Research Catalog

Title

As long as it's pink : the sexual politics of taste / Penny Sparke.

Author

Sparke, Penny.

Publication

London ; San Francisco, Calif. : Pandora, c1995.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xi, 275 p. : ill.; 22 cm.

Summary

• Why do car manufacturers use paisley interiors to sell their products to women, and does it work? Is women's taste really different to men's? Who says so? And does it matter? In this highly original book Penny Sparke uses familiar objects of our everyday environments - furniture, cars and domestic appliances and interiors - to look at how taste has become a gendered issue in our culture. Ever since the industrial revolution, the cluttered interior has been associated with femininity while the minimal forms of modernist architecture have acted as markers of a masculine aesthetic.
• As Long as It's Pink argues that 'taste' has been a quality assigned to women while 'design' is a man-made construction which has taken aesthetic authority away from women. This in turn has succeeded in trivializing and marginalizing women's material culture. Ranging across histories of domesticity, feminine consumption and home-making, as well as modern design and broader cultural theories, Penny Sparke offers a completely new version of the history of our modern material culture.

Subject

• Industrial design
• Design > History > 19th century
• Design > History > 20th century
• Aesthetics, Modern > 19th century
• Aesthetics, Modern > 20th century
• Consumers > Psychology
• Sex role
• Material culture
• Culture
• Women consumers
• Interior decoration > Social aspects
• Aesthetics

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction: 'The Architect's Wife' -- Pt. 1. Feminine Taste and Design Reform, 1830-1890. 1. 'An Institution of God Himself': The Domestic Ideal. 2. 'The Things which Surround One': The Domestic Aesthetic. 3. 'Those Extravagant Draperies': Domesticity Contested -- Pt. 2. Modernity and Masculinity, 1890-1940. 4. 'Everything in its Place': Women and Modernity. 5. 'Letting in the Air': Women and Modernism. 6. 'The Selling Value of Art': Women and the Moderne. 7. 'We are All Creators': Women and Conservative Modernism -- Pt. 3. Modernity and Femininity, 1940-1970. 8. 'The Happy Housewife': Domesticity Renewed. 9. 'A Kind of Golden Age': Goods and Femininity. 10. 'The Anxiety of Contamination': Highbrow Culture and the Problem of Taste -- Conclusion: Postmodernity, Postmodernism and Feminine Taste.

ISBN

0044409230 (pbk)

LCCN

gb^96005973^

OCLC

34116480

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library