• International Journal of Costume and Fashion
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.20-31
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• 2008

A person's external image is a non-verbal form of communication, through which the person's tastes, mode of thought, preferences, and overall personality is expressed. The dominant factor in building an external image is clothing, since clothing-images provide the most information about a person in the least amount of time. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the clothing- images of women politicians and the improvement of women's social status in Korea, by focusing on changes in clothing-image of female politicians at public functions throughout modern Korean history, and inquiring into the method of classification concerning aforementioned images. The time period of this study starts from 1945, when the first female political party was established, to the 2008 presidential elections. The methodology of this study consists of literature study of related books, theses and journals, which was jointly conducted with empirical study consisting of the research of news photographs of major daily newspapers. This study confirmed the clothing images of women politicians since liberation till 2000's reflects the directions of women's movement and their status in return. It is especially meaningful that the sudden increase of romantic and feminine images among the women politician in Korea is the reflection of the ideas of postmodern feminism which emphasize the acknowledgement of womanhood and the enjoyment of being a woman as its core.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.1063-1083
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• 2012

Florence Nightingale is best remembered today as the Lady with the Lamp, but modern research on the English nurse primarily addresses her popular iconography as a historical misrepresentation of her character and career. This scholarly reluctance to analyze critically Nightingalean iconography, however, has obscured important cultural work performed by the popular tropes. This article argues that the proliferation of Nightingale's iconic image as a symbol of Christian womanhood in transatlantic periodical poetry, when examined separately from biographical considerations, reveals important insights into the complex relationship between form and affect in mid-nineteenth periodicals. Popular representations of Nightingale give form to the disorienting effects produced on newspaper readers by the nascent field of international journalism and reflect a key generic paradox at the heart of the Victorian periodical: the simultaneous aim to report news objectively and to move readers affectively in response to events beyond national contexts and interests. Focusing on Lewis Carroll's "The Path of Roses" and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Santa Filomena," this article contends that Nightingalean periodical poetry mirrors back to readers their own affective response to modern media and functions as a new technology for managing an increasingly acute awareness of events and ethical responsibilities beyond the nation.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.441-458
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• 2009

The Imperial Road is Jean Rhys s unfinished manuscript, rejected by publishers for its openly racist tone. Although it describes Rhys s actual visit to Dominica in 1936, it is not a transparent recollection of the travel but a recreation informed by racial dynamics of the 1970s when she wrote the text. This paper examines the manuscript as a troubled (and troubling) response to what Rhys perceived as racial rejection from Dominica at the wake of political independence. Rhys s representation of white Creole womanhood significantly depends on an interwoven configuration of racial dynamics and sexual politics, where an oppressive white European man facilitates a white Creole woman s cross-racial identification with Afro-Caribbeans. However, the political and literary landscape of the West Indies in the 1970s made such cross-racial identification untenable. As a result, The Imperial Road is full of disturbing racial hatred, prejudice, and resentment. And yet, it also reflects Rhys s honest and serious concern over a white Creole s racial identity in postcolonial Dominica, raising a difficult question: How would a postcolonial age change a white Creole identity that belongs neither to the colonized nor to the colonizer (or both)? In The Imperial Road, unable to identify with Afro-Caribbeans, the white Creole is disoriented in time and space, lost at home, stuck between the past and the present, not knowing how to participate in a postcolonial homeland. Through the narrator s racial disorientation, The Imperial Road exposes the white Creole s fundamental dependence on other Creoles.

• Women's Health Nursing
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.82-92
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• 1997

The purpose of this study was attempted to understand the substance and meaning of menopause experienced by women through informal interviews with oral consent. The informants were 6 perimenopausal women of 50-55 years old who are executing menopause. Colaizz's analytical method, a type of phenomenological analysis, was used to analyze data recorded by audiotape. One professor and a master's degree student who understand phenomenology, and the one who has a master of arts examined the validity between the meanings composed of the clusters of themes. Findings were turned out to be valid through validation process as the last step. The meaning of menopause implied both 'concept about menopause' and 'menopause as a time of change'. Menopause was mostly considered as cessation of menstruation as a physiological, natural, and normal process by aging. However, some people regarded menopause as a loss of youth and womanhood and lessening of every function of the body. Menopause as the time of changes means 'the period of' 'hormonal changes' such as change of menstruation, hot flushes, perspiration, and palpitation ; 'body function changes' of visual acuity, physical strength, sleeping, digestion, thoughts, bone and joints, skin sensibility, sexual pattern and intelligence ; 'emotional changes' such as anxiety, loneliness, gloominess, and nervousness. Menopause is a turning point on the women's life cycle accompanying various kind of changes and health problems. Therefore it is inevitable to develop strategy helping menopausal women pass through the critical successfully by adapting and coping with their critical period toward the healthy and better quality of life individually rather than putting them all into the standardized hormonal replacement protocol.

