JANET STERLING SILVER DESIGN

"Auntie Mame": Champion of Existentialist Feminism

"Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!" claims Mame Dennis, also known as "Auntie Mame." Life is a party, and Mame is determined to enjoy the all the possibilities the world has to offer. Like an actress, she plays out a variety of roles, whether she focuses her attention to recreating an "exotic" culture or playing out different roles set by society or corporations. By suddenly becoming the guardian of her only living relative, her young nephew Patrick, this film is about her attempt to teach him to value his freedom, and not be confined to roles set by others.

Auntie Mame’s obsession with clothing could be interpreted simply as a result of being an unemployed, affluent woman with no sense of identity or self-worth beyond her exterior appearance. In other words, Mame could be seen by existential feminists as a "narcissist": "Believing herself to be an object...she is fascinated by, and perhaps even fixated on, her own image: face, body, clothes." On the contrary, I will argue in this essay that Mame is not a victim of narcissism: she uses clothing as a symbol of her effort to transcend beyond the limitations of being "the second sex."

There’s no denying that Mame’s character is very dramatic in every way. Even her house is a stage: to match her mood and dress, she completely redecorates to specific themes in order to have a compatible setting. As an actress, Mame understands the importance of "passing" as a created illusion. In order to hold the viewer in suspended animation, she uses not only her imagination and speech, but clothing as the primary signifier of the image she is projecting. For example, in the beginning of the film, Patrick’s financial guardian, a conservative "bourgeois bigot," comes to Mame’s house on short notice to see if Patrick is being "properly" taken care of. Mame frantically searches through her wardrobe to find an outfit which would signify "a good guardian." She tells her friend Vera, who is herself a professional actress, "Don’t you realize that I’ve got to make the right impression?!" Mame knows what kind of role she must play in order to convince Mr. Babcock; therefore, she decides that she needs a "Madonna like hairdo," and settles on a conservative brown business suit with pearls.

Mame, in this scene, is complying to the dress code as expected by Mr. Babcock. Although Mame is the legal guardian responsible for Patrick, it is Babcock who has the power to dictate how Patrick should be brought up, as well as the power to take him away if Mame does not comply to his "order." Babcock can therefore be seen as the symbol of patriarchal tyranny. As written by cultural critic Marjorie Garber, dress codes "had as their apparent motivation the imposition of discipline, with the implication that you were how you dressed...and also a sense of hierarchy." By complying to Babcock’s "dress code," Mame is not only dressing to "make the right impression," but she is also accepting her position as the "second sex," or in this case, forfeiting her right to Patrick as the "second guardian."

After losing custody of Patrick (after Babcock saw through her disguise/act of "the good guardian") Mame realizes that she cannot be limited to roles imposed on her. Historian and gender activist Erica Rand, writes in her book, Barbie’s Queer Accessories, "Like Madonna [the pop star]...Barbie suggests that roles are only as fixed as costumes." In other words, an individual can transcend their set roles as dictated by societal and cultural norms (whether by class, gender or ethnicity), and choose from an infinite array of possible roles desired. Likewise, Mame’s endless selection of costumes suggests that she is not mindlessly wearing clothes for purely an aesthetic value, but that she takes advantage of her freedom to be/dress as whomever or whatever she desires to be. Post-op transsexual Kate Bornstein concurs in her book, Gender Outlaw: "A fluid identity, incidentally, is one way to solve problems with boundaries."

Mame has difficulties with the imposition of set boundaries. It is precisely at these moments (when she attempts to conform to a specific role) when she finds herself alienated from both herself and from the group imposing the role. This is clearly evident in three particular moments in the film.

After the stock market crash, Mame loses all her money, the source which had allowed her to indulge in "playing" various roles. She first attempts to make her own money through acting. However, feeling that she needed to bring "more to life" (through additional speech and clothing) to the minor character to which she was assigned, she thereby disrupts the social order/hierarchy of the play, alienating her from the rest of the cast.

Still without income, she attempts to conform to the vocational limitations/requirements of being a telephone operator (in a uniform, confined to a cubicle, disembodied as just a voice) and also as the nameless "roller skate lady" at Macy’s. She fails miserably in both roles, this time disrupting the order of "the real world" as opposed to that of the make-believe world of the theatre.

