I can’t recall whether I’ve written about the mirror stage on the blog before. If I have, then this is going to sound a bit redundant (only a bit, though..) and if I haven’t, hurray!
Jacques Lacan originated the mirror stage and illustrated it with a narrative about an infant (between 6 and 18 months of age) beholding its reflection in a mirror and being struck by the discordance between its felt imperfections and the perceived perfection of the mirror image looking back at it. The image looking back at it is a gestalt (through the infant’s eyes) in that is it “perceived as a unified whole,” in contrast with the felt fragmentation.
We confront gestalts all the time. Maybe multiple times a day. The best example I can think of (because it’s the one someone used to explain it to me) is a model in clothing magazine. The clothes seem to fit him/her perfectly. Not an odd fold or wrinkle in sight. It makes me want to buy the clothes so that I can feel the way that model looks: unified and whole.
As I made my way through the Entwhistle reading, I couldn’t help but think about the “professional woman” as defined by Malloy as a gestalt and what troubling implications that such a conception carries with it: wholeness (in this case) for women is defined by a man, wholeness (in this case) is masculine whereas fragmented is feminine, wholeness (in this case) is heterosexual…I’m sure there are others, these are just the few standouts in my memory.
What I find so interesting about all this is that a fashion movement – if I can call it that – presented as a means to advance women in the workplace seemingly masks (or maybe it doesn’t) its perpetuation of patriarchy and inequality.
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February 28, 2013 at 8:53 pm
Rayne Zhou
I have the same feeling with you for the last paragraph. I always think about why a certain woman dresses like everybody is looking at her? People say that when one is indeed confident, one would not care about one’s appearance, which includes what one wears. If this is true, then when somebody is dressing up differently with something that one usually doesn’t wear, there must lie in something this person cares. In other word, one is not confident if one doesn’t dress like a certain way under certain condition. However, as I’m writing this, I start thinking what if a man wears something else rather than suit in workplace. He will also looks inadequate, right? So I guess that’s how people should behave when they are working. The specific environment determines people’s appearances, and people accept this as well.