To Think on One's Feet

Horst P. Horst: Barefoot Beauty (1941)

Feet: some people find them very beautiful and sexually attractive; others think them repulsive and shameful.

But, love 'em or hate them, the fact remains that plates are not without evolutionary, cultural and philosophical importance. Whilst Heidegger makes a huge fuss about the human hand, Bataille is more interested in the foot, particularly le gros orteil, which he regards as the defining feature of man; i.e., that which distinguishes us from other apes.

I don't know if that's true, but the fact that we can stand up and walk tall on our own two feet is certainly crucial. Freud argues that civilization begins with man's fateful decision to adopt an upright posture, with his nose in the air (this latter fact leading directly to the decline in his sense of smell and, subsequently, his association of bodily dirt and odours with shameful animality and base materialism).

Our habitual bipedalism developed rather belatedly in evolutionary terms and the human foot with its unique anatomical structure is a comparatively recent assemblage of bones, joints, tendons, muscles, etc. which might help to explain why our feet are so susceptible to all kinds of problems (from flat feet to swollen feet; from blisters to bunions).

Other maladies - including dodgy knees, bad backs, and hernias - are also associated with the fact that man likes to stand erect. Perhaps this is why in so many cultures feet are held in such low regard; the fact that they are often dirty and prone to sweat also adds to their perceived baseness. Arguably, only the sexual organs have a more degraded status within the heirarchy of the body.

Living as we do, we moderns, from the spiritual upper centres, we dream of becoming angels; i.e., heavenly creatures who have feet that never touch the ground. But, as a Lawrentian and as something of a podophile, I would challenge such idealism. I think we should overcome our secret horror for our terrestrial origins in mud and learn to value the naked reality of feet that are intensely alive with the desire for touch - as well as great centres of resistance with which to kick! 

See: Georges Bataille, 'The Big Toe', Visions of Excess, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl, with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie Jr., (The University of Minnesota Press, 1985), pp. 20-23. Click here to read this essay on line. 

This post is for Mimi.  

Operation Werewolf

Meine Werwolfzähne beißen den Feind

Werwolf was the brilliantly sinister codename for a plan to create a resistance force operating behind enemy lines that would strike terror into the hearts of the Allied forces as they advanced into Germany, similar - in the Nazi imagination - to the way in which their barbarian forefathers had struck terror into the hearts of the Romans who dared venture into the dark forests north of the Rhine only to find the skulls of their dead comrades nailed to the trees.

Who came up with the codename is unknown, although Hitler clearly had a penchant for names containing the word wolf and regarded the creature as his totem animal. It's also possible that Werwolf alluded to a novel by Hermann Löns, popular with figures on the far-right, including the Nazis.
          

What we do know is that in the late summer of 1944 Himmler ordered the formation of an elite force of volunteers drawn from the SS and Hitler Youth and trained to engage in clandestine activities and guerrilla warfare. The Allies soon got wind of this and Time magazine ran an article speculating on how the Nazis would attempt to prolong hostilities indefinitely by going underground and establishing sleeper cells.

Seeking to heighten and exploit such fears - whilst obviously realising that the game was up - Goebbels gave a speech on 23 March, 1945, in which he urged every German citizen to fight to the death and effectively become a werewolf. This would later cause problems for the Allies when seeking to identify those responsible for attacks; were they coordinated and carried out by trained fighters as part of a commando unit, or by lone wolves acting independently.  

Shortly afterwards, Radio Werwolf began broadcasting from outside Berlin. Each transmission would open with the sound of a wolf howling and when not encouraging every German to stand their ground and offer total resistance, it issued threats of revenge upon those who collaborated with the enemy.

These broadcasts further spooked the occupying forces, particularly the Americans, who were encouraged by their commanders to believe that every German was a monster in disguise. Unfortunately, this resulted in unnecessarily draconian measures being introduced and atrocities committed against German civilians by Allied troops during and immediately after the War.

Ultimately, like so much else about Nazi Germany, Werwolf was essentially a potent mix of medieval myth and modern propaganda; a mad fantasy which lacked any real bite or strategic value (not to mention material resources). The German people were all too willing to work with the Allies and there was no serious resistance, even if there were a handful of Nazi fanatics hiding here and there in forest huts - much as there were a few old Japanese soldiers holding out on tiny Pacific islands long after the War had ended. 

