Monday, April 23, 2012

Frances Kellor Lives in Lady Gaga and Media Bias

     
The transformation of a photograph of the transgender lesbian activist Frances Kellor (1873 – 1952) raises important questions concerning our current perceptions of gender. The photograph shows Kellor in her full masculine guise.[i] Months thereafter, a line-drawing rendition of the image appeared.[ii]  The contrast between the photograph and the line-drawing provides a contrast between what Kellor really looked like and an artistic rendition for public consumption.  The newspaper redrew her as they would like to have seen a female leader – they feminized this giant figure.









 Frances Kellor had her likeness in the newspapers a lot. She garnered wide publicity for her studies of African-American women in southern penitentiaries. Her work leading up to the founding of the National Urban League received a lot of attention, as did her undercover work for domestic workers.  When Theodore Roosevelt told crowds about Kellor taking him to homeless shelters, she needed no introduction. But at the time of the images, the public would have read of her monthly as the head of the movement that greeted immigrants –the Americanization movement.

  At first glance, the photograph of Kellor could be one of a man.  An acquaintance from childhood claimed dislike of young Kellor was widespread because she walked and talked like a boy.  Here we see a thirty-seven year old Kellor dressed in men’s clothes.  She has a tie on and a shirt that accentuates extremely broad shoulders.   Kellor worked as a basketball coach and rowed on the Cornell boating team she helped form. The expression on this reformer’s face gives the impression that she is busy and businesslike. The mess on her desk provides another clue that could lead an unsuspecting      reader to think ‘male.’

  The drawing rendition of this photograph could not but retain the masculine tie and shirt.  But several essentials have been feminized. While a Romanesque slightly florid design accompanies the photo, we now have a full flower below Kellor and another above her. The hair has feminized streaks and sits a bit looser. The eyebrows have been stylized. And the harried expression in the photograph has been transmuted into a welcoming feminine smile. 

  The differences between the photo and the drawing are subtle.  To totally feminize this short-haired, tie wearing, broad-shouldered person, would require a total falsification.  And, perhaps my perception that a slight hint of breasts appears in the drawn version verges on the paranoid. Furthermore, we could argue that newspapers routinely work to make people appear more appealing.  Still, in this case, it seems the aggregate of the small changes, making Kellor more “appealing,” results in a much more feminine appearance overall.

  Today it is still news when Lady Gaga or others act as ‘gender benders.’  The media’s shock reflects our fascination with this chink in the armor of the dominant gender paradigm.  And while at first blush the rare attention to ‘gender benders’ might not seem socially significant, it should raise our awareness of the constancy of normalized gender depictions. Female celebrities’ femininity, their dress, and make-up get hyped daily. And while these women may love performing these gender roles, Kellor’s photograph makeover reminds us of the longstanding and constant public pressure to bend girls to femininity and alternatives. 

 But what does this matter?

 The line-drawing rendition of the photograph sat above a headline that read, “Little Sister of the Alien Comes to Teach.” No male in Kellor’s position would have been described as a “Little Brother.” Upon becoming the first woman to head a New York State Bureau, a surprised New York Times told readers that they would have thought, “the head of the New York State Bureau of Industries and Immigration would be some big strong man.”[iii] Earlier the Times exclaimed that if anyone had suggested a year earlier that a woman would have had held Kellor’s position in a Presidential campaign they would have been “thought mad.”[iv] With such a powerful known history, this depiction of Kellor as “little” and familial illustrates how feminized images of women can diminish them.

 Not only can the reception of Kellor’s masculine image tell us something about gender perceptions, her example can remind us of means to fight it. Kellor advocated using sports – particularly basketball - to make women more masculine. Specifically, she thought sports would get women out of the home and off gossipy topics and into the street publically fighting injustices. In 1916 Kellor opened a women’s campaign for Presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes with a “historical discussion of men’s campaign trains and the masculine way of working.”[v] And, of course, in contrast to the more feminine settlement house workers around her, Kellor often dressed as a man. 

