Blind Women’s Appearance Management

Theoretical Frameworks: Blind Women at the Crossroads of Gender, Disability, and Visual Culture

The topic of women’s bodies and appearance has been discussed as an inseparable component of the performativity of personhood and gender identity (Butler 1990; Featherstone 2003; West and Zimmerman 1987), and as influential in multiple arenas of women’s lives, such as health (Bordo 2003; Fraser 1997; Zones 1997) and employment (Dellinger and Williams 1997; Wolf 1992), as well as women’s resources of time, knowledge, and money (Bartky 1997; King 2004; Wolf 1992). The women in this research present a distinctive case study to the writing on the feminine body and performance because of their constant struggle to interpret, decipher, and enact feminine visual norms. By studying the appearance management of a population whose experiences typically have been dismissed, this article not only addresses blind women’s unique awareness of visual norms but also considers blindness as a valuable case study that exposes familiarized visual gender norms and feminine practices, articulating the essential sociological work of revealing the taken-for-grantedness of our everyday lives.

While women’s appearance has been widely discussed, I argue that the vast majority of this literature expresses an ocularcentric focus that concentrates on visual interaction and the ways in which women see and are seen in the media (Beller 2006; Geraghty 1991), by the beauty industry (Bordo 2003; Wolf 1992), in cinema and art (Berger 1977; Mulvey 1975), and by the law (Kamir 2007). To some extent, while criticizing the objectifying gaze, the feminist critique has adopted a “panoptic” terminology that sketches modern patriarchal power relations as consisting of women who are subjected to the dominant masculine gaze, requiring them to present a calculated feminine appearance that will be perceived as neither overly provocative nor neglected (Bartky 1997; King 2004; Wolf 1992). Within this critique, women’s ability to see has been taken for granted, placing the construction of gender and social identity solely within the visual regime of the “society of the spectacle” (Debord 1995), while identifying femininity as a way of being seen (Berger 1977). Even research that has recognized the ocularcentrism of Western writing and offered an alternative approach, concentrating on the medium of touch, for example (Irigaray 1985), has yet emphasized the gaze and identified the visual as sites of rationality and masculinity.

Because of this visual hegemony, the integration of blindness into the conversation is extremely rare, and the obvious question of how blind women “do” gender and femininity has never been fully addressed. Recognizing this lack of research, this article analyzes the appearance management practices of women who exist outside our ocularcentric culture and offers a conceptual development that is applicable not only to blind women but to gender and social study of the body in general. In addition, it shifts the focus of the discussion from the eye and the gaze, addressing the critique regarding the neglect of the “peripheral” senses other than sight (Bull and Back 2003; Macpherson 2009) and joining alternative theoretical and methodological approaches, such as the movement toward the use of a “theory of multiple senses” (Kleege 2005, 187).

The larger framework of my discussion draws on feminist disability studies, which strives to “reimagine . . . [a]nd denaturalize disability,” addressing misrepresented experiences and the identity formation of disabled women (Garland-Thomson 2005, 1557). Scholars in this field have discussed appearance in the lives of women with disabilities (Campling 1981; Keith 1994; McCarthy 1998; Williams and Nind 1999; Zitzelsberger 2005) and typically addressed appearance within the system of passing as normal/able. Yet this article, by focusing specifically on blind women, who traditionally have been ignored, emphasizes agentic processes and blind women’s will to challenge the stereotypes of blindness, rather than simply pass as sighted.

Moreover, by expanding the framework of feminist disability studies, the article offers a new perspective in the current debate between the constructivist approach to disability, expressed by the “social model,” that emphasizes social barriers and limitations (Oliver 1996), and the “essentialist” approach, which recognizes the material reality of actual pain and illness in the everyday lives of people with disabilities (Corker and French 1999; Thomas 2002; Zitzelsberger 2005). My analysis responds to this discussion and to the request to “bring the body back in” through disability ethnography (Casper and Talley 2005, 118), examining the body as a “bio-social material entity” (Thomas 2002, 75) at the intersection of culture, society, and embodiment. This intersection is expressed through blind women’s simultaneous negotiation of cultural prejudices about the roles of “women,” “the blind,” and “the disabled”; social barriers in the workplace, the education system, and the public sphere; and embodied sensations such as the tactile, auditory, and olfactory experiences that accompany the use of dress and cosmetics.

