To point out someone’s flaws is a weapon of microaggression and policing against someone’s personhood that does not live up to be flawless (or perfect). When a person has failed at something and is therefore self-defined and societally defined as “incompetent”, “improper” or “inadequate”, he/she/they are comprehended as a small-scale failure. Even a small-scale failure, manifested as a flaw, is not allowed in Western (although pluralistic) society, which is constantly striving for success and perfection.

Flaws can be found everywhere, because everyone’s a critic and interpersonal criticism, based on someone’s body shape, size, behaviour or taste is a self-perpetuating machine that disciplines the ones who criticize (people with internalised disciplinary regimes) and those who are criticized (people who have not yet internalised them). Flaws can be bodily-, behaviour- or fashion/art-related, but their denominator is taste or the lack of it. Taste, as Pierre Bourdieu (1984) has stated, is a cross-breed of the socio-economic (money and other monetary belongings) and cultural capital (education and social origin) and those with high amounts of both capitals are trendsetters; they define what is tasteful and what is not. A flaw is therefore a lack of taste or even worse, a bad taste that carries a classist implication – those with no money and/or education are tasteless and cannot possess impeccable taste. Otherwise, they are flawed by default.

Flaws that are bodily-related differ from the tasteful conception of how male or female body should appear in public. Scars on the body are not aesthetic and should be corrected with the help of cosmetic surgery. Boldness, shortness, man boobs and excessive body hair on men’s bodies are a sign of men’s unfamiliarity with “normal” beauty regimes for men, because being bold, short or hairy is unappealing for women and straight men, but not necessarily for gay men. Women’s bodies are framed as flawed by default (size, age, body hair, aesthetic merits and skin colour), so the highlighting of women’s bodily flaws is not needed.

Behavioural flaws are much more embedded in the gender ideology and sexism. Derogatory name-calling, such are slut, bitch, sissy, cry-baby or crazy cat lady just reaffirm that certain behaviours, mostly connected with women’s sexuality, outspokenness, men’s gender identity and singleness are considered bad because they deviate from the traditional gender arrangements (e.g. silent women and hyper masculine men).

dr. Eleanor Abernathy or “Crazy Cat Lady” (The Simpsons) Credits: Fox Channel

Fashion’s faux pas are most ridiculed flaws. Examples of “no fashion taste”: wearing (white) socks with sandals or crocs, men in feminine clothing or high heels are mocked, women without bras with visible nipples and outlining of breasts are shameful, older women who do not wear age-appropriate clothing are regarded as caricatures, showing camel toe is distasteful, wearing too much make-up is trashy, those who take pleasure in kitsch (without irony) are the uneducated “cattle” of consumers and sporting black natural hair is still viewed as unkempt. The racist and sexist implications of the latter are obvious.

Despite the fact that the dominant definition of taste is practically maintaining and reproducing itself via ideological apparatuses (e.g. family, education system, culture, media, religion), we share this dominant concept (e.g. being a cultural snob and Othering anyone who lacks any type of capital – cultural, economic, social, symbolic) up until deliberately deconstructing and defying it, because we did not create it. By being aware of being flawed (a person is culturally clueless/naive or culturally advanced/rebellious), flaws can be culturally re-written and filled with different meanings instead with those that degrade them.

One of the options is reappropriation, a linguistic and cultural process, when an existing word or label is being cleansed of its negative or unpopular connotations (for example: geek, queer, fat, crazy cat lady) by taking the standpoint of that label and reappropriate it (“take the negative meaning and change it into neutral or positive”). A person, whom society has been describing with negative evaluations, can show her/his/their power by rejecting the presumed meaning and transform it into empowering one, which is possible because words and labels are socially constructed. This only exposes the notion that meaning of the label can be challenged, and that what is considered to be negative or a flaw is not a “bad thing” and that challenging negative labels by positively reappropriating them exposes the subtle forms of discrimination (or microaggressions) to become visible and furthermore, addressable.

Here is an example of reappropriating the label “crazy cat lady”. The dominant definitions via Urban Dictionary describe crazy cat lady as “An elderly suburban widow, who lives alone and keeps dozens or more pet cats, usually many more than municipal code allows, in a small house, and refuses to give away or sell them even for the sake of the safety of the cats or herself”, “a woman, usually middle-aged or older, who lives alone with no husband or boyfriend, and fills the empty lonely void in her life with as many cats as she can collect in one place. Their homes are usually very stinky and the aforementioned woman may also very likely be white trash”, “A woman who loves her cats more than people”, “That old lady that lives down the street from you that has over a dozen cats named after each of her ex-boyfriends that have done her wrong”.

Being called crazy cat lady (CCL) is a negative and hostile label that is directed against women, who do not take part (willingly or not) in the heteronormative and speciest lifestyle. CCL is always (1) a woman (2) single/unmarried, (3) lonely by default, (4) middle-aged and older (5) with mental issues (hoarding), (6) lacking in personal hygiene, (7) economically disadvantaged and (8) loving cats. The label carries several different aspects that stigmatize CCL: sexism (only women), heteronormativity (unmarried and childfree), ableism (“crazy”, asocial), ageism (middle-aged and older), lookism (unkempt and dirty), classism (poor) and speciesism (love for cats). CCL is a patriarchal warning sign to those women who are single, still young and love animals (cats in particular), because it projects the worst case scenario for women on how to spend their lives. I can think of several scenarios that surpass being a CCL: unemployment, sexual assault, homelessness and refugeeism. CCL can also be a postmodern and desexualised version of the medieval witch – an old woman, who is living alone with cats.

