Fashioning Manipulation

 I am engaging in what Jess calls Monogomous Dressing, which I do frequently.  I am once again wearing The Most Versatile Dress I've Ever Owned because I wore it last week when I visited my mom in Kansas City and promised myself that that would be the last time I wore it before I got it dry cleaned.  Well, what's one more time? Especially since I'll just be spending my afternoon in the library writing and students aren't exactly known for smelling great.  But that's what the Chanel No. Five is for.

dress - Corey Lynn Calter/Anthro (remixed)

cardi - GAP (giftcarded  & remixed)

tights - Assets/Target

boots - Plenty by Tracy Reese via Piperlime (remixed)

necklace - Urban Outfitters (remixed)

earrings - Anthro (remixed)

scarf and sunglasses - H&M (remixed)

 I'm at least a month overdue for a trim and because I have an important interview and a conference coming up I'm freaking out about the length of my hair again.  In the fall, I contemplated cutting a lot of it off because longer hair makes me look younger and generally connotes youth.  I tend to place a lot of anxiety on my hair because its changeable and I can't change my height, which has the biggest impact about the perception of my age and academic authority upon seeing me (as opposed to conversing with me).  For a few days last week I was convinced that I needed to cut off at least five inches otherwise my paper will not be well received and I will bomb the interview.  Then, Sara linked to a hair-do-how-to and since I saw that I've calmed down a bit and decided that I will continue to keep it long but start experimenting more with ways of putting it up that aren't a haphazard ponytail tuck thingie, i.e. Gym Hair.

Had I not been visiting my mom last Friday I would also have participated in Modly Chic's Friend Friday on Feminism. Many thanks to Katy for her questions and to the participating bloggers who took them on (and also, a congrats to Katy on the DIY publication of her YA novel, Aurora Undefined.) As it's Tuesday, I'm not going to respond to this now, but I was especially delighted to see questions 1 and 4, which were "Do you think there is an incompatibility between feminism and a love for fashion?" and "How is your self-image and the way you carry yourself informed by your beliefs?" All I will say is that there must be some critical navigation and self-introspection when it comes to feminism and fashion, even fashion is a verb and has a DIY quality to it. 

And I liked the other question even better because it cast a wide net about the intersection of fashion and our beliefs, convictions, politics, and ethics and about the place of visible public subjectivit(ies)y.  It's something I think a lot about as an academic and as an instructor, both in terms of research and self-fashioning.  My research into spectatorship and visual culture can also make me hyper aware of how things are "read" by others and how little control we have over reception and perception, hence my apprehension about my height, hair, and age in academic settings.  I think our knowledge of the wide variety of ways in which our appearances can be received actually causes more manipulation and dissembling through fashion than it does "authentic self-expression."  Not that that's necessarily a negative thing.  I wear pearls in the university classroom but have never worn them to teach  ESL (English as as Second Language).  Alternatively, I often forgo wearing a Miraculous Medal, which I wear on a nearly daily basis, in high stakes situations when I am initially meeting others (interviews, conferences, first day of class), but I've never taken it off for ESL.  I would be incredibly naive and self-deceiving if I said that the difference is simply accessorizing preferences from one day and time to the next.

What sartorial or accessorizing choices do you find yourself manipulating?  Do you have a "neutral" outfit that you wear when you want the focus off of yourself? Academics, is there anything you took off or put on for job talks or interviews?

Dressing Like A Feminist?

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.