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illes Lipovetsky (France, 1944) became a reference essayist when he dared to approach fashion as a social phenomenon. A philosopher and sociologist by training, Lipovetsky tackled a topic scorned by every self-respecting anti-modern philosopher. In fact, his book The Empire of Ephemeral Things (1987) begins by stating that "fashion provokes critical reflection rather than objective study. Fashion is always about others." He broke molds by approaching fashion - understood as the rapid process of design, production, and consumption - as a paradigm of modern capitalism. He was not the first: prominent thinkers such as Georg Simmel or Walter Benjamin had already turned their gaze to fashion as a symptom and expression of Western modernity.
Does the intelligentsia still dislike the issue of fashion? I think so. What has changed since the 80s is that fashion studies have developed enormously. When I wrote The Empire of Ephemeral Things, I struggled a lot to find information. There were no books. In the Anglo world, there are Women's Studies, and in the Basque Country, good studies were already being done then, but they are not done by philosophers, but by sociologists, anthropologists, or historians. Philosophers still despise fashion. They think it's only about conformism and the alienation of women.
And feminist thought, does it deal with fashion? In a chapter of The Third Woman, I deal with beauty. When I wrote it in the nineties, it sparked a great debate. Five feminists were asked to react to my book. None of them commented on that topic, as they consider it unworthy of serious study. It's a huge, total mistake!
You're right, it's a fundamental issue. Particularly for women, since the burden of appearance falls on us. It's a political issue related to the construction of female subjectivity. I totally agree. It's a very symptomatic reaction. In the United States, for example, there is a book like Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, but in France, politics is understood in a very strict way. Fashion is only linked to the woman-object. It's almost a contempt. Women are considered important for their citizenship, for their work, for taking care of their children. Well, agreed, but when it comes to beauty... how horrible! They throw their hands up in despair.
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But one must study the social constitution of beauty to know it, to be able to criticize it and change it, if desired, don't you think? There are things to criticize, of course, but the relationship with the body is essential. It is an issue that worries me, because the relationship with the body, particularly the female body, illustrates a trend that is contrary to other spheres of society, in which women are advancing. Well, here there is only one norm that legitimizes beauty: thinness. Before there was more pluralism, now less. Now the body must be thin.
"We are in a massive cultural revolution, but I am convinced that it will not pulverize the sexual division"In The Empire of the Ephemeral, you stated that "the artificial favors access to the real." Read from today's perspective, it made me think of transgender models, as I believe they exemplify the paradigm of the promise of transformation offered by beauty product advertising. The message that marketing directs to non-transgender women is: if a man can achieve this feminine and glamorous look, what won't it do for you?I don't believe in transexual models. I think they are a real effect of the advances of this collective, but to state that we are in a logic of blurring the division of sexes seems to me a contradiction. It works in advertising and marketing because it operates as a provocation, a subversion, but nothing more. We are in a massive cultural revolution, but I am convinced that it will not pulverize the sexual division. I don't believe we are going to a unisex or transexual society. It's only in the heads of marketing people. I think this is provocative among professionals because they are naive and victims of fashion. Fashion is a small world.
Do you think there is more creativity in fashion today? Now, especially for women, the most important thing is not fashion but the body. They worry more about weight or skin than about jeans. They dress more relaxed, with a fun side, there is a distance. Before they were obsessed with appearance, it was almost vital. Now appearance is the body, which stops being fun. This is very serious, the body, the face. Before, women were jealous of other women's dresses. This no longer happens, except among some teenagers. This trend is criticized, but I am in favor because it means that clothes have been put in their place. It does not carry the meaning of life, life is something else.
Too much importance is given to women's bodies, particularly in relation to aging, don't you think? Totally agree. The cult of thinness is terrible. There are many women and brands that fight this, like Dove, but they have little success.
I think the success in changing the model is weak, but many women identify with the Dove body and feel better. This is desirable. In fact, a certain roundness is not ugly, it doesn't shock me. The canonical beauty of fashion has a poor appearance.
It's that this type of beauty doesn't try to please men, but to accommodate a standard of obedient, disciplined, and consumerist subjectivity. It's another model, a model of subjectivity and a soft power strategy. There are many aesthetic operations and Botox. Women are right to talk about the tyranny of beauty.
"We need a new education that provides young people with tools and teaches them to be more than just consumers. Artistic training should be central, as well as strategies for competitiveness"I tend to refuse the term "tyranny" because I learned -precisely from your books, and from the notion of productive power in Foucault- that women are seduced into adopting this model. There is a lot of pressure, but the modus operandi is not the logic of force, but that of seduction, don't you think? It depends on how we study it. If we look at it from a sociological point of view, there is a tyranny. If we see it from the political side, we can always rebel. In school, pre-teenagers put a lot of pressure on themselves. We need a new education that provides young people with tools and teaches them to be more than just consumers. Artistic training should be central, as well as strategies for competitiveness. The goal is quality, not quantity. Democracy is equivalent to the possibility of realizing the human ideal. Fostering creativity and self-expression is fundamental to avoid the heaviness of repetitive work. Do good, love beauty, and create. Regarding tyranny, feminists complain, but globally it is less strong than before. Let's think, for example, about the texts that men wrote about old women, they were terrible! They treated them as witches, they were very violent.
Has it changed so much today? I will soon be an old lady… But you are still beautiful!