Blind women’s appearance and body care are also tied to the contradictory intersection where women with disabilities exist. While they are traditionally seen as nongendered, nonsexual, childlike, and dependent (Asch and Fine 1988; Limaye 2003; Lonsdale 1990; Morris 1991; Saxton 1987; Shakespeare 1996), aesthetic discourse of the feminine body demands of them a narrow range of accepted female appearance that does not include aids such as a wheelchair, white cane, guide dog, or artificial limbs. In addition, the social construction of disability is patriarchal and labels disabled people with “feminine” traits such as dependency, subservience, and helplessness (Asch and Sacks 1983; Elder 1983). Disabled men are also labeled with these characteristics; however, adopting “masculine” traits such as competitiveness, leadership, aggression, and ambition creates the opportunity to avoid the stigmas of the disabled (Asch and Sacks 1983; Elder 1983; Murphy 1990). Disabled women, though, deal with a double paradox, as they are accepted neither on the masculine side of the equation, because of their femininity nor on the feminine side, because of their disability. Within this framework, blind women’s appearance management operates as a mechanism that delivers messages regarding ability/disability, gender, and femininity to the wider society.

Finally, this article emphasizes blindness as a rich experience of the world and a whole mode of being, and continues the writing of scholars across disability studies who have raised awareness of the need for a more profound study of blindness (e.g., Asch and Sacks 1983; Kleege 2005; Kudlick and Weygand 2001; Michalko 1998; Schillmeier 2008).

Situating Blind Women’s Experiences Within the Israeli Context

Blind women in Israel are a population that has traditionally been ignored. An exception is the pioneering anthropological work of Shlomo Deshen, who chronicled the lives of blind people in Tel-Aviv during the 1980s. Nevertheless, Deshen’s research described the lives of blind people as a whole, thereby establishing “disability anthropology” (1992). This article, then, not only attempts to remedy this deficiency but also argues for the importance and singularity of the Israeli case study for the analysis of disabled women in general and blind women in particular.

The Israeli context poses extreme challenges for women with disabilities, many of which result from the operation of exclusion mechanisms spawned from the historical conditions of the Zionist project and the birth of the Israeli state, as well as increasing capitalism and consumerism in contemporary Israeli society. I argue for the existence of three main exclusion mechanisms that simultaneously influence blind women’s experiences: the militaristic culture, the pro-natal ideology, and the beauty discourse of consumer culture.

Militaristic features are inherent within the Zionist project, which fostered an “Israeli ableism” (Mor 2006, 82), excluding deviant bodies and idealizing the strong, masculine, healthy body of the pioneer, the sabra, the soldier, and the worker (Weiss 2002). This “disability policy” which excludes all people with disability, but, raises additional hardships for disabled women. Unlike nondisabled women, women with disabilities are exempt from obligatory military service ² —which serves as a route into the public collective and legitimate citizenship (Rapoport and El-Or 1997; Sasson-Levy 2007, 484). And, unlike veterans’ disabilities, women’s disabilities are not associated with heroic military sacrifice (Atshan 1997; Deshen 1996); disabled women do not “enjoy” the social glory, extensive benefits, powerful organization, and strong political lobby of disabled veterans (Mor 2006, 65).

In addition to its militaristic culture, Israeli society encourages traditional womanhood and motherhood, constructing Jewish-Israeli women first and foremost as wives and mothers (Berkovitch 1997), and promoting motherhood as a condition for social legitimacy and a marker of normative identity (Gooldin 2002; Weiss 2002). Studies have pointed out the difficulties of disabled women in general, and blind women in particular, in finding a romantic partner or becoming a parent (Asch and Fine 1988, 13; Deshen 1996, 64; Kent 2002, 81), and that disabled women are often considered unfit as mothers and are encouraged to be sterilized (Asch and Fine 1988, 21). The centrality of motherhood within Israeli society creates a unique challenge for blind women who cannot easily fulfill this feminine “ideal”—a hardship experienced by research participants, who reported numerous encounters with social workers, nurses, or parents who expressed degrading attitudes and even disbelief about blind women’s maternal abilities.

Alongside the long presence of militaristic and pro-natal ideologies in Israeli society, scholars have identified a radical shift toward increasing capitalism in Israeli culture during the past two decades (Carmeli and Applbaum 2004), which has reached “new heights” in Israeli culture in comparison to other developed countries (Sered 2000, 124). This “consumerism capitalism” is expressed in the arenas of fashion and advertising, among others, initiating a beauty discourse that publicly scrutinizes women’s bodies and sexuality. Sered argues that in Israeli society, Western beauty discourse is primarily inhabited by secular Jewish women, who reject the religious discourse of the modest female body on one hand yet are unable to attain the masculine militaristic ideal on the other. Therefore, they face a “corporeal void” that yields the pursuit of a slim, sexually attractive, and eternally young body (Ibid, 126). This feminine image is, however, not readily available to blind women, because it is manifested predominantly through the visual domain of television, newspapers, and billboards.

Within these Israeli collectivist embodiments, blind women find themselves in a complicated marginal position, and hence struggle to find an alternative route of belonging in the “public collective”—a struggle magnified by the “strong national ethos” (Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport 2001) within Israeli society. In this social dynamic, individuals must prove their membership in and contribution to the national project in order to gain an “entrance ticket” into the collective, through specified sites: masculine militarism, feminine fertility, the display of modernity among Mizrahi Jews, who were historically stereotyped as uncivilized and uneducated Easterners (Khazzoom 2008), or a “proper” Jewishness among immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s, who have been seen as a potential threat to the Jewish collective nature of the state because of the large number of non-Jews among them (Cohen and Susser 2009; Kravel-Tovi forthcoming). In this context, appearance management is a strategy aimed toward full inclusion within Israeli society, operating as a site of claiming public visibility and social legitimacy, and an escape route from blind women’s aforementioned marginality.

