The Toilet Paper: Femininity, Class and Misrecognition

Skeggs, Bev. 2001. The Toilet Paper: Femininity, Class and Misrecognition. Women's Studies International Forum, 24(3-4), pp. 295-307. ISSN 0277-5395 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

This article unpacks the paradoxical and ambivalent meaning and value of femininity; both its theorization and its practice. To do this it draws on specific empirical sites in the UK—women's toilets—to think through the significance of the contemporary politics of recognition, a politics that Nancy Fraser (1995) argues is displacing the politics of redistribution. The first part of the article explores how the appearance of femininity as a form of cultural capital is utilized and theorized. It also shows how femininity is known and judged and frequently mis-recognised through historical classed positions that are premised on appearance being read as a value of personhood. This analysis is then applied to the empirical research, drawing on two different research projects to make its arguments. Using examples of the tension in women's toilets, it shows how the feminine-appearing body is judged on the basis of excess and devalued but also, paradoxically, given authority to shame and judge. The different processes of mis-recognition invoked in the toilets expose the way class underpins any reading of bodies on the basis of appearance.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-5395(01)00186-8

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Sociology

Dates:

DateEvent
2001Published

Item ID:

13680

Date Deposited:

28 Sep 2015 11:44

Last Modified:

07 Jul 2017 12:47

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/13680

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