Pre- Clas: Cixous (Make-Up Post)

Cixous essay analyzes the topic of sex and gender in her feminist influenced piece, Sorties. She began by opening up the reader to the idea of binary oppositions, she notes that pairs (nature/mind & father/son for example) are couples. The moment one aims to make sense of them, they are destroyed. The one that stuck in my mind while reading this essay was the oppositions with activity and passivity. This is due to their links to females and males. "Either the woman is passive; or she doesn't exist. What is left is unthinkable, unthought of" (160) Woman remains a male-dominated space "always virginal, matter subjected to the desire that he wishes to imprint" One point that I really drew form the reading wish to talk more about is the notion of bisexuality. This postructuralist idea sets up a definition of bisexuality which is not about the combination of sexuality (androgyny) but the displacement of the terms "masculinity" and "femininity." Bisexuality here goes beyond dualism to imagine a multiple subject. Cixous points out that women are privileged by achieving this bisexuality because historically and culturally women are more open or accustomed to accepting different forms of subjectivity. One person who I feel fits this definition well is in the form of the actress, Angelina Jolie. Cixous notes "Bisexuality as a fantasy of a complete being, which replaces the fear of castration and veils sexual difference..a fantasy of unity. Two within one, and not even two wholes."(159). Jolie is one of my favorite actress' in the fact that she pushes the boundaries of masculinity in a great deal of her roles, whilst holding her femininity close to her. She poses a very masculine aura about her, it is originally and one that she has played very well throughout her career. Yet in binary apposition she is always in FHM's annual "100 sexist women" edition. She has never sacrificed her femininity. "Masculine profit is almost always mixed up with a success that is socially define" (161) In our Western culture, masculinity and femininity are seen as attributes that reside outside of our own selves and which can only be attained through hard work (dress, hair, body and style). People have this notion of being successful or not successful as being correctly masculine or feminine and spend a great deal of effort attaining it. She is a lone icon for women in the action films for this reason, finding a unique balance of the two.