In addition, blind women’s marginal position may shed light on the similarity of the exclusion mechanisms both Jewish and Arab blind women face, as each is located in a social position that generates, to some degree, similar relationships with the militaristic culture, the pro-natal ideology, and the beauty discourse of consumer culture. Nevertheless, while this subject is worthy of a much broader survey, these considerations are outside the scope of this article, which offers the first examination of its kind of the lives of blind women in Israel.

Data and Method

This article is based on in-depth interviews with 40 blind women conducted between 2007 and 2010 in Israel, as part of a wider ethnographic research on the gender identity of blind women and the representations of sight and blindness in the Israeli public sphere. The research participants are legally blind women. Thirty-one are blind from birth or from a young age as a result of medical malpractice, an accident, or genetics. Nine are congenitally visually impaired with a very limited field of vision, or became blind during adolescence or adult life, and therefore retain a limited memory of colors, visual images, and people’s appearance. The majority of the interviewees use a cane or a guide dog; therefore, their blindness is visible. Nevertheless, the findings cannot be generalized to all blind and visually impaired women in Israel, as concepts regarding gender, femininity, and appearance, and indeed blindness itself, vary.

The research sample is diverse in terms of age, marital status, ethnicity, geographic location, and profession. The women in this research were between 19 and 66 years of age. Nineteen of the interviewees are single, 15 are married or in a long-term relationship, four are divorced, and two are widowed. Thirteen of the participants are mothers, and three of them are single mothers. The interviewees include 38 Jewish and two Arab Muslim women, who identified as orthodox (five), traditionalist ³ (eight), and secular (27). The dominance of Jewish women within the sample can be attributed to the nationality-based segregation within Israeli society, which makes it extremely difficult for a Jewish sighted researcher to develop relationships with Arab blind women. In addition, although I made an effort to interview Arab blind women, only two of the women I became acquainted with met the parameters of the sample category of congenitally blind women or women who lost sight at a young age. ⁴ The interviewees have various ethnic origins: 27 were born in Israel, three in countries of the Islamic world, seven in Europe, two in Africa, and one in South America. A third of the women can be identified as Mizrahi Jews, as they or their parents came from Islamic countries, and the others as Ashkenazi Jews, as they or their parents came from Europe. Most of the participants can be identified as lower-middle class, and four women described themselves as coming from poor neighborhoods, and growing up in poverty. Despite the interviewees’ affiliation with the lower-middle class, they are all educated. All of the participants graduated from high-school, and 35 of them completed higher education studies. This paradox can be attributed to the Israeli higher education policy which is more supportive of blind and visually impaired students (Almog 2011, 19) than the labor market is, and to the necessity for many disabled people to depend on social security stipends. The participants’ geographic locations varied and included peripheral towns, central cities, and collective settlements throughout Israel. The participants represent a variety of professions, including the arts (musicians, singers), social welfare (social workers, rehabilitation instructors), education (youth counselors, group leaders, coaches, teachers, students), health and medicine (medical masseurs, physiotherapists), language (translators), and communications and media.

Despite the diversity of the sample, the participants’ social affiliations most relevant to the discussion of appearance management are gender and disability. Appearance practices, of course, vary by age, economic class, and religion; the participants’ age range produces a spectrum of attitudes toward fashion, and highlights changing priorities regarding appearance, as older women were more concerned with, for example, when and how to color their hair or whether to consider plastic surgery. While economic class impacts blind women’s appearance mainly by affecting their ability to purchase fashion, hygiene, and beauty products, religious women included in their considerations the edicts of the religious authority and the discourse of the pure and modest female body. Nevertheless, “normal” or “decent” appearance was important for interviewees across socioeconomic boundaries, reflecting the domination of the cultural discourse of “compulsory able-bodiedness” (Kafer 2003), in which women with disabilities display a nondisabled appearance in order to match the normalcy standards of a healthy and whole body.

Participants were obtained through word of mouth and by acquaintances made during research observations. The interviews took place in varying environments, such as the interviewee’s house or workplace or a public space. Those that took place in the public sphere occasionally included an activity such as walking down the street, shopping for clothes, riding a bus, or strolling the grounds of a university. These occasions allowed me, as a sighted researcher, to experience the public space with a woman using a guide dog or a white cane and hence to observe the role of appearance management in negotiating widespread stigmatic assumptions toward the blind. I conducted more than one interview with 6 of the women during the project.