 The drawing of Kellor identifies her as “Miss Frances Alice Kellor.” As a teen Kellor wrote under the name of ‘Alice Kellar.’ After leaving her hometown, she only wrote under the more androgynous name Frances Kellor. This feminized depiction of this ‘little sister’ marked her gender by revising her girlish first name. Not all women would be comfortable changing names, dressing as a man, or adopting “masculine” styles of activism; nor should they have to. But we would do well to understand the dynamics in public presentations of gender. To this end, we would do well to teach Kellor’s example and depictions of gender in today’s media.

  Finally, these comparisons model something of a victory in public perception. The photograph appeared in The New York Times in April of 1912. The article it illustrated showed Kellor scouring filthy conditions in industrial sites.  The ‘Little Sister’ drawing was printed in The Los Angeles Times in November of 1913. The text noted Kellor was a “remarkable woman” for leading a New York Bureau. Kellor’s level of achievement was new for women on the West Coast. The drawing and the headline had not yet caught up with the possibility of powerful masculine women. But the photo running earlier in the East Coast paper showed that activism had laid the groundwork for seeing women as powerful.


[i] “Preying Upon Helpless Immigrants After They Land,” The New York Times, April 14, 1912, SM10
[ii] “Little Sister of the Alien Comes to Teach,” Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1913, II1
[iii] “A Good Samaritan for Hapless Alien Hosts is Miss Frances Kellor,” New – York Tribune, May 12, 1912, A4
[iv] “Women as A Factor In the Political Campaign:  For the First Time in American History Their Active Support Is Openly Sought by All Parties,” The New York Times, Sept. 1,1912, SM9
[v] “Tells Why Hughes Asks Women’s Aid,” The New York Times, Aug. 7, 1916, 9

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Frances Kellor’s Americanization Versus Tony Kaye’s Detachment

Detachment, by Tony Kaye and Carl Lund, ranks among the most depressing films ever made.  It includes two suicides, overdosing, incest, whores, the beating of whores, and, worst of all, apathy.

Much of the social detachment that the film highlights comes from the absurdity of trying to foster growth in mechanized schools.   The out-of-control students’ rebellion mirrors rather than challenges the surrounding ugliness.  But if Detachment blamed the school system for all of the characters’ pain, the film would just be preachy.  This amazing piece of art explores all of our slow daily deaths.

But while institutions do not cause our existential dilemmas, a day at the DMV will show you the connection between systems and death. 

Frances Alice Kellor (1873 – 1952) was a asocial scientist and educational theorist.  And while the system caused Detachment’s educators to simply worry about State test scores, Kellor promulgated systems that took the human element into account – that sought to combat the very lethargy and mood of Kaye and Lund portray.

“Some women are abnormally sensitive and introspective or morbid, and live too much on the subjective side of life” Kellor noted in her book Athletic Games in the Education of Women.[i]  Detachment exposes just these sorts of brooding states. Kellor called these states “feminine” and sought to combat them by getting women involved in action via sports.  In a phrase, “When down do!”

Basketball instills the aggressive characteristics Kellor found feminine girls lacked.  Among the desired characteristics were focus, energy, and initiative.  And, the newly constituted active female would have mastery of herself. “All forms of ball-playing, from simple chase-ball up to basket-ball,” Kellor wrote in 1901, “require self control.”[ii]

In trying to make women as effective as marines, Kellor could be said to mirror one of the systemic traps that Detachment poetically shows us.  In the film, exterior goals remove all internal values and feelings. Brutal self-control for the sake of a goal can kill.  

