The New York Times International - 30.07.2019

.. T HE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION TUESDAY, JULY 30, 2019| 11

In 2015, an indie retailer called Other- wild unveiled a remake of the iconic 1970s “The Future Is Female” T-shirt. The design was an instant success, with the first batch reportedly selling out within two days. As one of many fledg- ling feminists trying to make sense of the cultural whiplash surrounding the F-word at that time, I loved the shirt, because it expressed a growing feeling of something nascent but urgent. Steeped in activist history, the Other- wild design preceded an explosion of overtly political T-shirts that responded to the changing political tides threat- ening women’s rights. The feminist T-shirts of 2015 and 2016 protested systemic inequalities via sans-serif slogans: “My Uterus, My Choice,” “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun-damental Rights,” and perhaps most pointedly, “Pussy Grabs Back.” The past three years, however, have seemingly delivered another kind of feminist fashion trend: T-shirts that simply make a statement of gender. Some just say “Woman.” Others feature slight variations: “WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN” or “The Woman” or “Human Woman.” Sometimes it’s contextualized in a sentence: “I am woman,” or “Man, it’s good to be a woman!” Other times it’s in other languages: “Femme/ Donna/Mujer/Woman.” You can buy a matching design for your little girl. The phrase has become so popular, it’s become something of a self-referential joke (“This Is a T-Shirt About Women”). T-shirts with “a simple statement or word,” have “become more and more ubiquitous throughout all levels of the fashion market,” said Nina Marston, a fashion analyst for the market research provider Euromonitor International. Such shirts serve as “identity affirming purchases” she said, that could lead women to “theoretically, take a step toward becoming more politically ac- tive.” Theoretically. The shift from the rah-rah political messaging of a few years ago to simple proclamations of womanhood also signals a larger change occurring within the microcosm of feminist fashion, as well as beyond it: The tilt from a politics of visibility toward an economy of visibility. Visibility has always played a critical role in feminist movements. Pride marches grew out of a need for a public

presence for L.G.B.T.Q. identities. Kim- berlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality framework made visible the unique discrimination black women experience to account for their lack of representation in workplace policies, laws and social movements. The success of #MeToo was in large part thanks to the newly public nature of what was once private sexual harassment. “That visibility which makes us most vulnerable,” Audre Lorde wrote, “is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.” This is what Prof. Sarah Banet-Weiser calls a politics of visibility: the act of highlighting identity categories like gender and race to accomplish political recognition and, hopefully, structural change. An economy of visibility, on the other hand, decou- ples this practice from its political end goals. Instead, visibility becomes valuable in its own right because of its monetizable potential. It’s at play in the near constant messaging to “invest in girls,” as if they were commodities. It underpins gender- equality-is-smart-economics activism. And it manufactures T-shirts that equate being a woman with being a feminist. This isn’t to say, necessarily, that what we had in 2015 was “good” and that today’s shirts are “bad” for feminist goals. Arguably, any statement T-shirt is involved in an economy of visibility; all those “Future is Female” shirts — even the ethically produced ones — were almost certainly negligible in their political impact. Indeed, gender schol- ars have argued convincingly that

capitalist feminism is hardly feminism at all. Crude though they may be, however, political T-shirt slogans are useful distil- lations of social movements into their most basic conceptual elements. A T-shirt that says “Equal Pay Now” may not do much in the way of dismantling pay discrimination, but it does let you know where our energies lie. What, exactly, does wearing a shirt that says “WOMAN” serve as shorthand for? An optimist might say it’s the self- evident importance of gender equality in 2019 — because this shirt exists, and because I am wearing it, what it stands for must be valuable. A realist might say it’s demonstrative of the sweeping way feminist principles have percolated through cultural consciousness in meaningful and not-so-meaningful ways. But cultural recognition itself is not enough. When the representation of marginalized groups becomes tokeniz- ing rather than transformative, the project of inclusion fails. When Nike creates viral marketing spots champi- oning women’s equality while discrimi- nating against its pregnant athletes, cultural recognition veils oppression. When Hollywood execs proudly trot out black filmmakers while privately pun- ishing them for using their voice, the economy of visibility betrays. What’s more, for many women, there is real danger in visibility without political valence. To be seen in public as a trans woman or lesbian brings with it an especially grave bodily risk. Sometimes 2019 feels like a dystopian dinner party where you’re handed a name tag at the door that reads: “Hi, my name is: WOMAN.” This kind of unvar- nished visibility distracts from the structural barriers to gender justice while reinforcing simplistic notions of gender. By emphasizing our monolithic “womanness,” we minimize our com- monalities with men, while collapsing the differences among ourselves. To be sure, the popularity of gender- statement T-shirts has little bearing on the state of feminist politics. But perhaps the trend of visibly wearing your womanhood is a symptom of a larger cultural condition. If in 2015 we pre- dicted the future would be female, in 2019 it feels as if we were right. Water bottles are female. Tote bags are female. Workspaces are female. And somehow, it’s still not enough.