The semistructured interviews were conducted in the form of a “life story,” and analyzed through a “grounded-theory” qualitative coding method (Charmaz 2006), in which the analytical themes are inductively derived from the study itself (Strauss and Corbin 1990). Appearance management was not mentioned as a specific topic before or during the interview; rather, the general research subject was defined as blind women’s concepts of gender and femininity and social attitudes toward the blind. After background demographic questions, the interview followed the participant’s life story and, later on, focused more specifically on gender, femininity, and sexuality in everyday life and their intersection with blindness and disability. During the process of my interview analysis, appearance stood out as a central theme within blind women’s performance of femininity and presented the possibility of examining blind women’s use of their bodies within the theoretical frameworks of visual culture, blindness, disability, and gender performance. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and translated from Hebrew into English, and I made an effort to maintain the colloquialisms of daily language. Twenty-six women received full transcripts of their interviews upon request.

Throughout the article, I refer to the interviewees as “blind,” since most of the interviewees use that word themselves and in some cases even object to the use of the term “women with blindness.” Pseudonyms are used for all participants.

Multiplicity and Contradiction in Blind Women’s Appearance Management

My goal is to find the fine line between trying to remain myself and express myself in the ultimate way and integrating myself into the existing norms in the visual world. . . . And it’s so complicated, with constant movement between “Maybe I should visually please everyone?,” And five minutes later, it’s like. “Hey, wait a minute! Me? Please everyone? There’s no such thing, you already let go of that, remember? You’re not part of the flow and you’ll choose what’s convenient for you and forget the rest of the world.” (Taliya, 31 years old, blind from age 3)

Blind women’s appearance management is a complex process that operates simultaneously as an inclusion mechanism into the wider society, and as a source of physical and emotional strife. The following analysis underscores the specific ways appearance is comprehended and practiced by blind women, focusing on three main, intertwined themes that arose from the analysis: appearance management as a powerful tool within stigma management; appearance as an expression of a rigorous discipline of the body; and appearance’s function as a platform for a rich use of the sensory body, evoking a “sensory capital.”

The discussion as a whole contributes to Third Wave feminist study of women’s bodies, which has focused on women’s daily bodily practices of femininity, arguing that women find embodied discipline practices both empowering and oppressive (Weitz 2001, 668). The analysis explores the duality of blind women’s appearance management, highlighting discipline on one hand and defiance and pleasure on the other—a tension expressed by Karin, a 45-year-old visually impaired woman, who captured much of blind women’s approaches and experiences:

I’m always in some kind of awareness, but this is me, you understand, Gili? This is me! I’ve accepted this effort, I’ve embraced it. . . . I’m attached to its aesthetics, to the movement in it. . . . Do you experience putting on lipstick as an effort? You don’t have to answer me. There’re days when I feel tired from being careful all the time, and on other days it’s really fun for me, you understand? Am I allowed to say, “I feel good in this way? Will people believe me?” I’m not sure they will.

Appearance and Stigma Management: Dispelling the Stereotypes

It’s important for me to look good . . . because I walk down the street and people look at me, so I want them to see something that looks good, not neglected. Like everything else, it started from “I don’t want them to pity me, I don’t want to be the poor blind woman. . . .” So [people] won’t come and say, “Well, what can you expect? She’s blind.” (Aviva, 27 years old, blind from age 6)

Women in this research repeatedly described their struggles with the stereotypes and dehumanizing attitudes they encountered via individuals and institutions throughout their lifetime, from childhood through high school, to higher education and their workplace, and within the public sphere, such as in restaurants, shopping malls, hospitals, or playgrounds, at bus stops, or while simply walking down the street. Neriya, a 44-year-old visually impaired woman, explained:

If I walk down the street with a cane and some mother tells her son, “Shh . . . be careful, be careful, a cane, a blind person,” she already gives him the feeling that “Ho no, a blind person with a cane is something horrible. . . .” And it hurts me. With all my success—and I easily connect to people—and all that, at the end of the day, I’m the “blind woman.’”

Viki, a 30-year-old visually impaired woman, concurred painfully:

A cane intimidates people; it makes you look miserable, pathetic. . . . Whatever I do, I could be the prime minister, it’s enough for me to take out the cane, and people immediately think that someone with a cane is miserable.

Most of the women reported struggling with assumptions that their blindness denies them the ability to speak for themselves, and their feminine and/or maternal abilities, assumptions expressed through questions such as “How can you help your son with his homework?” “How do you match socks?” or “How do you know you got your period?” Aviva related: “For people who don’t know me, I am the ‘blind woman’ . . . it’s like they just see me and immediately dismiss me.”