That's fascism ... fascinating - but fraudulent (and, who knows, perhaps fascinating because fraudulent).

Mazophilia (With Reference to the Case of Russ Meyer)

Eve Turner displaying her charms

I.

Located on the upper ventral region of the female torso, the breast, biologically speaking, is essentially a network of milk-producing ducts covered in subcutaneous fat. In other words, just a swollen gland that varies in size, shape and weight.  

But, of course, no one is really interested in hearing about breasts in purely biological or functional terms. They might provide nutrition for infants, but they also have social, sexual, and symbolic significance and possess a long and fascinating cultural history - not just in the plastic arts, but also in comedy, fashion, and advertising.      

The key thing, as feminist author and historian Marilyn Yalom notes, is that competing conceptions of the breast change the way it is seen and represented and any cultural history of the breast is constructed as much in male fantasy as it is in female biology.     

II.

Whilst it's true that the ancient Greeks were more interested in male nudity as a symbol of perfection and power, Western culture hasn't exactly been shy in portraying the female form, with a particular fascination for the breasts as morphologically diverse objects that have both a maternal function and an erotic allure.
 

Thus, during the Renaissance, for example, depictions of Mary as a nursing Madonna dominated the cultural imagination; not only did she suckle the infant Jesus, but, by implication, she provided the milk of human kindness and spiritual nourishment to all mankind. 

Within the modern period, in contrast, the bared female breast has become a symbol of radical political protest (think Marianne or Femen), a staple of bawdy comedy (think Barbara Widsor or Benny Hill), and a culturally-sanctioned distraction for heterosexual men who like to begin the day staring at a pair of tits (think Page 3). 

Some individuals, however, take their erotico-aesthetic interest in female breasts to a fetishistic extreme, invariably subscribing to the belief that bigger is always better. And here, we have to think Russ Meyer ...

III.

The American filmmaker Russ Meyer had - both as an artist and as a man - a lifelong love of naturally large-breasted women and would repeatedly feature such in his movies.

These women included Lorna Maitland, Darlene Gray, Kitten Natividad, Tura Satana and, personal favourite, Erica Gavin (as Vixen) - though, arguably, none were more lovely than Meyer's second-wife, the 1950s pin-up model Eve Turner, who produced thirteen of his films and played a significant role in helping Meyer establish a career.

Whilst large breasts are not really my cup of tea, these cantilevered actresses certainly appeal far more than the cosmetically-enhanced porn stars of today, suggesting as they do an entirely different aesthetic and female archetype; not necessarily more natural - although certainly less plastic - but more charismatic and amazonian in spirit.

This helps explain why some feminist critics now find something valuable and liberating in Meyer's movies, particularly Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), which is more psychotronic thriller and an ode to female aggression than simple sexploitation and described by John Waters (a master of transgressive filmmaking himself) as quite simply the best movie ever made.

See: Marilyn Yalom, A History of the Breast, (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).

To view a trailer for Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill! (dir. Russ Meyer, 1965): click here. 

The Shape of Felines to Come: Brief Notes on the Speculative Evolution of the Cat

I.

Speculative evolution is a genre of hard science fiction with a firm basis in biology, even if the future scenarios it imagines are hypothetical.

It may sometimes stretch the limits of possibility, but by retaining a concern with real-world processes and building on our knowledge of how things actually work, it retains a level of plausibililty that distinguishes it from pure fantasy.   

II.

One thing is for sure, a posthuman world - in the sense of a world in which Homo sapiens have become Homo extinctus - would not present any difficulties for the cat.

Even the most domesticated of breeds is never more than a whisker away from happily returning to the wild, as the feral populations successfully breeding and assuming their place as apex predators in many types of environment demonstrate.

With or without us, these natural born killers will survive and prosper. But the interesting question is how they might evolve ...

Not only might they increase in size, for example, but some commentators have put forward the idea of semi-aquatic cats evolving to exploit tide pools, mangrove swamps, or even coral reefs. Others, meanwhile, like to imagine flying cats, gliding from one tree (or one ruined skyscraper) to the next with the aid of a patagium, their long tail helping to provide in-flight stability. 

Thankfully, because cats cannot digest plant matter and need to eat meat to survive, it's extremely unlikely they'll evolve into some kind of boring herbivore.

