Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Steele's book is thoroughly researched and does an excellent job of placing fetish fashion in a historical context. What the author fails to do, however, is make a clear argument. When she states that she cannot claim to be for or against a particular piece of clothing (in this case, the corset), her well-crafted "neutral" stance weakens the very course of her history. As Steele demonstrates, each article of clothing featured in her book has a complex cultural and intellectual history imbedded with meaning. By refusing to go beyond, "feminists believe..." or "Freud argued...," the purpose of Steele's glossy work remains obscured. Moreover, the author's overuse of quotations further confuses the argument. I was lost between Steele's words and those of her sources and find that her failure to truly engage with her research rings of a forced objectivity.
My second objection is perhaps not a new criticism. I tend to cringe when I hear that the combination of being sexy and powerful rescues woman from the bad old days of obligatory femininity. Steele implies this by refusing to take a stance. The strong, yet sexy, woman remains a male fantasy. After all, the corset-clad, high-heel wearing dominatrix acts out the role to please her slave. She is there to help him live out his fantasies. Her pleasure (and this is generally the case whether the woman is dominant or submissive) tends to remain secondary. Steele's modern fetish woman gains pleasure from being pleasing to men and power from being sexually desirable. I would have liked the author to examine this issue further and even to deconstruct it.
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