Sarahel's Semiotics 4U

say something about how men's clothes are sized as small, medium and large

― ❊❁❄❆❇❃✴❈plaxico❈✴❃❇❆❄❁❊ (I know, right?), Monday, August 10, 2009 11:32 PM (1 minute ago)

^some bullshit, only reinforces stereotype that "size matters"

referring to penis size btw

oh hell lou

men's condoms are large and medium iirc

― cockles (country matters), Tuesday, August 11, 2009 3:35 AM (1 minute ago)

Ban this user from this thread (temporarily)

Confirm

The dearth of pockets encourages reliance on the purse/handbag, Because it is discrete from the woman's body, the purse/handbag reinforces the cultural norm that women should rely on others for security when outside the home. Were the woman to be employed in manual labor, and forced to carry a purse/handbag because of the lack of functional pockets, she would need to constantly watch that her purse/handbag is not stolen, or employ some other means or person to prevent this theft.

One could view the purse/handbag symbolizing a child, and that to design pants with enough functional pockets, would go against the societal demand that a woman needs to be caring for a child in order to be a "real woman."

anything else people want me to semiotically analyze?

pockets also make it look like you weigh more, so if trousers come with pockets some people will go to the tailor and have them cut out.

i would use a purse/handbag if society would allow me to.

sarahel, i was hoping you would discuss cost and quality of women's vs men's pants.

anything else people want me to semiotically analyze?

givenchy heels

The dearth of pockets encourages reliance on the purse/handbag, Because it is discrete from the woman's body, the purse/handbag reinforces the cultural norm that women should rely on others for security when outside the home.

I have started wearing girlpants this month and had this thought yesterday like verbatim btw

it depends on where the pockets are located ... side pockets a la cargo-type pants don't really do this. The worst offender in women's pants that make you look fat are front pleats.

Yeah but everybody knows that, I hope! Pleats do not do ANYBODY any favors regardless of gender.

I would like to hear more about the social ensnarement of women via accoutrements. Are there many other examples you can think of?

i thought you were banned from this thread!

xp I used to have a job doing audio visual work at hotels, where I had to wear pants that looked professional (as opposed to dickies or carharts), and I would be almost to the point of tears when shopping for functional pants. Besides pockets, I needed pants with belt loops so I could wear a belt and clip on the walkie talkie.

mea culpa

xp

Pleats do not do ANYBODY any favors regardless of gender.

except for really skinny guys.

idk - I think they're awful on just about everyone. I honestly can't ever recall seeing anyone in pleated pants (the traditional type, mind) and thinking it was a good look.

omg @ mea culpa

This all sounds like an interesting school of thought. How will it fare when applied to the advertising of women's clothing?

the social ensnarement of women via accoutrements.

Around the time of the sexual revolution/2nd wave feminism in the 60s/70s/80s the image of the superwoman was popularized. She was not only supposed to be as effective a worker as her male counterpart, but also highly capable as a wife, mother, and aesthetic subject. Nowhere is this seen more than in the products women are supposed to keep on their person, presumably in their purse or handbag. Failure to have these products, which include beauty aids as well as organizational/work tools, signifies a failure to fulfill the exhaustingly large list of requirements to be successful.

can you quote some relevant guy debord now plz ;)

not from memory ... the books are all in the other room.

aw

Can you now analyse the 'soccer/hockey mom' phenomenon?

after I have dinner ... someone else do some semiotic analysis while I'm gone, please?

uh, websites give you the illusion of choice but really they restrict the "free association" they imply through click-through designation and rationalise your thought process for you. Most web design is about a surfeit of choice which suggests unlimited options on each page but in reality the progression of one page to the next within a website is quite linear. This prolly has to do with newspeak and the mechanisation of our thought processes or something u kno?

adverts know you know how they're selling the product, and they expect you to be complicit in a narrative where the advert does not stand alone but exists in relation to other adverts; now no longer directly selling its product, the advert strives to be 'the one where x happens' as compared to other adverts for similar items, and depends on them to remain memorable. once the narrative has been digested, the buyer must merely pick a 'favourite bit' like from a movie or a sitcom. this is why to an occasional television watcher like myself, adverts seem increasingly superficial, jarring, and flashy. it is because their visual and conceptual span is not complete; it is a discrete fragment of a hypnotic and ritual whole

Does it depend on the jean? There are many different classes of demin. There are lower end demin, such as you find at Aamerican Eagle, Levi's Forever 21, Gap, and J Crew. Then there's 7's, Ernst Sewn, Jean Shop, Paper. Then there's Marc Jacobs, Gucci, etc... Does this affect the sexist implications found in the design of the jean?

yeah, sexism crosses class boundaries

So designer jeans don't allow for more freedom?

no, they only allow for the the freedom of men to oppress women into carrying babies in their purses (which might get stolen)

Jeans are a different issue - they are not "professional" attire

jeez, girl
more like insomniotics

can you quote some relevant guy debord now plz ;)

62 False choice in spectacular abundance, a choice which lies in the juxtaposition of competing and complimentary spectacles and also in the juxtaposition of roles (signified and carried mainly by things) which are at once exclusive and overlapping, develops into a struggle of vaporous qualities meant to stimulate loyalty to quantitative triviality. This resurrects false archaic oppositions, regionalisms and racism which serve to raise the vulgar hierarchic ranks of consumption to a preposterous ontological superiority. In this way, the endless series trivial confrontations is set up again, from competitive sports to elections ...

