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Marina Ma
Int. seminar
Jewelry and gender: How Jewelry
Affect Us
Marina Ma
Int. Seminar
Nicola Tulk
June 24th 2015
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Marina Ma
Int. seminar
Gender and ornamental jewelry
What does your jewelry represent? A romantic relationship, a
special secretive memory, or you are just fascinated by the appearance
of it? Jewelry is the most traditional art form. We can find the record of
them in thousands years ago. And our relationship between them has
changed thought time. Especially the relationship between gender and
jewelry is a rather complicated thing because it always involves our
emotional and memory. Women loves jewelry not only because of the
beauty of the form but also the personal attachments to them, especially
for men, men always tend to emphasize the memory and meaning rather
than the form. Beside those reasons, people create other relationships
with Jewelry based on the power of fashion trend and economic benefits.
However in hundreds years ago, jewelry represent something different to
genders, but nowadays everyone can wear them. They become a sign of
more equality in gender.
The attractive appearance of the Jewelry is seems like the most
important reason why we wear them: to enhance the visual appearance,
to increase our confidence, and to show the identity. Jewelry always has
the power to make differences mentally and physically. That mainly
happened to woman, as women we normally fell in love with the form first
and then as time pass by the importance increase and the stories behind
the jewelry created. In Bella Mirabella’s book Ornamentalism: The Art of
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Renaissance Accessories illustrates that Queen Elizabeth loved pearls
because they have the meaning, which is “associated with chastity” and
also represented “her wealth and the solvency of the Crown” Queen
Elizabeth gives us a great example of why she loves pearl, and how the
pearls means to her. Not only in western culture, in China something similar
happened, the Empress Dowager Cixi of Qing dynasty was captivated by
a type of jade, Feicui 翡翠（ we do not have a specific vocabulary for this
type of jade). The unique deep green pattern and meaning associated
with fortune capture Cixi ‘s eyes. Just like what Sharon Marcus says,
“Fashion was a way for women to enjoy femininity as a freestanding
object of visual pleasure” in her book Between women: friendship, desire,
and marriage in Victorian England, Jewelry can bring us beauty confident
and happiness.
However, does jewelry only belong to women? Why fewer man
wear them. To be honest, if we think about it, men actually do wear some
jewelry. They wear rings for marriage, necklace, and earring for their
personal reasons. People, especially men emphasize more on the
personal engagement of jewelry. Not everyone always like the form of a
jewelry, but sometimes it is just because the memory behind it. For
example, if a woman passes away, her son would keep or even wear the
jewelry that his mother wore everyday, regardless about the form, they
just wear it in order to commemorate her. Some men may not be the
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same sensitive to fashion and appearance beauty, but as human we all
have emotion. And that emotion is the key to link us with jewelry.
Beside the personal attachment and visual appearance of the
jewelry amaze people, there are two more reasons that create the
relationship between jewelry and gender, which are the power of fashion
trend and economic benefit. We offer different meaning to some gems
and materials in different time period At Queen Elizabeth’s time, people
highly values the virginity and purity. So when the Queen started wearing
it, the fashion of pearls started too, upper class begun recognizing the
beauty of them. Some women may not like pearl at first, but when the
Queen wear them, the meaning changed. Even today pearls still
symbolize graceful and classic. That is how the power of icon affects the
jewelry. And on the other hand, economic benefits create another
relationship with people. Feicui is just a subfield of jade, and it was very
cheap, only few people had known it and bought them before Cixi found
and loved it. The price of Feicui dramatically increased. That led to some
unpleasant situations happened, some businessmen intentionally sell less
Feicui because the less they sell, the price of it increases more. Many
people made big money on Feicui. The same as diamonds, Marilyn Moore
brought it to the public and lets us found out the meaning of love behind
it. Which in today, diamond always more expensive than other gems
because it is more related with us, If people never fond of them, never
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wear them, all this symbolic meaning, high price would not exist, they
would just be the same as rock. However, if we look at this relationship in
another point of view, just because we have emotion, we have economic
need, that why jewelry have brought us so much joys.
Although the meaning of jewelry has changed, they do not only
symbolic privilege and glory anymore. In Rebecca Ross Russell’s book
Gender and Jewelry: A Feminist Analysis. She talks some interesting points.
I define myself as feminist too, so it makes me curious how she explains the
relationship of gender and jewelry. She starts with the quotation of Georg
Simmel, a “ sociologist and philosopher” ‘s theory. He claims that men’s
capability relay on “ weapons” and women relay on their “jewelry.” And
then Russell starts points out the problems in his statement, she said it “limits
women in several serious ways”, because women cannot be beautiful
thought her entire life and “ beauty generally unlinked to intelligence,
achievements or merit” I totally agree with her point of view, and we can
clearly find out that the idea jewelry belong to women is from the
concept that women’s power is their beauty. We can find the sign of this
idea in our society. When people criticize men wearing fancy jewelry,
when discrimination happened to female for certain careers like police,
fire fighter, and political positions. These do not seems very serious, but the
ideas and serotype women is weaker and women has beauty but not the
capability and intelligence cause these situations happen.
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Jewelry is not only just the decorative object. It seems like has less
functional use than clothes but they are the sign of the well-development,
stable society We offer different meaning to different objects and
materials, and most of them represent wealth and power, like gold and
silver, but in today’s society, we see a man wear many fancy earing,
women wear a lot of punk jewelry. Now, modern jewelry usually has very
sharp shape, light- weight and economical materials and less feature of
gender distinction. It is rather important sign of our society shows that the
gender is not a boundary and limitation for us anymore. We could do
anything we like, wear anything we prefer. That dramatic switch of the
jewelry connects closely with the way we think.
As conclusion, jewelry have taken a very important role in our life
culture and history. It changes how we think of ourselves. It improves our
confidence and expresses our identity. More women enjoy the
appearance beauty, men emphasize on the memory. Furthermore, the
power of icon can strongly influence the way people think of jewelry and
many people can make living on it. In the past people think it represent
the women’s only strength, but nowadays it shows more equality in both
gender.
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Marina Ma
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Bibliography
Marcus, Sharon. Between women: Friendship, desire, and marriage in
Victorian England. Princeton University Press, 2009.
Mirabella, M. Bella, ed. Ornamentalism: the art of Renaissance
accessories. University of Michigan Press, 2011.
Russell, Rebecca Ross. Gender and jewelry: A feminist analysis. Rebecca
Ross Russell, 2010.