Mame later bleaches her hair blonde and dons a big white southern belle dress in an attempt to "fit in" with the dominant group, her fiancee’s family and friends in Louisiana. Although she might have been able to "pass" as a southern belle in New York, she runs into problems as her knowledge of what she perceives to be the limited "southern" role is questioned. While she dresses "appropriately" for riding side saddle in a hunt, Patrick reads to her instructions on how to ride a horse. Again, like an actress, Mame attempts to create a new persona for herself though both clothing and acting. Before her entrance to the hunting scene, Patrick reassures her, "You look convincing, like a magazine cover!" Wittily, the filmmakers play with the idea of "reality" in appearance: would Mame look more convincing if she imitated a real horseman, or is it more convincing to look like a mass media image (cultural expectation) of a horseman?

The filmmakers also develop this point by questioning the effects of multiple layers of clothing: can a person peel off one "false" layer, and is the layer underneath more "real" (expression of the internal) or is it still a part of yet another false exterior? After the death of her husband, Mame plays the mournful wife in front of her friends. Vera complains, "Couldn’t you have moved to purple by now?" Mame wears what appears to be a black, conservative, full length dress; however, after she discovering that she has a renewed interest/project in life, (the prospect of writing an autobiography with the help of a young Irish poet) she lets her outer garment fall, revealing a backless dress with a red flower on her tailbone. Although the viewer is now aware that Mame could be "hiding" more clothes/identities underneath, we can only depend on the most outer layer in order to "read" Mame’s character. In other words, we trust that she is who she appears to be at any give time or place.

This notion of clothing makes Mame "fashionable" using the definition give by art historian Ann Hollander: "‘Fashionable’ is merely one very consciously achieved way of looking fashionable--that is, right--at any given time or place." On the other hand, Edward Sapir, in defining "Fashion" in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, defines it in relation to what it is not: it is not "taste," which is "individual choice from among a number of possibilities; it is not a "fad," which "always differs from a true fashion in having something unexpected, irresponsible or bizarre about it; it is not a part of "custom," which "differs from fashions in being relatively permanent types of social behavior." Fashion, in Sapir’s theory, is the "property of larger or more representative groups." Therefore, using Sapir’s definitions, one could conclude that Mame’s clothing is simply a combination of personal taste and individual fad, or in other words, she consciously dresses herself in "anti-fashionable" attire.

Existential feminist Simone de Beauvoir, theorizes that men created myths about women in order to contain and control her as "the second sex." Writes Rosemarie Tong in Feminist Thought, "Girls are compelled to accept and internalize as shameful and inferior their Otherness, which is ossified, said de Beauvoir, in the institutions of marriage and motherhood." In order to escape from "the limits, definitions, and roles that society, propriety, and men have imposed on her," de Beauvoir suggests that women can do three things: 1) work outside the home (become a subject as opposed to an object); 2) become intellectual; 3) work toward a socialist transformation of society. Mame can be seen to have implemented all these strategies: she is financially independent from a man (for the most part of the movie, she is either single or a widow). In fact, she refuses the role of wife and mother for most of the film; when she adopts Patrick, she does not ask him to call her "mother"; instead, she says, "Just call me Auntie Mame." She is an intellectual, and surrounds herself with progressive thought. And finally, through her new autobiography, she teaches others to "live," free from oppression and limitations set by those in power. Through her eccentricities in both her personality and clothing, Auntie Mame exemplifies de Beauvoir’s vision of an individual’s progress toward women’s liberation: "Just as a sculptor’s creativity is limited by the marble block at hand, our freedom is limited by our society. If we want to be all that we can possibly be as individuals, we must first clear the social space for this project." Mame clears this space and replaces it with the theatre, showing that clothing and roles are socially constructed, and in which "normativity" is fluid.

Works Cited

Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Harper Perennial, 1992.

Hollander, Ann. Sex and Suits: the Evolution of Modern Dress. New York: Kodansha International, 1994.

Rand, Erica. Barbie’s Queer Accessories. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995
.
Sapir, Edward. "Fashion." Encyclopedia of Social Sciences.

Tong, Rosemarie. Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction. Boulder: Westview Press, 1989.

