The Manly Razor, the Feminine Chainsaw

As you might have guessed from my previous blogs, I've been somewhat of a feminist lately. Not that I ever deemed it okay to putz around in the kitchen all day (as my cooking skills might suggest), but these past few weeks, I've seen feminist issues in bowls of soup, YouTube videos, and my "I need to stop resembling a furry animal" shopping.

So today, I went to CVS with my mother. Pretty standard, right? It's not like they pull an Abrecrombie and Fitch and post pictures of male models glistening with testosterone. Nobody's going to cross their arms furiously, point their fingers at CVS managers and scream "you are sexist!" (okay, maybe someone will). But as I walked through the shaving aisle, trying to find the cheapest razor, I realized that I'd rejected the first set of razors because they were "too manly." There were no pictures of men on the packages. There were no beards, or any typical "male" symbol. The only thing that differentiated these razors from the "female" collection was the color of the packages. The "male" packages (oh, stahp) tended to be dark shades of orange and blue. They normally contained batteries, yet the ultimate purpose was the same: to remove hair from one's body. Both collections of razors were designed to not make you bleed out when you approached the tricky spots. Yet I walked straight past the orange and blues, making my way for the soft pinks and purples. I almost wished I had picked out a manly razor as soon as I caught myself making the distinction. Would the cashier look at me funny? Would he categorize a dark orange razor as manly if it was separate from its shaving tool companions? Would he make conclusions about me that had nothing to do with my hair-remover of choice? I guess I missed out on that social experiment this time.

It's amazing how we associate colors with our gender roles. Something that has the same purpose across the board can still be distinguished between manly and feminine if it's pink versus black. I own way more black items of clothing than pink. Does that classify me as butch? If I stopped wearing pink goo on my face, that would say something about my personality.

Then again, if I wore black goo on my face, that would say I'm gothic. Whole other can of worms.

This moment during a routine shopping excursion brought me back to a more thought-provoking atmosphere: the Andy Warhol museum. Warhol often used accessories as his subjects, making social commentary both on our consumerist society, and how gender roles play out in society. Although I didn't see this piece in full, I read that he painted a collection of shoes, but replaced the heels with tiny pistols.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Many artists gained inspiration from Warhol's works, and they too got an exhibition in the museum. The piece that resonated the most was Tom Sach's "Chanel Chainsaw":

This piece makes two different important commentaries. It first presents a typically masculine piece of machinery, but Sachs plays around with the connotations of the chainsaw when a typically feminine is slapped onto it. To be honest, I first read the label as "chain-el" because the word seemed so foreign to me when it wasn't on clothing or makeup. Would you see the chainsaw as less reputable because of the feminine label? Or would you see the label as more reputable because it was on a piece of masculine machinery?
Sachs also does a nice job referring to the dangers fashion throws at us. We rarely label fashion as un-threatening because of it's sweet and docile nature (so, rather, the sweet and docile models). It doesn't have an immediate physical violence (although, hullo, eating disorders anyone??), thus we deem it as harmless. Yet the psychological violence it forces on the female demographic can demolish just as much as any killing machine could. It's sneakier, but that just makes fashion scarier. You can't see its pointy edges, the death it's causing in so many young women.

Why these distinctions? Do we feel better when something is made "just for us"? Lots of women have different shaving needs; lots of women would rather power through life with a chainsaw rather than a tube of lipstick.

Next time, I'm buying a manly razor. I'll let you know if the world thinks I'm crazy.

Namaste.