As long as it's pink : the sexual politics of taste / Penny Sparke.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sparke, Penny.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women consumers.

Interior decoration--Social aspects.

Interior decoration.

Aesthetics.

Sex role.

Physical Description:

xi, 275 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

London : Pandora, 1995.

Summary:

Why do car manufacturers use paisley interiors to sell their products to women, and does it work? Is women's taste really different to men's? Who says so? And does it matter? In this highly original book Penny Sparke uses familiar objects of our everyday environments - furniture, cars and domestic appliances and interiors - to look at how taste has become a gendered issue in our culture. Ever since the industrial revolution, the cluttered interior has been associated with femininity while the minimal forms of modernist architecture have acted as markers of a masculine aesthetic.

As Long as It's Pink argues that 'taste' has been a quality assigned to women while 'design' is a man-made construction which has taken aesthetic authority away from women. This in turn has succeeded in trivializing and marginalizing women's material culture. Ranging across histories of domesticity, feminine consumption and home-making, as well as modern design and broader cultural theories, Penny Sparke offers a completely new version of the history of our modern material culture.

Contents:

Introduction: 'The Architect's Wife'

Pt. 1. Feminine Taste and Design Reform, 1830-1890. 1. 'An Institution of God Himself': The Domestic Ideal. 2. 'The Things which Surround One': The Domestic Aesthetic. 3. 'Those Extravagant Draperies': Domesticity Contested

Pt. 2. Modernity and Masculinity, 1890-1940. 4. 'Everything in its Place': Women and Modernity. 5. 'Letting in the Air': Women and Modernism. 6. 'The Selling Value of Art': Women and the Moderne. 7. 'We are All Creators': Women and Conservative Modernism

Pt. 3. Modernity and Femininity, 1940-1970. 8. 'The Happy Housewife': Domesticity Renewed. 9. 'A Kind of Golden Age': Goods and Femininity. 10. 'The Anxiety of Contamination': Highbrow Culture and the Problem of Taste

Conclusion: Postmodernity, Postmodernism and Feminine Taste.

Notes:

Bibliography: pages [255]-272.

Includes index.

ISBN:

0044409230

9780044409236

OCLC:

34116480