• Korean Parent-Child Health Journal
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.19-34
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• 2001

The childbearing process is not only a biological phenomenon of a woman who gives birth to a child but also a sociocultural phenomenon which is reflected on her value, belief in the sociocultural context according to social change and acculturation. The familial relation and sociocultural context in the multigravidas are more complex and intermingled than in the primigravidas. The purpose of this ethnographic research study was to explore the experience of identity from the first trimester of pregnancy to the third trimester of pregnancy in the Korean multigravidas and to understand deeply the perspectives of pregnant women reflected on Korean sociocultural values, beliefs, norms and familial culture. The participants of 10 pregnant women in Seoul, Korea were observed for 10 months from January to October 2000 and interviewed in their homes and comfortable place. Data analysis was accomplished 'line by line method' and significant concepts were classified according to themes, categories, and domains. The results of this study were as follows : The participants experienced 4 categorized subjects : understanding the oneself - mother to be, performing the dual role, drifting the emotion, and living disheartened during pregnancy. The participants were showed universality and diversity pattern in the self understanding process. The universal pattern were 'mother to be' showing maturation, life along family and priority on motherhood between being a mother and a woman. The diverse pattern were taking the dual role in working mothers having the higher self actualized value and personal identity rather than maternal identity, drifting emotion in resigned mothers, and living disheartened in mothers who have two daughters and no son. In conclusion, the Korean multigravidas experienced womanhood as well as motherhood through the self understanding process with familial connections during pregnancy. Therefore it is suggested that if the harmony and the balance between a mother and a woman is accomplished, the woman will lead a healthy and high quality of life. Also, this study sought to confirm the sociocultural factors affecting during pregnancy in the perspectives of the women with children. Therefore, the health care providers have to divert their attention from biomedical perspectives to biocultural perspectives integrating bio-psycho-sociocultural aspects of pregnant women in a clinical setting.

• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.117-129
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• 2015

This study is to find out the changes and features of male consumers' life style and purchase tendency according to the change of Korean fashion market, and based on which to suggest the design for the 20s men as well as a proper distribution channel for it. Documentary research and investigation were done together for the study. By reviewing documents focused on previous studies and declaring the change of men's fashion shopping tendencies and the following changes and features of their fashion sense and styles a conceptional frame for a design suggestion was presented. Ways to investigate were men's wear collection research, Q-technique. First of all, they tend to boldly reduce unnecessary purchases and do not hesitate to focus on the wanted item, expanding the trend of 'value purchase.' Secondly, men's wear use various design elements with feminine images, while the materials, colors and design expressive techniques that have been exclusively used for women's wear, began to be applied to men's one, turning them into gentle styles with womanhood is stressed. Thirdly, Korean distribution channel is rapidly diversified from departments to new-concept ones such as multi-brand stores. Especially, displaying and selling various optional products, multi-brand stores lead such diversification of fashion distribution channel. Fourthly, features of the drapery types favored by the 20s men are that they like no-chromed dark or blackish colors with fixed structure and partially-applied drapery on the clothes. Fifthly, it turns out that men in their 20s set a premium on design and price while they buy clothes. In addition to that, they buy clothes mainly during discount period and displayed much bigger satisfaction for the purchase on discounted price that those on normal price.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.2917-2921
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• 2016

Background: To explore factors that influence quality of life (QOL) in patients receiving breast conserving therapy (BCT). Materials and Methods: In this sequential mixed methods study, 118 women from Songklanagarind Hospital were included. We used participants' characteristics, Body Image Scale (BIS), and Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy with the Breast Cancer Subscale (FACT-B) for analysis. The BIS transformed into presence of body image disturbance (BID). Factors that influenced QOL were determined by stepwise multiple linear regression. Forty-one participants were selected for qualitative analysis. Our female researcher performed the semi-structured interviews with questions based on the symbolic interaction theory. Final codes were analysed using thematic analysis along with investigator triangulation methods. Results: Ninety percent had early stage breast cancer with post-completed BCT, for an average of 2.7 years. The median BIS score and FACT-B score were 2 (IQR=10) and 130 (IQR=39). In the regression analysis, an age of more than 50 years and BID were significant factors. As for the value of conserved breasts, two themes emerged: a conserved breast is an essential part of a participant's life and also the representation of her womanhood; the importance of a breast is related to age. Conclusions: Body image influenced QOL in post BCT participants. The conserved breasts also lead to positive and better impact on their body image as an essential part of their life.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.55-79
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• 2017

