N.B. *This is in response to the Feminist Fashion Blogger event call that asked,
How do you express your feminism in the way you dress?*
The IFC series
Portlandia recently
depicted the conflict between second-wave radical feminists, who were represented as frumpy flakes, and a young post-feminist or budding third-wave feminist, who wore short denim cut-offs and took pole-dancing classes. The joke, of course, was about what a feminist was supposed to look like or at least how you know you're looking at a feminist. You know, in an "
indigenous pantsuit."
I think this dialogue about fashion and feminism that
Franca and other FFB members have started is great, especially because there's such a history of gate-keeping about what a feminist does and does not look like. Must I defend my regular, earnest, and non-ironic wearing of makeup, a
miraculous medal, and
Anthropologie/Urban Outfitters to be a feminist? What about looking attractive in anything that might be considered target practice for the heterosexual male gaze? Recall, for example, the flack Liz Phair got for
wearing only a slip on the cover of
Rolling Stone. Her response? She had self-fashioned with her own slip, something she wore on stage and something that she wore out to dinner. There is nothing wrong with questioning how we navigate fashion and feminism. Pointed questions can, in fact, be very good, but the condemnation of fashion choices without productive dialogue assumes that the wearer is just too dumb to understand how she (or he, but it's usually a she) has violated some singular universal code of feminist fashion(ing) ethics.
sweater - Limited via Marshalls (remixed)
arrow skirt - Fei/Anthro via Ebay
leggings - Fylo (MIL-hand me down & remixed)
Fleur de Lys earrings - gifted (remixed)
scarf - street vendor in Santiago, Spain (remixed)
shades - H&M (remixed)
shoes - J-41 (remixed)
I really do think it is necessary to be acquainted with the wearer to know how exactly she expresses feminism through fashion, because there's no way you can tell I'm a feminist by looking at me. One of the major emphases of this blog is that fashion is a verb and not a noun dictated by someone else; fashion is to self-fashion and part of that is rejecting bizarre expectations about what the female body, especially, should look like. I chose to photograph this outfit because I know that a women's fashion magazine stylist would never do this: this skirt, leggings, and shoes on my body type make my legs look stubby and do not lengthen me. And while I know that rejecting all the ways I could "lengthen" my 5'0" curvy frame is a fucking cardinal sin in their book, it is part of a pathology that I find ridiculous.