Women's pants (sexist or not) are horrible anyway. IMO they just don't look good... but that's just me I guess.

O_O this is turning into the thread where people had to translate song titles into academese, while other posters had to guess the title of song in question... but without the "songs" part.

Dear celebrity, spectacular representation of a living human being, can I get your sister's email why because she look intersting

i <3 this shit tbh

I will address the semiotics of soccer moms after I get some sleep.

That Debord quote ties in perfectly with my line about advertising. Not sure I'd call competitive sports or elections 'false choices' mind.

competitive sports are a perfect example of false choices.

lol so are elections! perhaps that's why he mentioned competitive sports and elections in that paragraph..............

i am shaking my head at lj

it certainly has been posited quite a bit about U.S. elections, to be sure.

something can only be false if you believe in the truth

My only contention with sarahel's points, as one who shops with my gf quite often and has noted the bewildering variety that any 'size' may have wrt to women's clothing, is that, otoh, there is a certain standard and normative 'masculinity' which disparages men who are 'overly' fastidious about their clothing or overly daring. If a man is a size 42, he buys a coat size 42 but does that mean that all manufacturers make them equally? If a man wanted no pockets or non-functional pockets, could he get them easily in business attire? The conservativeneness of men's attire - the lounge suit being essentially THE de rigueur attire of men - dates from the 20's and while it has had fuller or narrower trousers and wider or narrower lapels and X number of buttons or been single or double breasted, it has otherwise little changed in 90 years. Standardization of sizes sounds like a good idea but it leads to a conformity and leveller result that denies rather provides variety and individual choice. At least when my gf goes clothes shopping, she knows that she has to try everything on - every brand's sizes being different and often different within the brand on different items of clothing. For men, the variables are generally inseam, sleeve, collar, chest, and waist. Add to this the varities of feminine curves , i.e., large bust/large hips, large bust/small hips, small bust/large hips, small bust/small hips and all the individual modulations specific to a real as opposed to a template woman and the sizing issue, while admittedly annoying, seems less to me like a horrible conspiracy (though there is definitely size deflation for the purpose of flattery) then a natural result of the nature of the business.

DUMPLINGS!

xp - men aren't all shaped the same, either. I see where you're coming from, though. A guy with a significant gut has fewer stylistic options of camouflaging, flattering said protuberance, than a woman does.

it is his superego. the small one is his ego, the alsatian his id

the small dog is real

lol

http://i.imgur.com/VSxOsMl.jpg

it really looks like a stuffed toy

it looks meek and apprehensive.

little doesn't know what is going on yet but is thinking, i will be first against the wall.

you are all focussing on what turns out to be the least important of the three participants in the story they belong to

http://img.izismile.com/img/img3/20100715/640/awkward_family_photos_640_10.jpg

that one definitely refers to classical representations of the holy mother and child, with the cat standing in for Jesus and the large stuffed rabbit for the Virgin Mary.

specifically paintings of the Adoration of the Magi -- except in this photograph, there is a flatness, the man (magi) is right next to the Virgin Mary (the rabbit) and the baby Jesus (the cat), as opposed to at an angle from the mother & child. This is definitely redolent of the post-modern age of this image -- we no longer need to concern ourselves with the issues of perspective that the Renaissance painters did.

http://i.imgur.com/tCwqS6g.jpg

The-shape-things-come-dog-grooming-Pets-fur-trimmed-make-heads-square-circular-bizarre-new-trend-Taiwan.html

Many are now opting for the cuts simply to get more likes and shares on social media sites.

http://www.radioactiva.cl/files/2014/07/hair_man-387096.jpg
http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1545023/meet-square-head-bro-taiwanese-man-blockhead-hairstyle

Wu, whose hair casts a 90 degrees right angle silhouette, told local reporters that he was still single and had difficulty attracting women, despite having a decent job that afforded him a salary of 70,000 Taiwan dollars a month (HK$18,000).

After being rejected by a girl, the dramatic hairstyle was adopted in an effort to “look more like a young guy in his 20s or 30s”, Wu said.

i think this is about toast:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-k5_uSmxzH5w/TaETz8nYXFI/AAAAAAAACFY/TMtkOOQ_bOY/s1600/Picture%2B1.png

http://americanlivewire.com/wp-content/uploads/Sonneveld.jpg

http://americanlivewire.com/wp-content/uploads/Sodahead.jpg

The harsh, angular edges of square objects… suggest masculine temper while the round shape of a circle implies the gentleness of a woman.

