Griselda Pollock - Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and Histories of Art

I didn’t expect a 1980s feminist essay to feel so current, but Griselda Pollock’s chapter “A Photo-Essay: Signs of Femininity” does. She places Rossetti’s portraits of Elizabeth Siddal and Jane Morris next to cosmetics ads and film stills of Garbo and Dietrich and suddenly it’s obvious: the same face keeps repeating. The same soft mouth, tilted head, distant gaze. Different mediums, same script.

Pollock argues that “femininity” isn’t something women possess, it’s something that’s made, carefully produced by images, sustained by repetition. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The Pre-Raphaelite muse becomes the movie star becomes the influencer. The ideal just changes costume.

What I like about this essay is how it messes with the idea of beauty as timeless. It’s not eternal, it’s historical, very coded, and taught. And that makes it possible to rewrite. It makes me think about my own work, and all the “feminine” materials I use, not as clichés but as tools. If beauty is constructed, it can also be reconstructed.

Maybe that’s the work I want to be doing: building new signs of femininity that don’t serve the gaze, but speak back to it.