Maia writes about Susan Brownmiller and the Case of the Trivialized Movement:
The last one refers to Shulamith Firestone. This is only the beginning other women are described in just the same way: bubbly, titian hair, frizzy hair, big soulful eyes, hair that falls below her shoulders, open-faced and bespectacled. She describes Bernadette Dohrn as a siren.1
How would she describe Andrea Dworkin, I wonder?
Maia compares these passages to journalistic descriptions of women in general. Some of the language is markedly gendered, as well as applied in a disparate way; how often has anyone ever described a man or boy as “coltish?” I’m seeing something a little more specific: Nancy Drew, Sweet Valley High, or even The Babysitters’ Club. Some of this is just bad writing, when an author will think, “I’ve gotta describe something! I know! Clothes!”
Some of it, in its original incarnation, was training. The spunky girl detective, the Butterfield twins, and the BSC constituency were all lessons in adult womanhood. They were a kind of cultural cross-marketing, a supplement to the YM and Seventeen and Cosmo Girl and Sassy and so on that girls were supposed to read and memorize. These girls offered fashion, makeup, and deportment tips to their readers. More than that, they offered a way of seeing oneself: as a “titian-haired beauty,” a personality communicated through a face and body. In this kind of descriptive language, your “raven” or “titian” or “fiery red” or “mousy brown” hair corresponds to your psyche.
They also encourage a troubling perspective on individuality–a kind of internalized tokenism, for want of a better word. Look at the way Claudia Kishi was always described more or less as an “almond-eyed beauty.” These girls were members of a microcosm, representatives of a type, a nod to a certain demographic–but they were also a way of teaching that demographic to view itself as undifferentiated.
That’s why it’s so jarring to encounter this language in a book that’s supposed to be about everything but surfaces–a book that should describe these women’s lives as anything but a branded collection of accessories to copy for oneself.