Within these social dynamics, blind women use appearance as a powerful instrument in their struggle to defy the cultural labels of “blind” and “disabled.”. Participants talked about femininity and appearance as a strategy aimed toward gaining a “respectful,” “pleasant,” “ordinary,” “communicative,” or “decent” look and emphasized their attempt to dispel stereotypes and display “personhood,” through the mastery of a normative look. Hani, a 26-year-old congenitally blind woman, who dresses casually, pointed out: “It’s important, of course, to dress in clothes that fit well. . . . God forbid that I should walk around in stained clothes or something like that.” Haya, a 57-year-old congenitally blind woman, seconded the need to look “normal” and follow social norms: “I want to look normal. I don’t want to look like Miss Universe; I want to look decent.”

Women repeatedly described the role of appearance as a useful “option” in reacting to the degrading ways in which they are perceived—a strategy that was expressed by women across economic classes. Interviewees from low economic classes strove to achieve “normal” or “decent” appearance even without great financial means. Shoshi, a 69-year-old woman who has been blind from age 13, emigrated from an Islamic country as a child and was sent to a boarding school for the blind. She described her childhood and adult life as one of ongoing economic strife, and explained the importance, as a blind girl, of her appearance:

I was a cute girl, and my mother always made sure to send me clothes from home, even though the school provided them for us. But she was always concerned with sending me clothes so I would look good. . . . It was really important at home that no one would ever think that since the girl is blind she’s missing something–on the contrary. My mother really cared about the way I looked.

Shoshi’s story exemplifies the prioritization of appearance in blind women’s education, as mothers, teachers, and friends recognize the importance of knowing about the “right look,” and how, if necessary, to creatively use inexpensive home made clothes.

Blind women’s awareness of normal appearance expresses their attempts to “unspoil the spoiled identity” (Brueggemann et al. 2005), and disabled women’s efforts to pass and gain status as normal. Nevertheless, in contrast to findings in earlier studies about appearance among disabled women, the purpose of blind women’s appearance management is not merely to enable them to pass as sighted or as nonblind but rather to control the other’s gaze, and to be perceived not only as blind/disabled but also as a person who can display femininity and human subjectivity as well as claim a public social legitimacy. Ayelet, a 33-year-old congenitally blind woman, who practices a highly groomed femininity, argued:

I want people to look at me and say “Walla,” she’s ok. Her being blind doesn’t make her ugly and it’s not like she doesn’t groom herself. . . . I arrive at work with a neat shirt and wear makeup and earrings. I don’t need them to think that I’m pretty; it’s really not the issue. What matters is that they look at me and don’t see a damaged and ugly person. A person should give a good impression; a person should be put together.

Ayelet not only emphasized her wish to maintain an appearance that will pass as “decent” but also to deliver a specific “un-damaged” feminine look, using practices such as wearing makeup and jewelry and removing her body hair. Neta, a 36-year-old congenitally blind woman, also accentuated the gendered aspect of her appearance management, identifying her practices as “feminine pampering,” which includes wearing makeup and having facial treatments, manicures, and pedicures. Michal, a 26-year-old congenitally blind woman, expressed a similar notion, illustrating the ways in which appearance can be used as an expression of both a collective and a feminine identity, which indicates her will to be “part of society.”

It’s important for me to be feminine in order to be a part of society. And it’s also important for me because of my partner, so he won’t feel like he’s walking around with a small child, but that he’s walking around with a woman!

Although a heightened awareness of normal appearance is common among disabled and blind people in general, who are “bombarded with advice about the need for good grooming, physical fitness and tasteful attire” (Kleege 2001, 48), appearance work is highly relevant specifically for blind women who must negotiate the social expectations of the aesthetic discourse of the feminine body, as well as that of the visual culture, which is saturated with images of the feminine body. Thus, blind women’s appearance management is not solely a component of their “stigma management” (Goffman 1963), but a negotiation with gendered visual norms. Unlike blind men’s practices, blind women’s appearance management is targeted toward claiming a feminine identity, negotiating the label of “non-sexual,” in order to claim their place in society as women, mothers, and romantic partners. And different from sighted women, blind women’s appearance practices are also aimed toward refuting the labels “miserable” and “helpless.”

Nevertheless, blind women’s appearance management also requires rigorous physical discipline to comply with visual norms, as the next section discloses.

Managing Appearance, Disciplining the Body

Blind women’s appearance management and attempts to achieve a “normal” and “aesthetic” look require a hyper-aware feminine performance and a rigorous control of the body. Karin, whose right eye does not function, described how she pays meticulous attention to her body movements and facial expressions, controlling the right side of her face, keeping her eyebrows at the same height and her eyelids in the same shape, and coordinating the movement of her lens with the turn of her head. She explained:

I pay lots of attention! I really do a lot of work on it. It requires energy, it requires focus! Great focus, all the time! Can you be in such focus all the time? This is what it takes of me. It’s not that I can’t do it. . . . But it is hard!