Note: those interested in this topic are encouraged to read After Man: A Zoology of the Future (1981), by Dougal Dixon - the Scottish writer and geologist often credited as being the founder of speculative evolution (though he admits to being inspired by H. G. Wells). 

Athenian Street Dogs

Two Athenian street dogs outside McDonald's near Syntagma Square

Photo by Matt Cardy / Getty Images

When the Little Greek told me that - as a result of The Crisis - Athens had gone to the dogs, I thought she was speaking figuratively. But, as it turns out, she was giving literal reference to the problem of street dogs - or free-ranging urban dogs as they are known in the scientific literature - whose numbers have grown enormously in the city during the last decade.   

Of course, what is true of Athens is true of many other cities and dogs can be found living in any urban area where the human population is prepared to accept them roaming about the streets and searching through garbage for food. Some are pets that have strayed or been abandoned, others are the descendents of feral animals; some are pure breeds, others are true mutts.

Obviously, they can be a real nuisance and pose genuine health and safety issues; pissing, shitting, fighting, fucking, barking, biting, as they do. However, the dogs seem to understand that in order to survive they have to keep conflict with humans to a minimum. And so, mostly, they're surprisingly well-behaved and extraordinarily well-adapted to an urban lifestyle; happily using the pedestrian crossings on busy roads, for example.  

Even I have to admit - and I don't like dogs - their intelligence, adaptive behaviour and sociality is pretty impressive and as long as they don't give me any trouble when I'm wandering around Plaka, I'm perfectly happy to share space with them. Indeed, there are plenty of people I'd sooner see neutered or rounded up and shot than these dogs.

Notes

Anyone interested in donating to a charity that provides food, shelter and veterinary care for stray cats and dogs in Greece can click here. 

Thanks to Katxu for inspiring this post.

On Why Lawrentian Werewolves Are Not Vegans 2: A Reply to Catherine Brown

Benicio del Toro in The Wolfman (2010) 
Does he look like he enjoys lentils?

Interestingly, the attempt to not merely anticipate but invoke and affirm a vegan world in relation to the work of D. H. Lawrence is also now being made by the much admired literary scholar Catherine Brown, herself a recent convert to this militant form of ascetic idealism. 

Brown argues that although Lawrence wasn't a vegan - nor even a mild-mannered vegetarian - his thought contains much that resonates with veganism as it is understood and practiced today. This is perhaps true, but, having said that, I don't think we can simply equate Lawrence's work with veganism, nor allow his thinking to be co-opted by any single cause or crusade. 

For whilst I'm sure Lawrence would have despised factory farming as much as Heidegger - the latter notoriously suggesting metaphysical equivalence between mechanized food production and the Nazi death camps long before Morrissey came up with the slogan meat is murder - he remained, as Brown admits, "comfortable within the omnivorism and speciesism that was dominant in his as in our culture".  

Indeed, whilst the tiger and the wolf present terrible problems to those idealists who want to think life exclusively in terms of the lamb, Lawrence invariably sides with those beasts of prey - including man - that feast on the flesh of other creatures in good conscience. What's more, he makes no secret of his contempt for those domestic farm animals - pigs, sheep, and cattle - that fail to attain purity of being and lapse into nullity:

"They grow fat; their only raison d'être is to provide food for a really living organism. [...] It is given us to devour them." [RDP 41]  

You can try and get around this by adopting the trust the tale, not the teller defence, and find fictional passages in which a character might turn their nose up at a plate of beef, or, like Ursula Brangwen, thoroughly enjoy a tasty vegetarian hot-pot, but, still the stubborn fact remains that Lawrence's carnivorous vitalism ultimately trumps any nascent veganism.    

And if, as we have noted, Lawrence despises those creatures that lack creative impulse, so too does he abhor human beings who have become docile grazing animals, subscribing to what Nietzsche calls a herd morality - cry-bullies forever bleating about rights and bloated on their own sense of righteousness. Such people are, he says, "the enemy and the abomination" and he is grateful for the "tigers and butchers that will free us from the abominable tyranny of sheep" [RDP 42].

Ultimately, Lawrence wants men and women with large mouths, big teeth and sharp claws and we can even locate within his work something that might be termed a werewolf manifesto - cf. the vegan manifesto that Dr. Brown finds within his writing. This werewolf manifesto openly sets itself against the Green Age - i.e., the utopia imagined by cabbage-hearted vegans, environmentalists, cows, Christians, and social justice warriors in which the lion lies down with the lamb and "no mouse shall be caught by a cat" [RDP 275].