To reappropriate the CCL label, individuals must identify with the label that will be socially recreated from the negative to the positive. When this occurs and the negativity of CCL has been addressed, the negative meaning starts to weaken and is in the case of CCL replaced with irony, wit and genuine (e.g. non-anthropocentric) appreciation of cats. The group identity for cat-loving persons is now easily established via social media due to its ability to distribute and produce any counter-discourse against the dominant one.

Credits: Gemma Correll

CCL is becoming an empowering, self-referential and even self-mocking part of someone’s social identity. Big part of reappropriating CCL is via art, mostly done by women artists, and fashion that vocally express this “flaw”.

Cat Meditation

So, go with the flaw. Love cats.

Party Girl (2014, d.: M. Amachoukeli, C. Burger and S. Theis) is a French woman-centric film, focused on Angélique Litzenburger, a sixty-year-old unmarried cabaret dancer, who has decided to get married; however, she does not follow through with her marital plan. The film plot may sound simple, but the story narrative deals with the ‘marriage mandate’ (i.e. a societal urge for a woman to be married at some point) and reveals an implicit societal sexism, ageism and classism.

‘Marriage mandate’ is something every western woman is seduced by with the help of ideological mechanisms (e.g. media, education system, religion, family, peers) that serve as self-disciplinary tools. Instead of someone directly commanding “You as a woman should get married”, an inside voice within a woman’s head (‘patriarchal other’) is gently whispering ‘Maybe I should be getting married because it is ____‘ (time, everyone else is, I don’t want to be alone …). And this is exactly what is happening to Angélique. She is is getting old(er), despite her single marital status she has four grown-up children, none of which prepared or able to take care of her in the future – emotionally, financially and physically, but the most important fact is that her job as an unregistered cabaret dancer did not enable her pension or retirement benefits. By not being entitled to any kind of pension, she could only collect a welfare support and live on the edge of poverty.

Her decision to marry a man at her age is a survival tactic, used by people of her economic underprivileged group. Although aging alone is a lonely experience, for a woman it is more of an economic risk, especially for low-income women, who also originate in a low socioeconomic class and could not climb upon the social ladder due to their socioeconomic and cultural limitations. This is where old age and inadequate financial power, gained through a person’s lifespan, meet and create an unfavourable living situation. For an uneducated woman, employment options are limited; she can only do jobs that require manual skills – and that also includes sex work.

Credits: Denis Carot & Marie Masmonteil

There is no sex-shaming in what Angélique and other women do on their account; it is a paid job and should be respected as any other one. However, this is not how her life is viewed through the eyes of a handful of young male clients, her children and soon-to-be-husband, who benevolently judges her nomadic lifestyle (“I live where I work”) and her thirst for fun. Her home is more with her women co-workers and the place where she works (public sphere) than a house where a woman of her age should spend her time (domestic sphere). Fun and self-indulgence (e.g. drinking, partying) of an older woman are not a picture society wants to paint. Women should abandon their need to have fun, to be irresponsible, reckless and spontaneous, because they must constantly think about their financial future (wage gap and limited options for work are almost every woman’s reality) and care about the social stigma for not being too sexual.

By marrying a man, she would gain more of the economic stability. But economic powerfulness of her fiancée is tricky – she immediately slips into the role of a housewife, which is a symbolic reminder of her economic dependency. A housewife in a traditional household has no status and no power, when it comes to economic decisions and even personal matters. Here is an example where a man’s economic power spills over into the personal control over a woman. There is a scene where her fiancée scolds her in front of his friends for smoking in the house. Surprisingly, his friends take her side arguing that it is now her house too, so she can do whatever she wants. Her fiancée does not share this view. “It is my house”, he stresses, “She just moved in.” It is clear that economic power overshadowed the romance. But (hetero) romance has always been about power – those who have more economic power, possess more power to command and control the other partner, even in such a trivial matter as someone’s behaviour. In this particular case, gender is amplified with economic privilege, so it constitutes rather traditional dynamics between a woman and a man, where Angélique should obey.

Another angle of their traditional coupling is fiancée’s overall possessiveness over her. Not only does he want to control her economically, he wants to eradicate any signs of her being a sexual being for anyone else but him. He gets upset when she is innocently flirting with a much younger man, although they never defined their relationship as monogamous. His suffocating sexual possessiveness results in her rejecting him sexually – she cannot have sex with him. The lack of emotional connectedness and his patriarchal views on marriage and women detach her from her sexual self and him. Angélique as a cabaret dancer is also stereotyped as a sexual worker – he expects ‘a wild animal’ in the sack, but she is not. She likes to perform seductiveness, not to live it. She enjoys the erotic overture, not the banal manifestation. She caters men’s fantasies, not their carnal fulfilment.

At the end, she does not go through with the marriage and walks away alone in the night. The equation between her being in a traditional marriage and her being a single nomad did not add up in her mind. She would have given up her joyfulness, emotional and mental independence, sexual vigor and … herself.

Credits: Denis Carot & Marie Masmonteil

Party Girl caters the premise of marriage as being emotionally, sexually and personally unbeneficial for a woman. When a woman must abandon parts of herself that do not fit into the simplistic and use-value model of a monogamous wife-sacrificial mother-dutiful housekeeper, then becoming a traditional wife can be compared to a social death of a woman, slowly withering away as a spiritual, sexual, emotional and economic being.