Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 20
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witness to how "my little Force explodes," leaving "me charred and
bare" (.Letters 2:414).
We need to be reminded, however, that such powerful and
intuitive titillation is, of course, the same feminine self-projection
which compels the "Working Women of Playboy" to display their
charms-not as the prostitution of their bodies but as the sincere quest
for their culture's hypervisual fulfillment and New Commandment,
"Undrape!" And thus the tears shed by the newly crowned Miss
America, on the spotlighted and televised stage at Atlantic City, are
at least in part and on some primary level the genuine response of a
woman thrust suddenly before the nation as its highest eye-con in the
American Religion of Vision—what Dickinson, above, gloried in,
"Dressed to meet You—/See—in White!" In fact, for Dickinson, even
American time itself must become an exhibitionist in order to harness
the culturally generative voyeurism, the Puritanical "lust of the
eyes":
The Day undressed-Herself—
Her Garter—was of Gold—Her Petticoat—of Purple
plain—
Her Dimities—as old
Exactly—as the World—
And yet the newest Star—(351-2).
As offensive as it may seem, it is absolutely necessary to realize
that the Penthouse Pet who spreads her legs for the two-page
centerfold is, culturally, no more promiscuous or obscene than
Dickinson's sensuous New England "flower," with "Depths of Ruby,
undrained,/Hid, Lip, for Thee" (158), or her vaginal "(Zactus" which
"splits her Beard/To show her Throat—/Thy Daisy—/Draped for
thee!" (160). The dozens of beauty ntagazines and women's magazines
surrounding grocery store check-out counters are thus absolutely
accurate in their felt exhibitionist ideal; and until today's
"feminists" come to terms with the naked reality that in "America
the Beautiful" the woman's highest calling may well be her
hypervisual influence in all its ramifications, the battles for "equal
rights" and "equal pay" and even the right to abort the viably visual
fetus will simply produce unnecessary gender confusion and cultural