Lawrence writes:

"This is the [...] golden age that is to be, when all shall be domesticated, and the lion and the leopard and the hawk shall  come to our door to lap [soy] milk and to peck the crumbs, and no sound shall be heard but the lowing of fat cows and the baa-ing of fat sheep. This is the Green Age that is to be, the age of the perfect cabbage." [RDP 275-76]

Of course, Catherine is perfectly at liberty to read Lawrence however she wishes: as am I. And, as a matter of fact, I'm very sympathetic to her idea that if we conceive of veganism "not as a dogma, identity, or state of putative purity, but as a queer nexus of perceptions and affects, then Lawrence can, at moments, be described as vegan".

Although, of course, we could easily replace the word veganism here with any other -ism - including fascism or feminism - and this sentence would still make perfect sense: that's the beauty (and the danger) of Lawrence's text; it invites anyone and everyone to play within the space that it opens up and to invest it with their own forces.  

See:

Catherine Brown, 'D. H. Lawrence and the Anticipation of a Vegan World'. This paper was originally given at the 33rd annual international D. H. Lawrence conference held at the University of Nanterre, Paris (3-7 April 2019). It can be read on the author's website: click here. 

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Reality of Peace' and 'The Crown', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988). 

Readers interested in part one of this post - in which I address the comments made by another vegan Lawrentian (David Brock) on an earlier post to do with dental morphology - should click here.

On Why Lawrentian Werewolves Are Not Vegans 1: A Reply to David Brock

Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man (1941) 
Does he look as if wants a veggie burger?

There are many ways of responding to D. H. Lawrence's lycanthropic longing for individuals in joyful possession of the sharp and vivid teeth of wolves with which to defend themselves and devour their prey.

One might, for example, smile and dismiss the whole thing as an absurd fantasy. Or one could seriously explore the possibility of human-animal hybrids and discuss developments in trans-species science, including xenotransplantation; who knows what dentists will be able to offer in the future?

But what one can't do is pretend that Lawrence's werewolfism as a vital expression of sensual, savage being, can be squared with the moral philosophy of veganism which abhors animal cruelty and exploitation and promotes a plant-based diet that is totally free from all forms of meat (including fish, shellfish and insects), dairy products, eggs, and even honey.

To do that is, at best, disingenuous - and David Brock's suggestion that vegans lustfully savour and even savage their food ... tearing at the flesh and seeds of a pomegranite, is, frankly, even more ludicrous than the thought of a Lawrentian lycanthrope prowling around Eastwood with 2" fangs and looking for a kiss.

Finally, it might be noted that wolves, unlike domestic dogs that have co-evolved alongside humans, cannot survive on a plant-based diet, as they don't possess the genes necessary to break down starches.

In other words, they need red meat and one would imagine that this would also be true of a werewolf, which, if I remember my European folklore and cinematic fiction correctly, is driven by an irresistible urge to kill and never howls beneath the full moon in want of a salad.    

Notes 

This post is written in response to a series of comments made by the former editor of the D. H. Lawrence Society Newsletter, David Brock (aka Badger), that he kindly shared at the end of an earlier piece on Lawrence and dental morphology: click here.   

A sister post to this one, in which I discuss the work of literary scholar Catherine Brown on Lawrence and veganism, can be read by clicking here. 

Existence is Elusive 2: Further Reflections on The Artificial Silk Girl

Penguin Books (2019)

When I put on my make-up, the pretty little mask's not me

'Cause that's the way a girl should be in a consumer society.

I. Artificial Silk

Artificial silk - which is really just a nice-sounding name for rayon (or viscose, as it is more commonly known in Europe) - was first developed from cellulose fibre at the end of the 19th century.

When, in the '30s, America gave the world nylon, soon even real silk stockings were outmoded and heavy cotton or woollen dresses replaced by garments made of more affordable and easier to clean synthetic materials. These mass produced clothes, sold in the new department stores that sprang up in big cities around the world, including Berlin, enabled even working-class girls like Doris, the protagonist and narrator of Das Kunstseidene Mädchen, to look good and follow fashion.  

In other words, artificial silk was a wonder product that furthered female emancipation and the creation of a consumer society.*

II. The Artificial Silk Girl

(i) A Girl Called Doris ...

