At one point Angel seems to assume that the distribution of body
types is class-blind. But having invoked Bourdieu's analytical
framework, it seems to me that class habitus, acting in and on
bodies (cf. culture-specific body hexis, the notion that inspired
class 'habitus'), as well as genetic selection, would not be
class-blind. Beyond this, there are delicate issues of what
aspects of our perceptions of body types, including of beauty,
facial feature patterns, body conformations, etc. are mediated
semiotically so that members of different subcultures "see" them
differently (cf. chap 5 in _Textual Politics_ on the 'semiotic
body').
Angel remarks at one point about a contestant "Her high-class
ancient classical Chinese beauty image ..." which certainly seems
to recognize class-based norms of beauty. Taking beauty and/or
sexual appeal to be more broadly a matter of norms of behavior as
well as bodily form and comportment, it has often struck me that
in my own culture, middle-class norms are the dominant ones for
femininity (as one would expect), but that surprisingly working-
class norms are the dominant ones for masculinity. This may not
be the case in Hong Kong or in Chinese culture, and it may be
modern phenomenon in European and North American culture. I think
it's probably important.
How can we reason socioculturally about such matters? Even in
well-developed theories like Bourdieu's, as I have noted before
(and ought to put in print soon), issues of bodily capital are
generally neglected. Bourdieu seems to completely exclude bodily-
capital (beauty, strength, athleticism, sexual appeal, etc.) as a
legitimate form of capital, despite its fit with his criteria for
forms of capital in other respects, including convertibility into
financial capital. To convert bodily capital into financial
capital -- what are the means available? As Angel says, among
others, through winning Beauty Pageants (getting into Show
Business, marrying money, etc.) Since by definition financial
capital is mainly in the hands of middle- and upper- class
people, it is their market needs to which working-class people
must orient if they are to successfully convert (also amply
demonstrated by Angel, perhaps with a conflation of male/middle-
class here as dominant caste in H.K.).
Angel is conflicted over the issue of whether the researcher's
status as privileged and middle-class leads to illegitimate bias
against avenues of upward mobility for working-class women. I
think she is correct that one can generally identify such biases
against nearly all the means of conversion of bodily-capital into
financial capital, since the former is about all the capital
working-class people are allowed (such capital benefitting
employers/exploiters), or at least usually begin with (capital
being defined as having value in markets controlled by middle-
class players), and conversion routes increase the value of that
capital and threaten the capital-monopolies on which middle-class
power and privilege depend. (Generalization of the classic notion
of ownership of the means of production, obviously.)
But how does a poor woman convert her bodily capital into
financial capital in our (or H.K.?) society? or a poor young
male? the most effective/available paths are probably
prostitution and street crime, pornography, ... and less commonly
but more famously: beauty pageants, modelling, athletic
scholarships, show business. The more available routes are
criminalized, the rarer ones left open as 'escape hatches' of
false hope (cf. gambling, lotteries).
Angel does a good job of trying to give the motivations of the
contestants from their own working class point of view: what's a
little degradation when you have a chance to get rich? (i.e.
escape the mortal dangers and pain of poverty in an abusive
society?). But Angel notes that the contestants have little real
power in the activity frame; contestants can win but can't change
the rules of the game. True, but who can? can the spectators? the
media? males as such? Even the media, who are most directly in
control, are pandering to (male) cultural desires, and could not
too radically change the rules and still win audiences.
Angel also cites the case of the working-class contestant who
bares her breasts in the tabloids and gets disqualified. This in
contrast with a contest winner who also sought extra publicity,
but in a way more acceptable to middle-class sensibilities. The
more brazen contestant made the class/gender exploitation too
obvious, was not complicit with middle-class blindness to class
issues and patriarchal denial of the painfulness of women's
expected roles. She was not a good candidate for elevation to the
circle of privilege.
Should we ban beauty pageants? end athletic scholarships? Or
should we see these as just the tips of the great icebergs of
gender and class oppression and exploitation, tips to which many
would willingly climb, if only to get their heads above water?
How exactly do we justify closing off the few remaining legal
escape routes upwards, unless we have opened new, less
exploitative ones that are effective and widely accessible?
Education and schooling do _not_ represent such alternatives, for
they by and large fail to transfer cultural capital to poorer
class students, for predictable and well-known reasons (the modes
of transfer demand prior cultural capital and intellectual and
social dispositions most poor kids don't have and would be
crippled by if they did _not_ succeed in becoming middle-class).
They certainly are not avenues of conversion of bodily capital to
financial capital.
Thanks to Angel for giving me plenty to be disturbed about. JAY.
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JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
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