Gender Normativity
"And it is now well established that gentlemen spend a great deal more time in inventing ways and means to entrap women and get them in love with them, than women do in trying to win the hearts of gentlemen" (Montez, 101).
We chose to work with the “gender-normativity” tag because of its relevance to the text. The Arts of Beauty; or, Secrets of a Lady’s Toilet appears to be an instructional guide for women to comply with conventional Western beauty standards, while men are given instruction on how to seduce women. The end portion of this text, which gives hints to men about how to impress women is meant, according to Montez, to be amusing to the women, firstly, but also helpful to the men. Gender-normativity is both promoted and slightly challenged in this text. Montez mentions that women are constantly advised on how to look to attract men, which is where this text promotes gender normativity, yet men are rarely instructed on how to ‘fascinate’ women, which is another purpose of this text.
Our research questions of focus which relate specifically to this tag are:
How does the idea of women self-objectifying stem from patriarchal standards of beauty in this manual?
Are beauty standards created by men's preferences?
"The art of fascination" chapter outlined ideals for mainly men to achieve to be at optimal attractiveness. This chapter seemed to define women as being mostly focused on their beauty and pleasing men, whereas men were busier "entrapping" women and having sex.
- From where do these stereotypes/standards originate?
- How are they created?
- Does this novel reinforce these standards of beauty, and does it limit women's opportunity and power?
"All women know it is beauty, rather than genius, which all generations of men have worshipped in our sex" (Montez, XV).