I like Irmgard Keun's second novel - a follow up to Gilgi (1931) - for many reasons, not least of all because it contains elements central to my own concerns as a writer; such as fashion and sexual politics. But I'm also very fond of its 18-year-old narrator, Doris, with her rosy complexion, permed hair, love of tinned sardines, and seven rusty safety pins attached to her underwear providing a form of punk chastity.

Doris is a promiscuous tragi-comic heroine in the same mould as Lorelei, the young flapper who narrates Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) and the divinely decadent figure of Fräulein Sally Bowles, who first appeared in a short novel by Christopher Isherwood in 1937.

However, I also think we can see something of Doris in the character of Macabéa, in Clarice Lispector's brilliant novel, A Hora de Estrela (1977), which, like The Artificial Silk Girl, is a tale of crushed innocence and anonymous misery (although, to be fair, it's also a far more philosophically-informed work).

(ii) Venus im Peltz ...

Whilst described as an artificial silk girl,** Doris is actually a young woman who values the authenticity of natural materials; ermine, for example, is a sacred word in her vocabulary - one that gives her goosebumps just to think of it. At some point she steals a fur coat and it becomes the great love of her life:

"Such sweet, soft fur. So fine and gray and shy, I felt like kissing it, that's how much I loved it. It spoke comfort to me, a guardian angel, protection from heaven. It was genuine squirrel." [40]

If, initially, she intended merely to borrow the coat (albeit without permission of the owner), she knew deep down that she'd never return it: "The fur coat was attached to my skin like a magnet and they loved each other, and you don't give up what you love, once you have it." [40-41] Later, wandering the streets at five in the morning, disappointed and disgusted by an old flame, Doris thinks to herself:

"I look so elegant in that fur. It's like an unusual man who makes me beautiful through his love for me. I'm sure it used to belong to a fat lady with a lot of money - unfairly. It smells from cheques and Deutsche bank. But my skin is stronger. It smells of me now [...] The coat wants me and I want it. We have each other." [42] 

This, one might suggest, goes beyond a fur fetish towards a genuine example of objectum sexuality. Amusingly, she even gives her beloved coat a Christmas present; "a waft of lavender perfume" [91], and, at the end of the book, when she is considering returning the coat to its rightful owner, she composes a letter in which she writes:

"'Dear Madam:

Once I stole your fur coat. Naturally, you will be mad at me. Did you love it a lot? I'll have you know, I love it a lot. There were times where it lifted me up and made me a high-society woman and [...] the beginning of a star. and then there were times when I loved it just because it's soft and feels like a human being all over my skin. And it's gentle and kind. [...] And I can tell you that a thousand fur coats could rain down on me [...] but I would never love another coat the same way I loved this one." [129]

 

Those familiar with the novel will recall that it was her initial concern that the police might be after her on account of the stolen coat that made Doris decide to flee her hometown and catch an overnight train to Berlin, determined to become a movie star:

"And then everything I do will be right - I'll never have to be careful about what I do or say [...] I can just be drunk - nothing can happen to me anymore, no loss, no disdain, because I'm a star." [30]

(iii) Du bist verrückt mein Kind, du musst nach Berlin

At first, Doris loves the excitement of the Big City; the people, the U-Bahn, the enormous neon signs, etc. Not that she's happy exactly - or wants to be happy. She wants, rather, to become rich and famous and happy people are content with what they have and who they are and don't care about these things. "Only if you're unhappy do you get ahead." [54]  

This pessimistic philosophy is perhaps best expressed in the following paragraph, which could easily have been lifted from An Illicit Lover's Discourse: 

"If a young woman from money marries an old man because of money and nothing else and makes love to him for hours and has this pious look on her face, she's called a German mother and a decent woman. If a young woman without money sleeps with a man with no money because he has smooth skin and she likes him, she's a whore and a bitch." [56]

Sadly, things - as they have a habit of doing - take a turn for the worse. And soon Doris's misery is compounded by poverty and hunger and she is obliged to increasingly trade on her looks, shall we say, accepting the precarious patronage of sugar daddies. But still she retains her dreams of stardom and devotion to the city: "My life is Berlin and I'm Berlin." [60]

Her descriptions of the city to Herr Brenner - an old blind man who likes to hold her feet with reverence and stroke her silky legs and to whom she's extraordinarily kind - are really very beautiful and astonishingly observant. She wants him to experience and to love her Berlin as she knows and loves it.

