Learning to be white

     So, what's new? Oh, just the usual. Since my last post, we sold our house, moved to a retirement community just in time to shelter in place for three months, and then had to watch from our nice, safe apartment while people got sick, unemployment went to Depression levels, and  millions of people went into the streets to renew America's struggle to live up to the ideals in our Constitution. 

     It is a weird time to be alive, much less trying to write a book about "how I learned to be female, feminine, and white". That's the theme of Que sera, sera, in a nutshell, and if you thought that considering that intersection of identities in the spring of 2020 would be easy, let me explain why you're wrong.

1. Our earliest lessons began before we started kindergarten. In the book, I begin the story with how adults not only dressed us (because I am a dress historian first and foremost) but also saw us, spoke to us, and treated us from the moment we were born. 
2. The early lessons they taught were almost entirely nonverbal. This makes it hard for a researcher to find evidence of the teachings themselves, much less how we, as the pupils, absorbed and internalized them. 
3. We have been learning and unlearning about sex, gender, and race all of our lives. While we hope that new learning might help us replace outdated information and false beliefs, I am highly skeptical that this actually happens. It's more likely that we have more layers than a Smith Island cake (up to 15, if you want to skip the recipe.)

     When it comes to how I learned that I was female, and then learned the cultural and social patterns that matched my sex - how to be feminine - I think I've got that pretty well figured out. At least, well enough to write two books and a pile of articles about it. (Not to mention this blog.) I undoubtedly learned about my whiteness in the same way, and "Que sera, sera" is about the relationship between my racial and gender identities and how fashion tied the two together.

     While the lessons little girls learned about feminine behavior in the 1950s were mostly nonverbal, the lessons we learned about being white were even less explicit. In a class I taught on diversity in American culture, I would often ask students to write on an index card their earliest memory of being aware of race. Students of color were more likely than white students to remember words - name-calling, or a parent's explanation. White students were more likely to remember actions, or gestures. In every class of about 25-30 students, there was always one white student whose earliest memory was riding through a Black neighborhood in the family car and having a parent roll up the window.

     Accustomed as I am to detect gender lessons in fashion images and texts, the silent language of white supremacy is new territory for me. Yet a scholarly book demands evidence. Here is the kind of thing I am finding.

     This is from a 1962 silverware ad in Seventeen. "What kind of girl are you?" quizzes were common in the magazine, usually about how to pick the right hairstyle or outfit to suit your personality, but also for other consumer products, from flatware to bedroom suites. The option of "Southern plantation days" in this quiz caught me up short. First,  I cannot image any Black girl in 1962 having fond fantasies about living in "Southern plantation days", so the assumed audience was clearly not Black. Second, in the answer key - where you found out what kind of flatware you should put in your hope chest - consistent select of #2 answers put you in the "Romantic" category ("very feminine, loves luxury and gracious living"). 
     After I saw this, I started paying attention to the depiction of Southern girls and Southern culture in the magazine, and there it was. Southern "belles" were consistently depicted as more feminine than the rest of us: the pinnacle of delicate, romantic, ladylike womanhood. (Don't worry, I will be sharing more examples.)

As  Robin DiAngelo writes in White Fragility, white supremacy as an ideology is

...more pervasive and subtle than the actions of explicit white nationalists. White supremacy describes the culture we live in, a culture that positions white people and all that is associated with them (whiteness) as ideal.

Could DiAngelo's statement be expanded to include the intersection of race and gender, as expressed in women's fashion? Is femininity coded as "white"? Watch this space.