Master's Thesis by Anya Kurennaya
Throughout rock music’s history, its stars have explored the boundaries of dress and sexuality, b... more Throughout rock music’s history, its stars have explored the boundaries of dress and sexuality, but none have done it quite as fascinatingly as those of glam metal, a particular subgenre of heavy metal which took hold in the United States in the mid-1980s. The stars of glam metal often appropriate modes of dressing culturally associated with the idea of the feminine, such as extensive and highly styled hair and makeup, yet they still successfully communicate overtly masculine, even hyper-masculine, personae designed to snare women through their clothing, lifestyle, and the presentation of both in popular media. The resultant balancing of sartorial signifiers demonstrates glam metal’s emphasis on projecting a carefully calibrated sense of masculinity to its audience. As musicologist Robert Walser writes, metal is a cultural entity that offers lots of opportunities for doing identity work, and accomplishing gender is one form of identity work that merits particular focus. Using the visual material contained within the metal imagery, “pin-up” or centerfold, and the music video, this project takes upon itself the task of understanding how glam metal musicians accomplish gender, with particular emphasis on the way ideas about masculinity are packaged and presented to the consumer of such imagery. This project engages with the musical genre’s efforts to construct ideologies using the process of bricolage and also to subvert popularly received notions of gender, sexuality, and authenticity.
(keywords: gender, sexuality, authenticity, artifice, masculinity, performance)
Book Reviews by Anya Kurennaya
Teoria Moda (Russian Fashion Theory)
Papers by Anya Kurennaya
Throughout rock music’s history, its stars have explored the boundaries of dress and sexuality, b... more Throughout rock music’s history, its stars have explored the boundaries of dress and sexuality, but none have done it quite as fascinatingly as those of glam metal, a particular subgenre of heavy metal which took hold in the United States in the mid 1980s. The stars of glam metal often appropriate exaggeratedly feminine modes of dressing, such as extensive and highly styled hair and makeup, yet still successfully communicate an overtly masculine, even hyper-masculine, persona designed to snare women through their clothing, lifestyle, and the presentation of both in popular media. As musicologist Robert Walser writes, metal is a cultural entity that offers lots of opportunities for doing identity work, and accomplishing gender is one form of identity work that merits particular focus. Using the visual material contained within the metal “pin-up” or centerfold, this paper takes upon itself the task of understanding how glam metal musicians accomplish gender, with particular emphasis on the way ideas about masculinity are packaged and presented to the consumer of such imagery. The metal centerfold is compared to its more famous female counterpart, the Playboy centerfold, to illustrate the way clothing and body posturing influence our reading of gender and sexuality, and the cowboy imagery that defines musicians such as Bret Michaels of Poison is compared to the image of the cowboy as viewed in Marlboro advertisements, demonstrating glam metal’s emphasis on projecting a carefully calibrated sense of masculinity to its audience.
Fashion Studies Journal (FSJ) by Anya Kurennaya
Book Chapters by Anya Kurennaya
Global Fashion Brands: Style, Luxury & History, 2014
This article examines the dynamics of the brand-focused online community blog Effortless Anthropo... more This article examines the dynamics of the brand-focused online community blog Effortless Anthropologie, devoted to the popular retailer Anthropologie, with particular emphasis on how brand values are created, espoused and disputed by its members in a dynamic and interactive online forum. Using relevant literature on the concept of brand community, the net is expanded to capture the activities of a community that exists primarily online. We use examples of posts and commenting activity to demonstrate that it is the existence of the blog that facilitates and maintains such a strong sense of community. This, along with the fact that the blog exists independently from the retailer that it values – that is, it is not a company blog – forces us to reconsider our concept of how brand communities are formed and maintained in the virtual realm. From this analysis, we can learn how brand communities are facilitated by blogs and how they take on a unique dimension online. Consumers use blogs like Effortless Anthropologie to find a community of like-minded users and be a part of a community existing outside of the retail sphere. Retailers and marketers might engage with or be aware of the sense of trust, bonding and loyalty that such an online community engenders.
Published Articles by Anya Kurennaya
Where does one locate the study of dress and fashion within the academic domain? Where are there ... more Where does one locate the study of dress and fashion within the academic domain? Where are there sites for research into this field? What are the tools used to create a discourse on and about the clothed body? What on earth are fashion and fashion studies anyway? These are a sample of questions used to frame Parsons' groundbreaking symposium titledLocating Fashion/Studies, which was held at the Theresa Lang Community Center on November 12 and 13, 2010.
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Master's Thesis by Anya Kurennaya
(keywords: gender, sexuality, authenticity, artifice, masculinity, performance)
Book Reviews by Anya Kurennaya
Papers by Anya Kurennaya
Fashion Studies Journal (FSJ) by Anya Kurennaya
Book Chapters by Anya Kurennaya
Published Articles by Anya Kurennaya
(keywords: gender, sexuality, authenticity, artifice, masculinity, performance)