Southern Belle - The documentary

Today I intend to introduce a hotly debated documentary, broadcasted last year by PBS. The film itself follows three girls' days who are reenacting the everyday life of Southern Belles as taking part in the annual reenactment of Athenaeum Girls' School in Columbia, Tennessee. The girls volunteer not only to dress up, dance and sing like their ancestors, but also to give up their modern rights and for the period of the reenactment camp live according to female rights under the Civil War era. The desire to step out from our modern manners and dresses and the need for the revival of the chivalric past strengthens the idea that the Southern belle's image is still very much alive in the American mind.The aim of the camp is not only to dress up and have fun, but to learn genteel manners and build pride in Southern heritage. For this reason, the girls are given a wide variety of lectures and trainings. However, the intensive historical camp was fiercely attacked by historians. Though the camp is designed to reconstruct Southern ladies' life in the good old days, it teaches false values that contribute to everyday race and gender roles in the 21th century. First and foremost scholars opposed the camp's intention to neglect to incorporate the issue of slavery, since it was a core experience of the Southern belles' everyday life. Since in the film there are no slaves who would dress up the ladies, as it happened before and during the Civil War, one can claim that history is presented in a distorted way. On the other hand, in modern times it would be quite racist to recruit Black boys and girls for a reenactment camp to inact slavery again. It is not surprising, that the documentary provoked many questions in the public's mind.

Sources:
Southern Belle - ITVS : www.itvs.org/films/southern-belle

The Modern Image of the Southern Belle

To be honest, I encountered with the revival of the southern belle image a couple of years ago. Browsing on the internet for another home assignment I found a really fascinating article that catched my attention: http://www.lareecarucker.com/pages/southernbelle.htm . This article not only calls our attention on the reenactment of Natchez, Mississippi, but also on the alteration of the Southern belle's image. The article claims, that the image of the Southern belle is adapted to the 21st century's life. The Southern belle is today a career-minded and independent woman, who traded hoop skirts for T-shirts. What is more, the term is not applicable on white women only, since a true Southern belle mind her manners and treats equally all races and minorities. This way the Southern belle figure became a more inclusive term, depending rather on one's value system and manners than skin colour. Although, the recent belles do not live on plantations, nowadays Southern little girls are still taught to be Southern ladies. They are raised up to be gracious, charming and well-bred. A belle must be proud to come from a good family since the family background is one of the most distinguishing characteristic of a lady.The author of the article also highlights the plasticity of the idea of the Southern belle, since the media  ruins the image a lot. It is not only formed by the mass media but seriously threatened as well. Still, the article ends positively, hoping that the Southern belle image is going to be passed on to the future generation as a cultural heritage.

Works Consulted:
 Rucker, LaReeca. "Southern belle: Refinement Redefined." 20 February 2012. <http://www.lareecarucker.com/pages/southernbelle.htm>.
 

Diverse Representation

To tell the truth, I was really surprised surfing among the wide variety of southern belle images that still shape the American culture in the 21st century. The archetype of the southern belle is represented not only in reenactments and civil war memory camps for teenage girls, but in handbooks, songs, films, fashion and in popular TV-series, such as Vampire Diaries, as well. Week by week I would like to pick one area and investigate that approach.

My Civil War Memory Blog :)

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to my Civil War Memory Blog, dedicated to the Southern Belle's image in the 21st century. Originally it is a university assignment, but who knows, maybe the beginning of a beautiful friendship :) Enjoy it!