Being Gorgeous explores the ways in which extravagance, flamboyance and dressing up can open up possibilities for women to play around anarchically with familiar stereotypical tropes of femininity. This is protest through play - a pleasurable misbehaviour that reflects a feminism for the twenty first century. Willson discusses how, whether through pastiche, parody, or pure pleasure, artists, artistes and indeed the spectators themselves can operate in excess of the restrictive images which saturate our visual culture. By referring to a wide spectrum of examples, including Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, Matthew Barney, Dr Sketchy's, Audacity Chutzpah, Burly Q and Carnesky's Ghost Train, Being Gorgeous demonstrates how contemporary female performers embody, critique and thoroughly relish their own representation by inappropriately re-appropriating femininity.

Introduction: Being Gorgeous and Feminism
Part One: Sexuality, Gender & the Art & Erotics of Visual Extravagance
1 Drop Dead Gorgeous:
2 Skin Deep
Part Two: The Pleasure of the Visual (Being Gorgeous and the 'Low')
3 Crinoline & Cupcakes
4 Powder Puff & Beauty Spots
Part Three: Bitter-Sweet Poetry (Being Gorgeous and the 'High')
5 The Paradoxical Body
6 The Sensual Body
7 Pleasure, Violence & the Sensual Spectacle
8 Creative Spectatorship & the Political Imagination
9 Conclusion
Bibliography
Index