Karin and many other women described their appearance management as demanding a tremendous effort: scrupulous use of body movements as they move in space and stand, sit, or walk, and highly controlled facial expressions with specific attention to the area surrounding the eyes (the direction of the gaze, the movement of the eyes, eyelids, and eyebrows). Taliya described directing her attention to sitting upright and to the way she walks, trying to display a “normal” look:

When I was ten I used to walk with my legs in this Charlie Chaplin walk. Why? Because I felt like it. And my mother told me not to. “Why not?” “It doesn’t look good.” “What do I care?” “You care! You want to look normal right?”

Blind women’s appearance management is also tied to the use of material culture, such as clothes and jewelry, as many women choose to carefully match clothes and colors and to wear specific jewelry with a specific outfit. Practicing highly groomed femininity was expressed by Einat, a 27-year-old congenitally blind woman: “Visual appearance is very important for me. I pay lots of attention; I have sighted friends who don’t care as much as I do.” In response to my question, “What do you mean by ‘paying attention’?” Einat replied, “The clothes, the hair; I get a haircut exactly once a month, and remove my body hair every once in a while, even if I don’t see that it has grown.” Roni, a 27-year-old congenitally blind woman, even challenged the supposed contradiction between feminine grooming and blindness:

I make sure to groom myself. Because, no, I don’t see myself in the mirror but it’s important for me to look good. So, you know, going to the esthetician, plucking my eyebrows, even going to the hairdresser, to highlight my hair.

Not all women described the same use of material culture, and contradictions appeared between women who practice highly elaborate and stylized femininity and those seeking to minimize time and effort spent on appearance by wearing clothes in neutral colors, or emphasizing comfort over fashion. Yet even women who usually do not practice highly groomed femininity directed their appearance management strategies toward other areas, such as body movements, and paid close attention to the way they look, struggling to display a “normal” feminine appearance and their awareness of visual norms. Haya, for example, described how she chooses to have routine hairdresser appointments:

Once every two months I do myself a favor and go color [my hair]. My girls told me to dye it a deeper color, so I went to the hairdresser and I asked for it, and now they’re happy with the color, and that’s that. I don’t make a big deal out of it.

In addition, in Israel, where traditional Jewish imagery and modern commercialism are constantly juxtaposed (Sered 2000), blind women’s appearance management is also influenced by their religious affiliations, which raise concerns such as whether or not to cover their head (and the style of the head scarf), whether to wear pants or skirts (and the length and width of the skirt), or whether to utilize cosmetics (the color of the hair, the style of makeup). Tamar, for example, a 24-year-old orthodox-religious congenitally blind woman, expressed her opinion regarding the “appropriate” appearance of the modest body:

Right now, I don’t like wearing long skirts. . . . I hate it. I don’t find it comfortable. . . . In my opinion, pants are much more modest because with a skirt I need to sit down carefully. . . . Pants are much more modest, and believe me, if the rabbi had said so, everyone would have worn them.

Aviva also expressed her dilemma regarding wearing long skirts. As a “traditional-observant” woman who emigrated from Ethiopia, Aviva is aware of the symbolic effect of her long skirt—a clothing item, that in the Israeli context—where a cultural stereotype labels Ethiopian Jews as religious—is simultaneously associated with her gender, religious, and ethnic identity. Aviva explained with frustration that people do not usually associate her long skirt with her feminine style but rather interpret it as a mark of her assumed orthodox religious identity:

I don’t want people to affiliate me with a group that I don’t belong to. If they see me with a [long] skirt, no one would analyze it saying, “OK, she wants to be feminine.” No, they would say “This one, she’s religious.”

These narratives reveal appearance management issues that blind girls and women on the religious spectrum must consider, exemplifying that religious concerns do not reduce the cultural emphasis on normative appearance; rather, they function as an additional set of rules concerning the female body.

Blind women’s control over normative appearance emphasizes appearance work that the sighted are also required to engage in, yet blind women’s descriptions reveal a self-reflective awareness of practices that sighted, able-bodied women might take for granted. Therefore, blind women’s accounts are useful in framing appearance management within modern “projects of docility” (Foucault 1977, 136), allowing an examination of Foucault’s view of the body as a site of modern disciplinary practices of “subtle coercion . . . movements, gestures, attitudes, rapidity: an infinitesimal power over the active body” (Ibid, 137).

This type of disciplinary practice was expressed in the words of Taliya, who described her attempt to avoid “blind mannerisms” such as rocking back and forth, scratching her eyes, or playing with her fingertips. The importance of avoiding “blind mannerisms” was also expressed by Neta, identifying it as “acting blind”: “If you don’t act blind . . . or . . . have blind people mannerisms, rocking or doing all kinds of stuff, then people forget, and you’re a person like anyone, and the blindness isn’t important.” Some of the women mentioned not only avoiding “blind expressions” but also choosing to perform bodily practices that are pleasing to sighted society, although they are inimical to more practical and comfortable behaviors—efforts such as directing their gaze to the speaker rather than their ear, or moving their hair from their eyes, after being told that it “blocks the field of vision.”

