What to look at when Yuja Wang performs

From a new Guardian agony article titled ‘Fashion, fabrics and fishtails – why we need to talk about what female classical performers wear’

… Perhaps part of the issue is that fashion lies outside the traditional classical critic’s toolkit. “That’s right, I’ve turned into a fashion critic,” wrote Norman Lebrecht, who described Wang’s outfit as “a micro-dress cut an inch below the butt.” But this sexualised account couldn’t be further from fashion criticism. It tells us nothing about the dress beyond its length. What were the fabrics? Style? Who was the designer? How did the dress choice interact with the musical programme? The language and skills to address these questions might need to become part of the modern critic’s toolkit – and if critics start taking fashion seriously, agents might be able to include outfit details in press releases without fear that it will open the floodgates to derogatory commentary about the artists they represent.

The inability to talk about Wang’s clothing in a sensitive and respectful way reveals damaging and longstanding assumptions around women and their dress on the classical stage. The notion that what we see might “distract from” music, rather than shape our experience of it, stems from a centuries-old division of body and mind, physicality and rationality, that claims classical music as purely cerebral stuff. The body has no place here. And this idea is gendered. Rationality and the mind have historically been coded masculine, sensuality and the body feminine, with the result that women and their bodies have been marginalised within classical music. It’s no coincidence that Hoffmann used “he” as the default for his imagined musician….

This narrative needs to change, not least because either sexualising or ignoring women’s clothing diminishes their agency as artists. Wang’s clothing has been dismissed as a triviality, an unconsidered marketing ploy with dresses picked purely for whether or not they “show more leg”. And to do so, Wang has been painted as a naive, lost individual who has “had neither time nor guidance to acquire perspective”, and is consequently being used “as tinsel” by more experienced, expert (male) musicians.

The denial of Wang’s agency also feeds into racist stereotypes around the submissiveness and inexpressiveness of both women and classical musicians of Asian descent – stereotypes that Wang’s clothing choices actively disrupt….

Read on here.