The Circle, bluntly, in Circle in the Square represents the female, the rounded shape or 'hole' of her reproductive organs, while the Square means the line of the penis. The Circle is within the Square, that is symbolically and effectively ruled by the male, even where metaphysically (for instance in the medieval cosmogony where the encircling ether or sky is female, while the encircled fountain represented by the Hebrew letter yod is male), or materially (during coitus, or while pregnant) she seems to surround and contain the male; for her purpose for being is in nourishing and setting off the glory and power, and to serve, and ultimately, "when she is good", to become the crown of, the male organ or as Wolfson explains, the woman's highest pride would be to inhabit the very corona of the circumcised penis!

also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_formal_garden

http://img1.imagesbn.com/p/9780486600680_p0_v2_s260x420.JPG

but mostly, poor doggy [ :( ]

sarahell i saw this and thought of you, wanted to post before i forgot
http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-semiotics-of-clowns-and-clowning-9781472532787/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_content=The%20Semiotics%20of%20Clowns%20and%20Clowning&utm_campaign=NL-CT_Semiotics%20of%20Clown%20and%20Clowning_June/

hahahah i find clowns disturbing!

What are people's thoughts on concrete poetry? I ask because I used to read a lot of that kind of stuff, and I'm now reading Perloff's 'unoriginal genius' and I noticed she views it differently from me. She sees I as a somewhat conservative trend which equates the signified and the sign. I always felt that it was contrasting the signal and the sign, exposing contradictions and opening up new ways to experience characters and text separated from their normal usage.

I know, of course, that concrete poetry isn't enormously popular, I just figured that the typographical possibilities of the internet would bear it's legacy somewhat. Does anyone have any thought, knowledge etc to bear?

I always felt that gomringer's silencio https://i2.wp.com/media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lat7dvHeL31qzkabq.gif is contrasting the for of the word 'silence' with what it signifies, for example

linked to by a friend on fb:
http://www.racked.com/2016/9/19/12865560/politics-of-pockets-suffragettes-women

special request 4 semiotic breakdown of veronica, betty and cheryl blossom particularly vis-a-vis cheryl blossom's interruption/addition to riverdale continuity

When I think about people “doing semiotics at Brown” I still get a tingle down my spine

— Naomi Fry (@frynaomifry) June 22, 2018

What does a Sarahel think of ‘The Uprising’ by Berardi? Reading it in the pub atm.

haven't read it. but I do recommend David Graeber's The Utopia of Rules

I’ll check it out! I’ve read Debt and Direct Action - I think I tended to enjoy the anecdotes and ephemera within them more than the overall project, but I did enjoy them.

the anecdotes are good -- I feel like that's where he excels as a writer in this vein

22nd Street tiger painting is gone

that's it, Mission is over

HOW DARE THEY!!!!!!!!!!

Also this is the perfect thread for that info.

special request 4 semiotic breakdown of veronica, betty and cheryl blossom particularly vis-a-vis cheryl blossom's interruption/addition to riverdale continuity

― Mordy, Wednesday, December 14, 2016 5:44 PM (one year ago

In the TV show? I watched it only a few months ago! Riverdale and Gotham are kinda my inexplicable faves rn

i really meant in the comix - cheryl blossom was foregrounded in the world of the show but in the comix iirc she was always an interpolation. "now introducing cheryl!" or like an image of cheryl driving into town in a corvette and veronica and betty put out by archie crushing on her. narratively i think this is obv an opportunity to unite veronica + betty against an outside force but these figures do seem archetypical to me like it's not a coincidence that the brunette + blonde's quest for the all american boy is hijacked by a red head but i'm not 100% sure why i know it's contained within the semiotics of hair color, gender norms + american small town mythos among other things but i can't extract it.

I never read the comix ... so all I have to go on is the tv show. Having her be revealed as queer was a shift, and kinda felt like a tension release in a way? I kinda don't know how I feel about it. I guess one thing that connects Riverdale & Gotham (outside of being based on comics) tv shows, is the way that they incorporate the retro and the contemporary. Like, these shows are "period" and also not, but they try to make it appear cohesive ... idk.

Gotham's even "weirder" in that it incorporates (or tries to) elements from multiple time periods, as opposed to Riverdale which is just 50s + contemporary

riverdale feels like a subversion of the comix - like a lynchian undressing of idyllic small town american high school life. by contrast sabrina despite being also a much more mature + at times disturbing version of its source material feels like it preserves the essential conflicts of the original work. it's just like a much darker take on the torn between two worlds narrative and wanting to be a normal teenager etc. on the show do betty + veronica ever fight over archie? i only watched the first few episodes and the show seemed to be studiously avoiding putting them in competition over his affection.

they don't really fight over archie. show begins with betty having a thing for archie, but she later gets over it and dates jughead. betty and jughead, and veronica and archie who are also a couple, break up for a short time, and archie and betty kiss during this time. but theres not really any "fighting" and both respective couples get back together

it definitely does the Lynch thing, sometimes so much so that I'm rolling my eyes. It's fun tho. I like Gotham better. It actually is interesting in terms of commentary on mental health issues

also re Riverdale, there's the extra-textual thing of Archie's parents being played by Molly Ringwald and Dylan from 90210

i keep getting ads for this company. this is one of the ads -- from a Marx-informed perspective -- this whole ad campaign is ... damn ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho4LUg9avZA