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				"Auntie Mame": Champion of Existentialist Feminism "Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!" claims Mame Dennis, also known as "Auntie Mame." Life is a party, and Mame is determined to enjoy the all the possibilities the world has to offer. Like an actress, she plays out a variety of roles, whether she focuses her attention to recreating an "exotic" culture or playing out different roles set by society or corporations. By suddenly becoming the guardian of her only living relative, her young nephew Patrick, this film is about her attempt to teach him to value his freedom, and not be confined to roles set by others. Auntie Mame’s obsession with clothing could be interpreted simply as a result of being an unemployed, affluent woman with no sense of identity or self-worth beyond her exterior appearance. In other words, Mame could be seen by existential feminists as a "narcissist": "Believing herself to be an object...she is fascinated by, and perhaps even fixated on, her own image: face, body, clothes." On the contrary, I will argue in this essay that Mame is not a victim of narcissism: she uses clothing as a symbol of her effort to transcend beyond the limitations of being "the second sex." There’s no denying that Mame’s character is very dramatic in every way. Even her house is a stage: to match her mood and dress, she completely redecorates to specific themes in order to have a compatible setting. As an actress, Mame understands the importance of "passing" as a created illusion. In order to hold the viewer in suspended animation, she uses not only her imagination and speech, but clothing as the primary signifier of the image she is projecting. For example, in the beginning of the film, Patrick’s financial guardian, a conservative "bourgeois bigot," comes to Mame’s house on short notice to see if Patrick is being "properly" taken care of. Mame frantically searches through her wardrobe to find an outfit which would signify "a good guardian." She tells her friend Vera, who is herself a professional actress, "Don’t you realize that I’ve got to make the right impression?!" Mame knows what kind of role she must play in order to convince Mr. Babcock; therefore, she decides that she needs a "Madonna like hairdo," and settles on a conservative brown business suit with pearls. Mame, in this scene, is complying to the dress code as expected by Mr. Babcock. Although Mame is the legal guardian responsible for Patrick, it is Babcock who has the power to dictate how Patrick should be brought up, as well as the power to take him away if Mame does not comply to his "order." Babcock can therefore be seen as the symbol of patriarchal tyranny. As written by cultural critic Marjorie Garber, dress codes "had as their apparent motivation the imposition of discipline, with the implication that you were how you dressed...and also a sense of hierarchy." By complying to Babcock’s "dress code," Mame is not only dressing to "make the right impression," but she is also accepting her position as the "second sex," or in this case, forfeiting her right to Patrick as the "second guardian." After losing custody of Patrick (after Babcock saw through her disguise/act of "the good guardian") Mame realizes that she cannot be limited to roles imposed on her. Historian and gender activist Erica Rand, writes in her book, Barbie’s Queer Accessories, "Like Madonna [the pop star]...Barbie suggests that roles are only as fixed as costumes." In other words, an individual can transcend their set roles as dictated by societal and cultural norms (whether by class, gender or ethnicity), and choose from an infinite array of possible roles desired. Likewise, Mame’s endless selection of costumes suggests that she is not mindlessly wearing clothes for purely an aesthetic value, but that she takes advantage of her freedom to be/dress as whomever or whatever she desires to be. Post-op transsexual Kate Bornstein concurs in her book, Gender Outlaw: "A fluid identity, incidentally, is one way to solve problems with boundaries." Mame has difficulties with the imposition of set boundaries. It is precisely at these moments (when she attempts to conform to a specific role) when she finds herself alienated from both herself and from the group imposing the role. This is clearly evident in three particular moments in the film. After the stock market crash, Mame loses all her money, the source which had allowed her to indulge in "playing" various roles. She first attempts to make her own money through acting. However, feeling that she needed to bring "more to life" (through additional speech and clothing) to the minor character to which she was assigned, she thereby disrupts the social order/hierarchy of the play, alienating her from the rest of the cast. Still without income, she attempts to conform to the vocational limitations/requirements of being a telephone operator (in a uniform, confined to a cubicle, disembodied as just a voice) and also as the nameless "roller skate lady" at Macy’s. She fails miserably in both roles, this time disrupting the order of "the real world" as opposed to that of the make-believe world of the theatre. Mame later bleaches her hair blonde and dons a big white southern belle dress in an attempt to "fit in" with the dominant group, her