Sex and Real Estate

Notes

 

In her book ‘Sex and Real Estate’ (Pantheon, NY, 2000), Marjorie Garber argues that the structure of rooms has been guided by the interplay of a number of dichotomies. For example, that between public and private spaces. Currently she says that bathrooms and kitchens are the rooms people are spending most money on, creating special spaces which then need to be shown off, and shared, becoming more public places. Guests now relax and chat in kitchens while the objects of their entertainment are prepared. Jacuzzis now invite bathing to become a shared experience.

 

The driving forces are multifarious, but an example is the invitation first to treat oneself, then to enjoy that treat with others…

 

p.85-6

 

“…the pendulum has swung back, making the “informal” kitchen the costliest, and often most glamorous, room in the house, rivalled only by the formally humble bathroom for pride of place, outsize proportions, and the latest in fixtures and cabinetry.

 

Not only are the kitchen and the bathroom the most extravagant rooms in many houses, they are often (as a consequence) the most displayed to visitors. And not only are the marketed as “sexy” (in the loose general sense of “desirable” and “expensive”), they have become places we think of as suitable for assignations: with a spouse, a lover – or that most seductive of partners, the room itself.

 

An issue of House & Garden devoted to “Perfect Powder Rooms” and “Bathing Luxuries from Soaking Tubs to Fabulous Fixtures” opens with a two-page frontispiece ad from American Standard Plumbing that pictures a romantically candlelit tub, sink, and toilet. The headline reads, “A great place to read ROMANCE NOVELS or for that matter to RE-ENACT THEM.”.

 

Bedrooms are in consequence becoming places of greater privacy and retreat, where even refrigerators are intruding for those peckish moments.

 

Another dichotomy is that between inside and outside – again the Jacuzzi features, along with the patio and the conservatory.

 

These areas are particularly significant, because they are new, and established rules for their use do not yet exist. Does one use the Jacuzzi with others wearing a bathing costume, or naked? There is ambiguity of meaning if one does it naked – one normally bathes naked, after all – or is it an invitation, a hint that more is possible? This is the edge of chaos, where creativity is possible. It is the realm of expectation and dreams. Intriguing and erotic.

 

And then, where there ARE rules, there is the frisson of breaking them. Assignations in unusual places, in public instead of private, outside instead of inside, and so on.

 

 

Judith Williamson ‘Decoding Advertisements’, Marion Boyars 2000

 

The main contribution here is the concept of Referent Systems – systems of connotation rather than denotation, where for example, Catherine Deneuve in the famous Chanel ad is denoted by a photo of her, but who connotes ‘wealthy, French chicness’, and her image and the Chanel bottle come to connote one another. In the process Deneuve is emptied of meaning – she is not a person with a real history, just a sign, a metonym. Margaux Hemingway on the other hand connotes ‘aggressive femininity’, and the ‘witty, confident, outspoken, fun’ lady in the ‘outspoken’ Chanel, no 19.

 

Another intriguing feature is her recognition that these concepts are ‘cooked’ rather than raw – adapted by civilisation to select certain features and ignore the wider truth – as in the presentation of Nature – it is never nature in the raw, but a more romantic image of ‘nature’.