But from her earliest sports writing, Kellor insisted on the “play-spirit.”  This coach never wanted her girls to become “too hard and business-like.”[iii] Eerily predicting Detachment, she wrote that without the “play-spirit” humans were “a machine, which without its operator either runs amuck or becomes a mere automaton.”[iv] And, on Detachment’s very subject, she worried that “the growing commercial spirit in education institutions so hurries students that they have no time for games.”[v]

By way of a cure, Kellor enthused that sports “Seem to awaken a spirit of play and fun which brings a level of healthy excitement to even the most sluggish natures.”[vi] Yet, insightfully, she held that even in sports, “The play-spirit is yielding to the work-spirit and the loss of individual play spirit has not yet found its counterpart in the proportionate increase of the group play-spirit.”[vii]

We can see herein that Kellor promoted a complicated nuanced vision of play that deserves analysis. And, if we wish to use social systems, such as sport, to enliven people, we would do well to investigate the values that competition and other structural trappings our sports and other endeavors tend to cultivate. If nothing else, Detachment should encourage such discussions.  

Kellor’s greatest notoriety came from leading the Americanization movement.  From 1906 – 1921 this movement greeted immigrants and attempted to assimilate them into our national fiber. This systemic confrontation with alienation parallels took on the sort of alienation Detachment depicted, only on a national level. 

While other’s brand of Americanization sought to make immigrants conform culturally, Kellor Americanized via having immigrants and long-term Americans work collectively on progressive reform efforts.  Thus, quite literally, her Americanization work became a direct analogy to team building in sports.  When undertaken with a play – spirit such reform could bring a joyous sense of vibrancy to our national community. 

In Detachment, the lead character finds some salvation via helping his father and a prostitute.  No impersonal goals, such as saving the homeless, grace the screen.  Such distant impossible goals would only insert more distance into any of the immediately needy Detachment characters.  Whereas Kellor dealt in social justice writ large, she also understood the importance of human connection. 

Kellor’s Neighborhood Americanization project urged long-term American women to spend time in the homes of immigrant women. Beautifully, she advocated entering immigrants’ homes without an agenda. She told her female audiences, that immigrants just wanted “friendliness and new contacts.”[viii] The public social scientist told them to visit, “Not with the idea of uplift, but of getting acquainted for mutual benefit.”[ix]

Detachment painfully exposed the intimate pain and distance in modern lives. As a sensitive humanist Kellor realized that large systems could not solve deeply intimate psychic issues. She asked, “Have we gotten into the habit of asking too much of our government – thinking of it as something impersonal – unfailing, like air and sunshine? The governments cannot impersonally Americanize the home.”

Yet as a sensitive soul, Kellor understood, as Detachment conveyed, that social systems can promote or hinder well-being. This creative sociologist began the national celebration called Americanization Day. And she often crowed that immigrants told her “it was the first time they had shaken hands with an American!”[x] We can create venues for intimacy. And, sports, with a proper sense of the play-spirit, can promote well – being. Thus can the social sciences combat Detachment. 


[i] Dudley, Gertrude, Kellor, Frances, Athletic Games in the Education of Women, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1909), 135
[ii] Kellor, Frances, Experimental Sociology: Descriptive and Analytic (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1901), 29
[iii] “Ethical Value of Sports for Women,” American Physical Education Review, Vol. 11, 1906, 162
[iv] Dudley, Gertrude, Kellor, Frances, Athletic Games in the Education of Women, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1909), 142
[v] Dudley, Gertrude, Kellor, Frances, Athletic Games in the Education of Women, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1909), 38
[vi] Ibid, pg. 238
[vii] Ibid., pg. 5
[viii] Ibid pg.,17.
[ix] Kellor, Frances, “Americanization of Women: A Discussion of an Emergency Created by Granting the Vote to Women in New York State,” Address delivered before the New York State Woman’s Suffrage Party in New York City, Jan. 17, 1918, 7
[x] Kellor, Frances, Neighborhood Americanization: A Discussion of the Alien in a New Country and of the Native in His Home Country, An address to the Colony Club in New York City, Feb. 8, 1918; in Wisconsin State Historical Society Pamphlet Collection #54-997, 8