects were embodied as important guidance for people back in ancient China. 

Fortunately, when these traditional Chinese clothing and designs are still circulating on the fashion show stages and under the hands of fashion designers, their original cultural limitations, such discriminative and sexist rules were abandoned behind. They were no longer seen as symbolic characters of social rankings and social status. Here on the show stages and in the display windows they were simple artistic expressions of the designers.

   Hyperlinks:

http://en.vogue.fr/fashion-culture/fashion-music/diaporama/paris-fashion-week-playlist-fall-winter-2013-2014/12607

http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/hot-topics/830/1204/paris-fashion-week-autumnwinter-2013.html

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The Circulation of Traditional Chinese Clothing and Chinese Design

In ancient China, from Tang Dynasty all the way till the end of the imperial Chinese history---Qing Dynasty (the last dynasty in China), clothing and its delicate design, including the patterns, materials and color, has always been an inseparable part in the traditional Chinese culture. Although varied between different regions and time, there are several major patterns and designs that has always prevailed: Dragon, Red-crowned Crane, Phoenix, plum blossom, bamboo and Chrysanthemum. Since such colors as red, yellow and gold and black have been seen to symbolize propitiousness, fortune, wealth and power, they were used as the predominant colors for clothing. For the royal families, those who born with a silver spoon in mouth, especially the emperors, most of their clothes are made of silk. However, while such ancient clothing design gradually disappeared in modern China, amazingly they popped out in a brand new form in another part of the world. On the fashion show of a lot of well-known brands such as Givenchy, Dolce & Gabbana, Luis Vuitton and Valentino, those traditional designs are being brilliantly used by their designers. The question here is: How did all those traditional Chinese elements travelled across continents and oceans, all the way from ancient China to modern west?

 In order to explain the cause of the circulation of tradition Chinese clothing, we need to trace back to the First Opium War. The First Opium war, fought between the United Kingdom and the Qing Dynasty occurred during the period of 1839 to 1842. The war ended on August 29th, 1842, when China signed a peace treaty, the Treaty of Nanking, with United Kingdom. While the treaty built a bridge for trades between China and a lot of western countries, it also opened up the door of China. Starting from that time, a great amount of Chinese immigrated to all over the world, mainly to western countries. After the early Chinese immigrants settled down at their new home, in an entirely different country, they brought cheap labor forces to this new land, and beside that, they brought their culture with them as well: their language, food, and what we are discussing here--- the clothing designs.

 Nowadays, fashion designers from different parts of the world, speaking different languages, dealing with various styles and working for independent brands and companies are all borrowing the clothing designs originated in ancient China. Nevertheless, the significance of such designs differs. Back in ancient China, the wild usage of bright colors and silk as well as the patterns were not just for artistic reasons. They were treated as important symbols of social status and rankings. For those royal members, and ones who were in control of wealth and power, people could always tell directly from their clothes, the colors and designs. To be more specific, the designs of bamboos, plum blossoms and red-crowned cranes on bright shades of red, yellow and black were generally worn by businessmen, highly-ranked officers and royal members. Phoenix designs were especially favored by the queens and princesses. Most importantly, the dragon designs and usage of gold were exclusively for the emperors, no one else. The more silk-made clothes a person had, the more brightly-colored, fancily-designed his or her clothes were, the more he or she was respected and had a higher social ranking. While when these elements were used in the hand of fashion designers nowadays, the patterns are kept and combined with modern elements, but the social meanings were lost. Here, on the latest Givenchy show or the 2016 New York Fashion Week, worn by the models on the stage, they were presented again, in a way more modern form with a completely meaning. It was seen as revolutionary designs that combine eastern and western art, as masterpieces that, in a large extend, reflect current aesthetics values and as indicators for fashion industry.