W hat “scripts” and “concepts” form what we commonly call womanhood? And why can’t women, even after decades of feminist discourse, simply break away from these scripts? This is what the cultural scientist Ann-Kristin Tlusty asks in her clever feminist criticism Sweet.
Tlusty’s book explains how internalized instructions lead women to do things that do not correspond to what they want. So why emancipated women suddenly appear flirty and sweet, even though they find this uncomfortable. To this end, Tlusty analyzes three female figures: the “gentle”, the “tender” and the “sweet” woman are each examined in the context of a socio-political issue. Using the gentle woman who puts her own needs aside in favor of others, Tlusty looks at the problem of unpaid or underpaid care work: “It was a gigantic coup in the history of patriarchal theory to have nonchalantly declared female work non-work and essentialized it as gentleness . ”Tlusty is not interested in criticizing the gentleness. Rather, she wants gentleness to be an option for all genders.
With the “sweet” woman, Tlusty illuminates the field of the sexual in the heterosexual matrix. The sweet woman is sexually available to the man, a consumable, delicious woman. The author shows problems of feminist sex positivity culture, which has elevated sexual activity and self-determination to a kind of imperative. She refers to the sociologist Eva Illouz and her argument that sexual activity and competence have become a value criterion – regardless of gender. But that leaves little room for a tentative, desire-driven sexuality, which could possibly also consist in temporary renunciation or less exciting practices such as the so gladly scolded flower sex. The delicate woman, on the other hand, is that female figure who in our picture can only be saved or made happy through the existence of a man.
So why has the real balance of power changed so little despite decades of feminist struggles? The author identifies “potency feminism” as a cause of the problem, which calls on women to make their own decisions independently, but disregards and conceals structural obstacles. It’s not just glass ceilings that hold women back, but “invisible walls”, “sugary facades held together by sticky ideology”. Incidentally, decorated with liberal, capitalist sprinkles.
Contrary to what the somewhat garish cover of the book suggests, Tlusty writes matter-of-factly, soberly and dispenses with the gender asterisks, which many perceive as unreasonable; she usually writes about “the woman” or “women” anyway, knowing full well that no statements can be made about all women. The author’s gentle, sweet and delicate woman are also decidedly white, bourgeois figures. This also explains why, in struggles for recognition, Women of Color or women who are read as “Asian” have to resort to other strategies of appropriating and rejecting these images of women.
In Tlusty’s polemic, “woman” actually always means a mode of world experience. In this way, she succeeds in walking the paradoxical tightrope of writing about women and, at the same time, being able to question the cultural and social narratives that structure and contain womanhood. In the end, the analyzed female figures appear for what they are: sticky-sweet traps that women shouldn’t first fall into.
Sweet. A feminist criticism Ann-Kristin Tlusty Carl Hanser Verlag 2021, 208 pages, € 18
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