Posted on 08/19/2015 6:24:59 PM PDT by SJackson
The writer is research associate in American Studies at University of Maryland at College Park, and the author of “Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South” (under contract to University of Georgia Press).
When administrators at the University of Georgia declared a ban on hoop skirts in the spring, I could only think, what took you so long?
But in that sense UGA was really no different from other Southern schools. Long after many universities had officially done away with a variety of Old South symbols, the feminine figure most clearly identified with Dixie — the Southern belle — continued to enjoy free rein. College administrators who had long since banned the Confederate battle flag, nixed the singing of “Dixie” and given plantation-owner mascots the boot were still saying yes to the dress.
Wearing hoop skirts to unofficial campus social events such as fraternity-sponsored Old South balls, after all, was just feminine. Just fluff. Just women.
The hoop skirt ban was enacted in response to an ensuing uproar in March at the University of Oklahoma after members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, a fraternity with Southern roots, were caught on video chanting a racist song with references to lynching. The ban also came just weeks before University of Mississippi student Graeme Phillip Harris was indicted on federal civil rights charges of leaving a noose and a flag bearing Confederate insignia on a statue of James Meredith, the school’s first black student. Harris has since pleaded guilty. Of the charges, then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. noted, “No one should ever be made to feel threatened or intimidated because of what they look like or who they are.” The Mississippi NAACP branch has called the actions a hate crime.
The crude campus racism would soon pale next to the June tragedy in Charleston, S.C. After the mass murder of nine African American churchgoers, allegedly by a white supremacist who blatantly linked his views with the Confederate banner, the U.S. public engaged in long overdue soul-searching about the true meaning of Confederate symbolism. One result has been the steady removal of its signs from civic life. But related conversations have not necessarily taken place, and the question remains: Will feminine racial symbols — less noticed, highly effective — ever be similarly called to task? Will observers ever recognize what the hoop — and the contemporary belle — have to do with the hate?
All good - But G.R.I.T.S = 'Girls Raised In The South' - A very rare thing out here in the west... If I ever do get married again, it will be because I found me one... Won't settle for less.
“Mother fixed grits probably 80% of the time for breakfast.”
G.R.I.T.S. aren’t a side dish. Or a breakfast food.
Somehow, Max, I have the feeling she wouldn’t want to go to a ball with a guy.
EGAD! She’s using every tip in the Book of Dykery to repel men.
Yet if Bruce Jenner chose to wear one, he’d be hailed as a heroine.
LOL !!! A fine idea indeed.
They’re coming for America. One American at a time. Bastards.
I still have my evening gown from 1962 and I wore a hoop with it. I even remember what my mom paid for it. A whole $35. I had the hoop until the 70’s when I loaned it and it was never returned.
Ms. Boyd looks like the female version of what used to be called “the egghead” or “double domes”, basically book smart, ivy tower people who have little or no practical intelligence and almost no appreciation for the realities of life.
These people want no American culture prior to FDR.
Oh no he didn’t.
There is absolutely nothing hateful about a beautiful Southern girl in a hoop skirt. This writer sounds like she is auditioning for the Yankee Taliban. Keep your nose out of our culture. Your hateful language is offensive to us.
I would like to see one of these tyro ‘academics’ do a serious study of the effect on women who are forced to cover their hair, faces, and in some countries every bit of flesh, in smothering, stultifying Islamic female dress.
I’d also like to see a serious academic study on the mental/sexual ILLNESS that this denial of the Feminine causes in both men and women, in those countries. It might give us a clue as to the deep, vicious mental illness of ISIS.
Anyone? Anyone?
(crickets.....)
-JT
That:
“She’s so ugly she would make a freight train take a dirt road!”
The dresses are racis’? Really?
Figures. She’s lashing out because it is most likely she’s never been laid or even out on a date. Maybe I might be out of line, but it looks like she’d make a freight train take a dirt road.
I can’t wait for that day. I’m ready to put them in cages now and lock them in and throw away the key.
Dyke!
Didn’t even have to guess. Is being ugly a prerequisite to be gay because I keep seeing the same patterns? Its as if they wouldn’t have had a chance with the opposite sex so they have to turn to their own kind.
I’m a tosser and got rid of everything,much to my regret.
Your old hoop might show up on a retro-chic website.
Good memories.
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