NICOLA PARDYis a freelance writer and producer.

This is an article about women

In 2019, simple proclamations of womanhood are more popular than ever. But what, exactly, do they achieve?

Nicola Pardy

JENNIFER HEUER

America’s museums are more than repositories of ancient Greek statues and Renaissance paintings. They are guardians of a fading social and demo- graphic order. On Thursday, Warren Kanders resigned from the board of the Whitney Museum of Art, after protests over his company’s sale of tear gas grenades that were reportedly used on asylum seekers. His case reveals the extent to which museums have become contested spaces in a rapidly-changing country. On one side of the crossfire are trustees who benefit from a distorted economic system that protects and promotes inequality. Wealthy donors and collectors decide what is valued. They expect appreciation, not scrutiny, for giving generously as government support for the arts wanes. And they are offended by the accusation that they use museums to launder, or “artwash,” their reputations and increase the value of their personal collections. On the other side are people whom the system excludes and exploits. An increasingly diverse viewing public, and growing protest movements, are calling for installations and institutions that represent a broader cross-section of America. They demand museums serve more than the interests of the elite. Museums find themselves in the same struggle tearing society apart — a struggle fueled by worsening inequality of every kind. Consider how this is playing out in New York City. The Metropolitan Mu- seum of Art announced it would no longer accept gifts from the Sackler family, owners of the opioid maker Purdue Pharma. Before Mr. Kanders resigned, eight artists in the Whitney’s 2019 Biennial withdrew in protest. (They have since rejoined the show.) Employees of the Guggenheim and New Museum, whose wages have largely stagnated as those of top museum executives rise faster than inflation, have recently unionized, inspiring other such efforts. I believe that museums have the responsibility to hold a mirror up to society. As the country becomes young- er and more diverse, and as its immi-

grant population grows, museums must shift. This is not about “political correct- ness”; it’s about how these institutions can achieve excellence, now and in the future. At stake is not just the work or pres- tige of a particular institution, but the underpinnings of democracy: How do “we the people,” tell our story — who is included, and who is locked out? And how do museums resist reinforcing biases, hierarchies and inequalities? To start, museums should prioritize hiring curators from academic programs that invest in diversity. Donors need to support artists and academics of every background; the people en- trusted with analyzing and exhibiting the American story ought to reflect the future, or risk not being a part of it. Fortunately, there are signs of progress. A 2018 Mellon Foundation survey found that educational and curatorial depart- ments have grown more racially diverse since 2014. More than a quarter of museum education positions are now held by people of color. A number of prominent museums, from the Getty to the Museum of Modern Art, have announced the appointment of curators of color recently. One of the most successful traveling exhibitions of the past year, “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” generated critical acclaim and enor- mous attendance, demonstrating the hunger for such programming. The fall cultural calendar in major museums promises to be among the most diverse ever, with solo exhibitions devoted to artists including Teresita Fernández, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu and Mark Bradford. Many organizations that support art institutions are demanding more. New York City, for instance, now requires diversity reporting from the cultural institutions it subsidizes. Beyond the numbers, the fact that the city will hold institutions accountable is starting to shift the focus away from merely seek- ing donations. Major arts foundations — from An- nenberg to Walton — are emphasizing diversity and inclusion in their grant- making. By doing so, they are offering

