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grammes, What Not To Wear (WNTW) and Would Like to Meet (WLTM). For
full details see the BBC website (www.bbc.co.uk). There are also many new,
hybrid genres, in one series both gardener and interior designer team up to
make over house and garden, in another two women cleaners shame a victim
in the hope of encouraging him or her to become more clean and tidy, and in
a recent and kinder US programme, five gay men help a straight man each
week to improve his home, self-image and fashion sense.)
These programmes actively generate and legitimate forms of class antag-
onism, particularly between women, in a way which would have been
socially unacceptable until recently. That is, the rules of television were
such that public humiliation of people for their failure to adhere to middle-
class standards in speech or appearance would have been considered
offensive, discriminatory or prejudicial. However, now denigration is done
with a degree of self-conscious irony, both the presenters and the audiences
are assumed to know that no harm is intended, and that this is just good fun.
It is now possible, thank goodness, to laugh at less fortunate people once
again. And the message is that the poor woman would do well to emulate
her social superiors. While men are involved, as both experts and victims,
this is largely a female genre of television and the overall address is to
women (see Brunsdon, 2003). And this female address corresponds to the
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 Needs and Norms : Bourdieu and Cultural Studies 145
changing identity of women in contemporary Britain. No longer primarily
defined in terms of husbands, fathers or boyfriends, girls have been set free
to compete with each other, sometimes mercilessly. Public enactments of
hatred and animosity are refracted at a bodily or corporeal level. But is this
just girl against girl or are there specifically class dynamics? I would argue
that there are clear class elements, redrafted along the lines of the merito-
cratic model promoted by the Blair government. People are increasingly
individualised, they are required to invent themselves, they are called upon
to shape themselves so as to be flexible, to fit with the new circumstances
where they cannot be passively part of the workforce, but must instead
keep themselves employable, and adapt themselves and their skills for the
rapidly changing demands of the labour market.
Thus, class makes a decisive reappearance in and through the vectors of
transformed gendered individualisation. Walby has suggested that with full
participation in the workforce, class differences between women (in terms
of income) are becoming more marked than ever (Walby, 1998). She has also
described the enormous disparity of income between younger and older
women (with the latter much worse off). And although racial disadvantage
weighs more heavily against black males than females, there remain marked
inequalities of access in relation to education and careers between white
and black women. Overall, this scenario would suggest gender transforma-
tion including widespread fragmentation and dispersal, but with younger,
well-qualified, white women moving towards a more secure middle-class
position. Change and movement are a feature of women s experience in
recent years. How do these changes connect with the sharpness of the class
antagonisms in these programmes? Of course as Bourdieu and many others
have shown women have by no means been immune to the articulation of
sharp and often cruel class distinctions. Working-class women have been
very aware of the denigratory judgements made against them by their
middle-class counterparts particularly in regard to their appearance and
non-respectability (Skeggs, 1997). Indeed middle-class women have played
a key role in the reproduction of class society not just through their exem-
plary role as wives and mothers, but also as standard bearers for
middle-class family values, for certain norms of citzenship and also for
safeguarding the valuable cultural capital accruing to them and their fami- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]