These descriptions portray a vigilant discipline of the body to conform to a narrow range of accepted behaviors. This bodily control exacts high costs from its performers, such as limited opportunities for spontaneity and nonchalance, and a large investment of time and attention to simple tasks. Women expressed anxiety, and confessed to the lack of spontaneity, mobility, and freedom inherent in their attempt to master a “normal” feminine look. Karin said:

I’m always and all the time in some kind of . . . readiness, awareness. . . . I can’t just simply jump down the stairs and choose clothes; it’s not easy. It’s not casual. . . . Most of the time I’m paying attention.

Ayelet described the constant tension that accompanied her feminine practices as a blind teenage girl:

Your body is changing; all of a sudden you’re supposed to behave like a woman and not like a girl. . . . Listen, you get your period . . . ! And you say, “Hold on, am I different from everyone else? Am I more developed or less developed or like everyone else?” Maybe you suddenly don’t wear your bra right, everything bounces around, I don’t know. . . . Some of the girls in school will make a remark; others will laugh at you. . . . A sighted woman can see herself in the mirror and what everyone else sees, she sees herself.

These examples reveal the ways disciplinary practices of “micro-physics of power” (Foucault 1977, 222) function among blind women, focusing on body movements, facial expressions, and clothes. They demonstrate the similarities of blind women’s practices to commodified disciplinary norms of women in general, who “manipulate the body through continuous dieting, plucking, shaving, cutting, and constricting” (Odette 1994, 41) yet emphasize the explicit demands and costs at stake for blind women, who, in attempting to achieve a “normal” and “aesthetic” look, control and monitor their appearance without the physical ability to see themselves and their surroundings. Yet within its disciplined nature, blind women’s appearance management evokes an acute and pleasurable sensory embodiment, as blind women carefully use sensory mechanisms other than sight, as discussed in the next section.

“Sensing Femininity”: Appearance Management and the Sensory Body

Feminine performance among blind women accentuates the role of the sensory body, emphasizing tactile, auditory, and olfactory experiences. Women in this research described sensory experiences as inseparable from their use of clothes, jewelry, cosmetics, and hygiene and body products, as appearance is greatly affected by choices based on the texture of clothes, and by the way products smell or feel on the body. Taliya identified the sense of touch, for example, as the dominant element in her use of nail polish:

When I choose to put it on, it’s because when touching my nail, I feel that it’s smoother and shinier. I feel this . . . difference, like between newsprint and colored paper. The colored paper has this special feel in the hand, in the finger.

Roni, on the other hand, mentioned her sense of touch in relation to her clothes, explaining: “The most important thing is the fabric, its touch, or texture.” Liron, a 30-year-old congenitally blind woman, described the weight, heat, and vibration of the fabric on the body, and said:

I like to have light clothes, like these jeans, they’re fun because they’re wide, and I don’t like something tight on my body that you can’t breathe and move with . . . I like shirts with pleasant fabric, so I don’t wear wool since it itches.

In addition to the variety of ways in which clothes feel on the body, women mentioned their smell (as in the case of shops that use incense, or the use of a scented laundry powder) and sound (as in the case of high heels, bracelets, or beads). Tzila, for example, a 59-year-old congenitally blind woman, explained:

Since I was five, I’ve loved dressing up. Why? I don’t know, but I liked the sound of high heels; I was the first in my class to wear high heels. I liked their sound.

Sensory richness within blind women’s appearance management appeared deeply and widely embedded among research participants, and was expressed by women from 19 to 66 years of age. Yael, Semadar, and Tzila, for instance, emphasized the sensory body within their feminine practices, talking about the central role of tactile experiences:

Yael, 26 years old: Beauty is everything that has softness within it, fabrics that are soft, pleasant. Lace is pretty because it’s soft and delicate.

Semadar, 32 years old: Usually I prefer tighter clothes, and . . . sparkles on pants, so it’ll also be interesting to touch, not just to look at.

Tzila, 59 years old: I like silk and sheer fabrics with rich textures, and tints, and embroideries, and all kinds of interesting textures . . . I look for soft, flowing, supple fabrics . . . I have always looked for dresses and shawls with pretty and prominent objects like ribbons, fringes, or trains.

Although sighted people might have the same kind of comments about clothes, blind women’s narratives uniquely highlight the role of the senses within gender performance and the embodied sensuality of commodified disciplinary practices of appearance management, while giving voice to alternative sensory realities and possibilities. The sense of touch within their descriptions emphasizes the tactile body and expresses the rich, complicated, and diverse experiences of sensations such as heat, weight, and vibration of clothes and jewelry on the body, which can be “sticky,” “clammy,” “tight,” “flowing,” “cumbersome,” “warm,” and more.