funds that are not contingent on naming rights for new buildings, but rather to build more diverse staffs and invest in a broader range of stories, of which there are still too few examples. And yet, everything that moves an institution forward, or holds it back, can be traced to its board. So, boards need to include members from more diverse perspectives and backgrounds. After all, no institution in a democracy that aspires to reflect society, or serve the public, can do so without representing the communities that constitute it. To engage diverse leaders, museums should redefine the terms of trustee- ship. At a time when institutions face greater pressure than ever to raise resources, their boards have veered too far toward only appointing trustees with wealth. But we know there are other valuable forms of capital not easily measured in dollars and cents. And so boards need to stop seeing diversity as subtracting from their annual revenue, but rather as adding strength. Diversity helps them attract new vis- itors, artists, communities and constitu- encies. In other words, museum boards must move from tokenism to transformation — the kind of transformation that only meaningful inclusion can bring. Transformation will take hold only if it happens at every level of the museum. That’s why boards have a responsibility to support and hire a diverse staff and to compensate them responsibly. Only then will the public begin to see themselves and others robustly reflected and represented. Static, monolithic history must be supplanted with histories, plural — even as museums continue to safeguard the past in the objects they conserve and display. Directors and their staffs can enact bold forward-looking visions only when their boards support them in seeing museums as spaces to challenge, take creative risks and not simply conserve. Museums have the chance to redefine excellence and relevance. They should be civic spaces where we can gather and do the exhilarating work of building community. For that to happen, institutions should look beyond the gilded frames of this new Gilded Age, and better reflect the public they serve.

DARREN WALKERis the president of the Ford Foundation.

Darren Walker

HOKYOUNG KIM

Museums and the future

They reflect America’s widening inequality. Their trustees must help fix this.

opinion

which have swollen to three times the size of the real economy. In this environment, cutting rates could hasten exactly the outcome that the Fed is trying to avoid. By further driving up the prices of stocks, bonds and real estate, and encouraging risky borrowing, more easy money could set the stage for a collapse in the financial markets. And that could be followed by an economic downturn and falling prices — much as in Japan in the 1990s. The more expensive these financial assets become, the more precarious the situation, and the more difficult it will be to defuse without setting off a downturn. The key lesson from Japan was that central banks can print all the money they want, but can’t dictate where it will go. Easy credit could not force over- indebted Japanese consumers to bor- row and spend, and much of it ended up going to waste, financing “bridges to nowhere” and the rise of debt-laden “zombie companies” that still weigh on the economy. Today, politicians on the right and left have come to embrace easy money, each camp for its own reasons, both ignoring the risks. President Trump has been pushing the Fed for a large rate cut to help him bring back the postwar miracle growth rates of 3 percent to 4 percent. But much as in Japan two decades ago, an aging population and falling productivity have sapped the capacity of the American economy to sustain its previous pace. According to the Con- gressional Budget Office, the economy’s growth potential has fallen by half from

its postwar average to less than 2 percent now. With the domestic economy already growing a bit above that pace, injecting more easy money into the engine won’t make it run much faster, particularly not after 10 years of trying. At the same time, liberals like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are turning to unconventional easy money theories as a way to pay for ambitious social programs. But they might want to take a closer look at who has benefited most after a decade of easy money: the wealthy, monopo- lies, corporate debtors. Not exactly liberal causes. By fueling a record bull run in the financial markets, easy money is increasing inequality, since the wealthy own the bulk of stocks and bonds. Research also shows that very low interest rates have helped large corporations increase their domi- nance across United States industries, squeezing out small companies and start-ups. Once seen as a threat only in Japan, zombie firms — which don’t earn enough profit to cover their interest payments — have been rising in the United States, where they account for one in six publicly traded companies. All these creatures of easy credit erode the economy’s long-term growth potential by undermining productivity, and raise the risk of a global recession emanating from debt-soaked financial

and housing markets. A 2015 study of 17 major economies showed that before World War II, about one in four recessions followed a collapse in stock or home prices (or both). Since the war, that number has jumped to roughly two out of three, including the economic meltdowns in Japan after 1990, Asia after 1998 and the world after 2008. Recessions tend to be longer and deeper when the preceding boom was fueled by borrowing, because after the boom goes bust, flattened debtors struggle for years to dig out from under their loans. And lately, easy money has been enabling debt binges all over the world, particularly in corporate sectors. As the Fed prepares to announce a decision this week, growing bipartisan support for a rate cut is fraught with irony. Slashing rates to avoid deflation made sense in the crisis atmosphere of 2008, and cutting again may seem like a logical response to weakening global growth now. But with the price of borrowing already so low, more easy money will raise a more serious threat. By further lifting stock and bond prices and encouraging people to take on more debt, lowering rates could set the stage for the kind of debt-fueled market collapse that has preceded the economic downturns of recent decades. Our economy is hooked on easy money — and it is a dangerous addiction.

The world should fear easy money

S HARMA, FROM PAGE 1

The key lesson from Japan was that central banks can print all the money they want, but can’t dictate where it will go.

RUCHIR SHARMA, author of “The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World,” is the chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Invest- ment Management.

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