Thank you, but isn't this precisely the trap? Women are socially acceptable as long as we are beautiful. However, accepting the authority of our voice, well, that's harder – regardless of whether you are beautiful or not. If they consider you beautiful, they find it shocking. Many men are still afraid of educated women. Beauty acts as a protection: "you are still beautiful." The "witch" emerges when a woman's beauty fades and what stands out most then is her knowledge, her wisdom, don't you think? When I give lectures in Brazil, women love what I say, but they tell me that men believe women in their forties are old. However, I know women of a certain age who find partners of their same age. For an intelligent man, on an erotic level, I believe a woman of a certain age is erotic. They are interesting. The body is fine, but it's not that important. About eroticism, Proust says imagination is necessary. But some men are, in fact, conformist. Even with today's evolution, the tools of seduction for men and women are not the same. For example, power and money are attractive factors for women. Political men, leaders, attract women. Female leaders do not attract men at all. On the contrary. And this does not seem to change. That's why I don't believe in transgender mixing in the cultural sense. After all that has already changed, this has not yet. Rich and old men look for young women. The revolution is not total, there are great permanencies that remain, lagging behind.
More than a revolution, is it then a small avant-garde? Is our erotic gaze going to change? I don't think it's an avant-garde, I think it's a potential virtuality but it will remain something marginal. Listen, I pay close attention to anthropology. Los homo sapiens have been in existence for 50,000 years during which there always seems to have been a sexual division of labor. I don't see this dimension disappearing. Being a man and being a woman, one can say it is a construct, as gender studies affirm, but it is not a total construct.
Intellectual women tend to be perceived as people who deal with matters that only concern women. Are there intellectual women in France today who are public figures? Is there no hierarchy of voice authority? That's a good question, but celebrity is not the reference now. There are many women academics who write. Some things don't change, but other things have changed. In the 1950s, it was considered that women could not study mathematics. That's over. There aren't many female engineers, but no one considers that by being one they stop being feminine. That's not true.
"The dominant culture among young generations is no longer a hierarchy of sexes according to which women are good at listening, raising children, being beautiful and desirable. The egalitarian model has defeated the old model, but this does not mean that, suddenly, everything is egalitarian"Well, but it's not a question of the perception of femininity of female engineers, but whether they will have the same trust from clients in their work - and the same remuneration - as their male colleagues. There are many differences in startups: most are men. These are the facts, but no one disputes the principles of equality. The great era of machismo has ended, but feminism is not happy. I don't stop criticizing the things that haven't changed, but there are things that have. Feminism only sees inequality, as if it were terrible. It is not machismo on which the glass ceiling rests. It is much more complicated. Macho culture believes that there is a superiority of men over women, but most men no longer think this. Although it still exists, the dominant culture among young generations is no longer a hierarchy of sexes according to which women are good for listening, raising children, being beautiful and desirable. The egalitarian model has defeated the old phallocentric macho model, but this does not mean that, suddenly, everything is egalitarian. There are new forms of difference and inequality that are reconstituted. For example, in politics, more and more women are reaching the top and it is not a problem. However, large companies are still in the hands of men, we can agree. But, in revenge, there is an enormous number of women entrepreneurs in medium and small companies. Many are governed by the professional model but do not want to destroy the family model. They seek to find balance.
They also seek to change society in such a way that allows them to do everything. Yes, and men don't seek it. I have friends who have not accepted professional promotions because they do not want to sacrifice family and children, but men do not refuse. Is this machismo? Not exactly. We do not live in a macho culture, but neither do we live in an egalitarian one. The current feminist model still responds to the idea that men want to hold women back. I think it is a vision that is not good for women. Men have evolved a lot, not in everything, but the fact is that there is no father in Europe who does not want his daughters to study. It has changed a lot! I wanted my two daughters to study. I never thought they should set limits for being women.
Don't you think women tend to reject hyper-competitive work models? They want to work, but not wage war. Yes, women are less competitive. For this reason, they create small businesses. In large ones, it's terrible, it's war. Indeed, it's a masculine political model: men build their identity based on competition, even sexual. Women don't. This doesn't change.
No, but it could. It's not biologically determined, it's cultural. Biology is educated, but anatomically we are not the same. This counts. It must be taken into account that today the positive far outweighs the negative. The model of the 50s is totally overcome. The idea that women should marry and exclusively take care of the home was a majority tradition, which is now obsolete. It is totally unthinkable. Girls should do what they want. There is no problem. The revolution is enormous! I think women should reflect more on the enormous changes that have occurred, even if not everything is positive. The old model had something comfortable about it because it was tradition, but today, women must be much more reflective and, like men, permanently reinvent themselves. The model is that of the woman who invents herself, as I advocate in The Third Woman. Woman is not predetermined. You have a daughter and you don't know how she will live. Before, yes, you knew what she was going to do: she stayed in her town, got married, and had children. Life is now more open for women.
"Carnally we are sexed beings. It is impossible for this capital biological dimension to stop counting. It is anthropologically unthinkable"The egalitarian model is already an advance, since previously man, the male, was the human being and, on an inferior and secondary plane, were women. We all have the same rights, though not everywhere in the world. This is the trend, but anthropologically, the human being is an abstraction. In the flesh, we are sexed. It is impossible for this crucial biological dimension to stop counting. It is anthropologically unthinkable. Everything can change, people will dress as they please, but even I, a liberal dad, when my daughter started going out at night, I would go to the disco to pick her up. I was scared. I didn't want to leave her alone. I worried about my daughter, but not about my son.
Ah, well, but try to explain to a man who is not a father how women experience the possibility of aggression in public spaces, how we measure each of our steps. Men do not experience this or, if they do, it is not for the same reasons. Furthermore, the relationship with sexuality is not the same. It's not sexism. It's more complicated. The cultural model is key and education is essential to make it evolve. It is necessary to create female role models. Successful women want to remain feminine, they dress up, they wear makeup. In Beauvoir's time, women wanted to be like men. Beauvoir dressed femininely but not sexy. Now they also want to be sexy. I like this. It's positive.
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