He tells her: "'The city isn't good and the city isn't happy and the city is sick, but you are good'" [79] and I think that's probably true.

(iv)  Wir sind alle Prostituierte / Jeder hat seinen Preis

Actually, this remark made by Herr Brenner reminds me of a story that Norm MacDonald tells Jerry Seinfeld in an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, about the naivety of Det. Crocker in an early episode of Kojak (the CBS series from the 1970s starring Telly Savalas).   

Investigating the murder of several prostitutes, Crocker interviews the mother of one of the dead girls and reports back to Kojak that, actually, she wasn't on the game - she was a good, good girl. Kojak, however, who's seen and heard it all, is cynically dismissive: "She was a good girl. Mama's apple pie. The Fourth of July - she was a hooker!" 

And, despite her protestations otherwise, that's really what Doris was - a good-time girl with a talent for storytelling and cooking her own goose. She remains defiantly proud of the fact that - despite everything - she's not a normal girl living a regular life: "Compared to that, a whore's life is more interesting." [120]

Ultimately, those men, including the ultra-annoying Ernst, who would oblige her to seek respectable paid employment and strip her of her beloved fur coat - which has such soft hair and been through so much with her - can go fuck themselves.

And if she turns into a whore like the girl Hulla, wearing "cheap, tight-fitting wool jumpers that emphasize her body shape in a vulgar way" [80], well, as the song says, we are all prostitutes ... And perhaps glamorous stardom - just like bourgeois decency - isn't all it's cracked up to be (or even all that different).

Notes

* Unfortunately, the history of artificial silk production is also a disturbing tale of toxic materials, environmental abuses, and economics trumping health and safety concerns; many workers involved in the industry suffered serious illness as a result of contact with this innovative and highly lucrative product. See: Paul David Blanc: Fake Silk: The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon, (Yale University Press, 2016).

** As a matter of fact, Doris is not a fan of artificial silk and advises against wearing it on dates with men as it wrinkles too quickly: "'Only pure silk, I say ...'" [72]

Read: Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl, trans. Kathie von Ankum (Penguin Books, 2019). 

Play: X-Ray Spex, 'Art-I-Ficial', from the album Germfree Adolescents (EMI, 1978). The Pop Group, 'We Are All Prostitutes', (Rough Trade, 1979). 

Watch: Jerry Seinfeld and Norm Macdonald, 'A Rusty Car in the Rain', Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Season 9, Episode 2 (2017): click here for the Kojak scene. 

Readers interested in the first part of this post in which I discuss the life of Irmgard Keun, should click here.

Existence is Elusive 1: In Memory of Irmgard Keun and The Artificial Silk Girl

Irmgard Keun (1905-1982)
Photo: Ullstein Bild / Getty Images

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but there doesn't seem to be any similar kind of objection to judging a work by its title and Irmgard Keun's 1932 novel has such an absolutely fabulous title - Das Kunstseidene Mädchen - that I immediately ordered a copy on Amazon.

In part, The Artificial Silk Girl was inspired by Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) - a work that created a literary sensation at the time and which is still regarded today as one of the most important works of German modernism. Keun had met Döblin at a literary event in Cologne and he encouraged her to write, rightly recognising that her narrative skills and extraordinary powers of observation would bring her success as an author.

However, it's important to also acknowledge the influence of Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925). Keun was determined to write the German equivalent to this bestselling American novel and to create a strong female character to rival the young flapper Lorelei. In Doris, who heads to the Big City wearing a stolen fur coat and a pair of knickers held together with seven rusty safety pins in order to become a movie star, I believe she did so. The book was an instant smash.

Unfortunately, the Nazis were not impressed and not amused by The Artificial Silk Girl. Not only did they ban its sale, but they destroyed every copy they could lay their paws on. Joseph Goebbels and friends at the Reich Chamber of Culture thought the work degenerate and un-German; a prime example of what they termed asphalt literature filled with low-life characters who deserved to be placed in concentration camps rather than made sympathetic.

Amusingly - and to her immense credit - Keun didn't take this lying down; she attempted to sue the Nazi regime for loss of income. Sadly, she was unsuccessful in this and, in effect, the Nazis had terminated her career as a writer. She left Germany - and her Hitler supporting husband - in 1936, and spent the following years drifting around Europe in search of a new start. Alas, despite having many famous friends and lovers in the literary world, a life of anonymity, alcoholism, and homelessness followed.