fiancee’s family and friends in Louisiana. Although she might have been able to "pass" as a southern belle in New York, she runs into problems as her knowledge of what she perceives to be the limited "southern" role is questioned. While she dresses "appropriately" for riding side saddle in a hunt, Patrick reads to her instructions on how to ride a horse. Again, like an actress, Mame attempts to create a new persona for herself though both clothing and acting. Before her entrance to the hunting scene, Patrick reassures her, "You look convincing, like a magazine cover!" Wittily, the filmmakers play with the idea of "reality" in appearance: would Mame look more convincing if she imitated a real horseman, or is it more convincing to look like a mass media image (cultural expectation) of a horseman? The filmmakers also develop this point by questioning the effects of multiple layers of clothing: can a person peel off one "false" layer, and is the layer underneath more "real" (expression of the internal) or is it still a part of yet another false exterior? After the death of her husband, Mame plays the mournful wife in front of her friends. Vera complains, "Couldn’t you have moved to purple by now?" Mame wears what appears to be a black, conservative, full length dress; however, after she discovering that she has a renewed interest/project in life, (the prospect of writing an autobiography with the help of a young Irish poet) she lets her outer garment fall, revealing a backless dress with a red flower on her tailbone. Although the viewer is now aware that Mame could be "hiding" more clothes/identities underneath, we can only depend on the most outer layer in order to "read" Mame’s character. In other words, we trust that she is who she appears to be at any give time or place. This notion of clothing makes Mame "fashionable" using the definition give by art historian Ann Hollander: "‘Fashionable’ is merely one very consciously achieved way of looking fashionable--that is, right--at any given time or place." On the other hand, Edward Sapir, in defining "Fashion" in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, defines it in relation to what it is not: it is not "taste," which is "individual choice from among a number of possibilities; it is not a "fad," which "always differs from a true fashion in having something unexpected, irresponsible or bizarre about it; it is not a part of "custom," which "differs from fashions in being relatively permanent types of social behavior." Fashion, in Sapir’s theory, is the "property of larger or more representative groups." Therefore, using Sapir’s definitions, one could conclude that Mame’s clothing is simply a combination of personal taste and individual fad, or in other words, she consciously dresses herself in "anti-fashionable" attire. Existential feminist Simone de Beauvoir, theorizes that men created myths about women in order to contain and control her as "the second sex." Writes Rosemarie Tong in Feminist Thought, "Girls are compelled to accept and internalize as shameful and inferior their Otherness, which is ossified, said de Beauvoir, in the institutions of marriage and motherhood." In order to escape from "the limits, definitions, and roles that society, propriety, and men have imposed on her," de Beauvoir suggests that women can do three things: 1) work outside the home (become a subject as opposed to an object); 2) become intellectual; 3) work toward a socialist transformation of society. Mame can be seen to have implemented all these strategies: she is financially independent from a man (for the most part of the movie, she is either single or a widow). In fact, she refuses the role of wife and mother for most of the film; when she adopts Patrick, she does not ask him to call her "mother"; instead, she says, "Just call me Auntie Mame." She is an intellectual, and surrounds herself with progressive thought. And finally, through her new autobiography, she teaches others to "live," free from oppression and limitations set by those in power. Through her eccentricities in both her personality and clothing, Auntie Mame exemplifies de Beauvoir’s vision of an individual’s progress toward women’s liberation: "Just as a sculptor’s creativity is limited by the marble block at hand, our freedom is limited by our society. If we want to be all that we can possibly be as individuals, we must first clear the social space for this project." Mame clears this space and replaces it with the theatre, showing that clothing and roles are socially constructed, and in which "normativity" is fluid. Works Cited Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us. New York: Routledge, 1994. Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Harper Perennial, 1992. Hollander, Ann. Sex and Suits: the Evolution of Modern Dress. New York: Kodansha International, 1994. Rand, Erica. Barbie’s Queer Accessories. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995 . Sapir, Edward. "Fashion." Encyclopedia of Social Sciences. Tong, Rosemarie. Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction. Boulder: Westview Press, 1989.
Home \| About Us \| Testimonials \| Ads & Press \| FAQs \| Return & Exchange Policy \| Contact \| Privacy Policy Copyright © Janet Sterling Silver Design, 2001. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.