Ella Hepworth Dixon's The Story of a Modern Woman is a pioneering female writer?s important work which was not deeply studied yet very influential in new women literature and its cultural global impact. Although women had been often praised for their beauties specially by romantic poets but their self-realization and innate values were not widely recognized until new women writers advocated their desires and active roles in the society at the end of the $19^{th}$ century. The new women writers including Ella Dixon gained popularity with their professional skills as the journalists or the contributors to the journals which were suddenly popular and actively circulated among Victorian women. From the 1880s to 1920s, in contrast with the traditional images of wives as ?the angel in the house?, these women new women writers broke the yoke of subjugated womanhood and instead tried to freely express their independent spirits and demanded their roles in the society. Although they were criticized sometimes as "the daughter of a new guise" "a lady of restless sex" or "the wild women," new girls? perky images in new women fiction brought into the new cultural phenomenon which led to the ?flapper? girl in the 1920s. Ella Dixon?s protagonist Mary Erle, strikingly similar to author herself, was a representative new woman who displayed a wide range of new cultural perspectives from a feminist?s viewpoint, but her untimely desire in the capitalized society was not fully accomplished, just promising the potentiality of the female solidarity which might be achieved later by her feminist posterity.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.191-215
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• 2011

This paper aims at investigating Dorothy Wordsworth's later conversation poetry, which has not been the focus of critical discussions on her literary works. While many critics have been emphasizing Dorothy Wordsworth's journals and the tendency of self-effacement in her prose, this paper argues that her later poetry often reveals acute self-consciousness about the circumstances that condition this self-annihilation and searches for a creative way to endorse her own identity. In "Lines Intended for My Niece's Album," she expresses anxiety and uncertainty about the inclusion of her poetic piece in Dora Wordsworth's album, which contains poems by prominent male writers of the contemporary period. "Irregular Verses" presents Dorothy Wordsworth's self-conscious narrative of her girlhood and shows how her own ambition to become a "Poet" has been stifled by external circumstances, including the ideology that instills the idea of proper womanhood into aspiring girls. While these poems examine contemporary gender discourse and the frustrated poethood resulting from it, other poems activate conversations with William Wordsworth's poems and thereby provide a revisionary re-writing of her brother's texts. For example, in "Lines Addressed to Joanna H." Dorothy Wordsworth becomes "a woman addressed who herself addresses others." Her scrupulous approach to her own addressee refuses to subordinate the other to the self's will, and through this revision of "Tintern Abbey," Dorothy Wordsworth vicariously liberates her own self confined in her brother's poems. "Thoughts on My Sick-Bed," which echoes "Tintern Abbey" through borrowed phrases and direct address to William Wordsworth, foregrounds her own poetic identity in the form of the first-person pronoun "I." Dorothy Wordsworth's continual illness during this period of her life paradoxically allows her the time for personal reflection formerly denied to her in her busy life constantly occupied by physical and spiritual labor for others. Instead of earning satisfaction from the subsumption of her creative energy under William Wordsworth's poetical endeavor, Dorothy Wordsworth finally starts to affirm her own poetic identity that can properly express her inner vision and artistic talent. Although this final affirmation remains largely incomplete due to her later mental collapse bordering on madness, it powerfully conveys the hidden literary aspiration of the formerly frustrated female poet.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.639-666
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• 2010

Meditation on Christ's body is peculiar to late medieval female mysticism. The somatic meditation on Christ basically derives from the Incarnation, but the female mystics focused more on the Passion and the Eucharist, i.e., Christ's bleeding and feeding. Then, female body structure and the gender role of nurturing were combined to make facile her imitatio Christi, because the female body was aptly identified with Christ's body. The blood flowing in the side of Christ was often in medieval graphics and texts identified with a mother's milk for a baby to suck. Wound and food, suffering and nourishing, were inseparable in Christ's and the female mystics' body. Thus, in late medieval female mystical practice, it is important to note, first, female mystics' bodily pain was not to be cured but endured; second, that not only did a female mystic eat Christ's body, but her own body was to be "eaten" by poor neighbors, just as Christ gave his own body to be eaten by believers. As Christ's body is punctured, so does the female body have open holes, and as Christ is food, so is the female body. This female meditation on Christ's body developed the notion of "divine motherhood" to be accepted and enjoyed quite literally by the female mystics in late medieval times. Yet, in a sense, the female mystics' meditating on Christ's feminine function of nourishing can be considered as their accepting and interiorizing the socially constructed female gender role and thus lacking in subversive power. Nevertheless, this meditative practice at least functioned to redeem the female body which had typically been labelled inferior and even dirty. Through Christ's feminized body, the female mystics rehabilitated their bodily dimension, presenting it to be shared by male believers. Capitalizing on the gender stereotype of womanhood itself, they converted female weakness to power.