“Is Cleopatra Black?”: Examining Whiteness and the American New Woman

Angelica J Maier

doi:10.3390/h10020068

Abstract

In the 1920s and 1930s, conceptions of the “New Woman” and Egyptomania shaped American culture. Employing methods of critical race art history and material culture studies, I focus on a 1925 Callot Soeurs dress and silk pajamas (c. 1920–1929), taking into consideration both the semiotic qualities of Egyptian motifs as they circulated in early twentieth century American visual culture as well as the sensuous material aspects of the garments. Through primary sources like cosmetic advertisements, fashion magazines, and costume manuals, I contextualize the figure of Cleopatra as a symbol of white beauty and power in this period. Weighing both visual and material aspects, I argue that the repeated act of wearing these garments by white-presenting women placed them in a performative valence, where the wearer ironically became a white woman through her appropriation of Cleopatra and Egyptian motifs. Further, these motifs conferred modernity, cosmopolitanism, class status and an acceptable sexuality upon the wearer. As such, I address how material objects shape subjectivity, simultaneously reflecting and producing racialized and gendered discourses. By focusing on white womanhood, I draw upon critical studies of whiteness in order to disrupt its invisible normative status. This essay traces its operational logic and aids in dismantling the pervasive power of white supremacy that continues to circulate today.

Highlights

Museum of Design, Gift of at Collection of the Goldstein Museum of Design, Gift of Felice Wender). Together these garments illustrate a lexicon of Egyptian motifs present in American. Against this backdrop of Egyptomania and the popular presence of Cleopatra, how fashion in the early twentieth century and reflect the fervor of Egyptomania in American might we use these garments to consider the relationship between clothing, femininity culture at the time
As Berger describes, the task of identifying and analyzing the unseen—whiteness as a racial logic, ideology, mode of perceiving the world—faces an evidentiary challenge: if you cannot always see whiteness, because of its normative invisibility, how do we find it?
The discussion turns to Julius Caesar’s long absence from Rome and rumors that a love affair with Cleopatra keeps him in Egypt

Summary

Introduction

Two silk garments from the 1920s capture the energy of Egyptomania and present the opportunity to think through the relationship between exoticism in fashion garments and racial embodiment for white middle to upper-class American women. Collection of the Goldstein Museum of Design, Gift of Felice Wender) Together these garments illustrate a lexicon of Egyptian motifs present in American. Against this backdrop of Egyptomania and the popular presence of Cleopatra, how fashion in the early twentieth century and reflect the fervor of Egyptomania in American might we use these garments to consider the relationship between clothing, femininity culture at the time. DeMille’s 1934 Cleopatra, in order to underscore how the indeterminacy of Cleopatra’s race allowed for her white appropriation, and further reinforced the potency of Egyptian motifs in modern women’s dress

The Garments

Conclusions