In 1966, Keun was committed to the psychiatric ward of Bonn State Hospital, remaining there until 1972. It was only after an article appeared in Stern magazine in 1977, that the public rediscovered her and new editions of her books were published. By this time, however, she was too old and too ill to really care.

Keun died of lung cancer in 1982.

Note: a sister post, in which I review the novel in more detail, can be read by clicking here. 

On the Politics of Lipstick

Victory Red lipstick by Elizabeth Arden

 No lipstick will win the war. But it symbolises why we're fighting. 

I.

Can we ever maintain a pure distinction between aesthetics and politics? I don't think so. In fact, it seems to me that questions to do with art, fashion, and the extraordinary profusion of forms and ideas belonging to modern culture are always at the same time questions to do with power and ways of living in the world; what I would term philosophical questions.       

And so, the question of cosmetics, for example, is just as important as a question concerning the economy. Examining our own thinking and discourse around the simple act of wearing lipstick allows us not merely to stage a strategic engagement with historical fascism, but to confront also the molecular fascism that exists in us all.   

In a preface to Anti-Oedipus, Foucault asks: How does one keep from being fascist? How do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism? It isn't easy. But there are a number of things one can do (or not do) and a number of things one needs to watch out for.

For example, it's wise to exercise caution before exclusively tying an ideal of Beauty to Nature and to Truth (and thus also to the Good). It doesn't necessarily make you a Nazi if you do so and believe chapped lips have some kind of transcendental superiority - it might mean, rather, that you're a Platonist, a puritan, or simply a sad militant always on the lookout for signs of decadence - but it's not coincidental that the Nazis did precisely this ... 


II.

As soon as they gained power in 1933, the Nazis not only started to prepare for war and to persecute the Jews, they also attempted to control every aspect of women's lives, including how they looked.

Although Hitler wanted German women to be the best-dressed in Europe, trousers were out (too unfeminine) and so was the use of fur in fashion (too cruel). He also disapproved of hair dye, thought perfume disgusting, and hated makeup - particularly lipstick, which he never tired of telling everyone was made from waste animal fat.

For the Führer, the fashions coming out of Paris, pioneered by designers like Chanel, encouraged an unnaturally slender (boyish-looking) silhouette; that was no good, as he wanted German women to be physically robust breeding sows; all hips and tits and no cigarettes, paint, or powder. Aryan beauty would be wholesome, clean, and fresh-faced; the antithesis of that artificial and androgynous look favoured by the Neue Frauen parading around Berlin during the Weimar period.    

Thus it was that the Allies - whether they liked it or not - were obliged to affirm the use of cosmetics. If loose lips sunk ships, then painted red lips would provide the kiss of death to the Third Reich. 

British women, therefore, applied makeup  - even though it became an increasingly scarce commodity traded on the black market - as a patriotic duty. It was what we might term an essential non-essential and even government officials realised that lipstick mattered as much to women as tobacco mattered to men.  

American girls - including those serving in the armed forces or working on factory lines - also continued to wear their lipstick with pride in order to retain their femininity, boost morale, and stick it to Hitler. Shades including Victory Red and Fighting Red were created by cosmetic companies such as Elizabeth Arden keen to do their bit for the war effort.

Feminists still celebrate J. Howard Miller's iconic figure of Rosie the Riveter, but it's often overlooked that she always had perfect makeup and never surrendered her right to be glamorous as well as strong and free.         

See: 

Michel Foucault, Preface to Anti-Oedipus, by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), pp. xi-xiv. 

Marlen Komar, 'Makeup and War Are More Intricately Connected Than You Realized', Bustle (28 Oct 2017): click here to read online.

Sandra Lawrence, 'Beetroot and boot-polish: How Britain's women faced World War 2 without make-up', The Telegraph (3 March 2015): click here to read online.

Elizabeth Nicholas, 'The Little-Known Lipstick Battle of World War II',  Culture Trip (14 June 2018): click here to read online.

Jane Thynne, 'Fashon and the Third Reich', History Today (12 March 2013): click here to read online. 

Note: this post was written in response to a series of comments on an earlier post on lips and lipstick: click here.