In addition, blind women’s specific appearance knowledge reveals not only the central role of the senses within gender performance but also the function of senses as a stimulus for sensory pleasure. Women emphasized the pleasures received through their heightened awareness of sound, smell, and touch, recognizing blindness as allowing a deep and authentic connection with the body, intuition, and femininity. Yael explained:

Blindness allows me to feel, it’s a freedom to sense your body and to listen to it deeply. Sight makes you occupied with seeing and not sensing; sighted people are obsessed with looking forward, looking around them, and not inside of them. In blindness, there is something very opening and enabling to femininity. . . . It has more attentiveness to the senses . . . to . . . sensation, feminine intuition, you know.

Anat, a 34-year-old congenitally blind woman, also emphasized the necessity of touch, smell, and taste in her daily life and the kind of intimacy blindness enables:

When you see, you see it on TV, but as a blind person, you need to touch in order to see. You need to smell, to taste. . . . I think sight is about distance. You see a flower, you can see it from a hundred meters. I need to go to the flower, to touch it, to smell it, in order to enjoy it. It’s a much closer medium, much more intimate, personal, much more pleasant even.

Within their celebratory approach to blindness, women also described its advantages, while criticizing sightedness as flat, lazy, and detached. Yael, for example, went on to explain the advantages of hearing versus seeing:

Hearing operates in 360 degrees; however, you can’t see what’s behind you. . . . I think that when you live with the qualities of sound, in the sphere of hearing and not in sight, there’s something else, much deeper. Because when you hear, you can’t hear half-heartedly. I can’t hear with a glance. . . . I think that in sight there’s something closed, it’s about the exterior, like “See how I look.”

These descriptions emphasize the realm of pleasure and delight within gender performance, revealing the ways research participants and women in general might experience embodied sensuality and the centrality of the sensory body in this process. Differing from previous studies—which have given little if any attention to this topic and have not concentrated on the sensory body (Bartky 1997; Dellinger and Williams 1997; Huisman and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2005; King 2004)—this study of blind women’s appearance management emphasizes personal pleasure raised from sensations rather than achieved through attracting a romantic/sexual partner or looking aesthetically pleasing to men.

Furthermore, blind women’s acknowledgement of blindness as accentuating the sensory body brings to light an additional aspect within their appearance management, which I identify as sensory capital—a previously ignored yet essential component within Bourdieu’s term of “physical/embodied capital” (1986, 243-44). Bourdieu’s use of the term referred to “aesthetic dispositions,” which bear symbolic value and influence practices directed toward the body, such as diet, beauty care, or exercise, as well as styles of walk, talk, and dress (Bourdieu 1984). Blind women’s appearance management described in this section highlights a sensory component within these bodily practices: Touch, sound, and smell play a significant role within blind women’s various routes to knowledge about appearance. As Aviva related, “I’m very aware of the senses, of their operation; I use them.”

Blind women’s appearance management analyzed by means of the term “sensory capital” underscores a gendered aspect within “physical capital” that is worthy of further research, in order to address questions such as how we understand the operation of the term among blind women as opposed to among blind men, and its implications for sighted women, and to what extent it can be converted into other forms of capital within various social fields. ⁵

Conclusion: Challenging Assumptions, Changing Attitudes

In their article “What Her Body Taught (or Teaching about and with a Disability),” Brueggemann, Garland-Thomson, and Kleege (2005, 15) discuss the ways we can reimagine disability without erasing or normalizing it: “What we want is not for them to forget that we have disabilities and therefore to assume that we have normative bodies and to assume that we fit the standard expectation. . . . We want to redefine, to reimagine, disability—not make it go away”. Following this perspective, I argue that blind women’s appearance management reveals a subtle attempt to negotiate the stigmatizing dynamics of blindness, gender, and disability, from a nonapologetic standpoint. Through appearance management, blind women endeavor to reclaim subjectivity as a feminine-blind person, not to “escape” their blind identity or to become sighted. This view resonates within the feminist discussion cited earlier: “It’s so tricky—because you don’t want the blindness to drop out, but you want the way it matters to change. . . . You don’t want your disability, your identity, to be taken away” (Brueggemann, Garland-Thomson, and Kleege 2005, 30).

The voices of the women in this article express a unique awareness of visual culture and an ability to perform, enact, and decipher the visual norms of beauty and femininity, illustrating a broader definition of the term “visual skill” as not merely a physical skill. As Anat says, “There are many ways to see, not only with the eyes; touching, smelling, tasting.” Blind women’s practices display blindness and femininity at the same time and in the same body, reducing their “otherness” and creating opportunities for taking part in the wider society. Through appearance management, they challenge stigmatizing attitudes by actively influencing the ways they are being perceived by the gaze of others within the “able-bodied” cultural orientation, resisting the “normative” script written for them as blind women, and revealing the existence of a blind subject who chooses how to manage her appearance.

Through the voices and daily experiences of blind women in Israel, this article offers an insight into the contradictory ways in which blindness, gender, and disability interact, extending the discussion from feminist disability studies to the vast feminist literature on the objectifying gaze, addressing the various ways in which women negotiate acceptance, assimilation, and subversion within modern visual cultures.