Introduction To Fashion Week

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I can't stop! So it's officially Fashion Week here at I Blame The Patriarchy. Over the next few days I'll be ridiculing assorted fashion trends, standards, and practices. My brilliant thesis, in case you're just joining us, is this: fashion = misogyny.

"Whoa there, Twisty," you say. "Why such a killjoy? Fashion is fun! Through fashion I choose to creatively express my individual personality! "

Unto you, my young onion, I say this: Pause. Reflect. For although fashion, like singersongwriting, expresses many things, believe me, your individual personality ain't one of'em (for personality expression--if I may suggest--nothing beats playing the accordion!).

What does fashion express?

Fashion expresses your affiliation with your particular cult. It expresses your loyalty to consumerism. It expresses your insouciant indifference to indentured servitude in 3rd World labor markets. It expresses your status within the caste system. It expresses the misogyny of sadistic gay male fashion designers. It expresses the taste created by money. It expresses your acceptance of the patriarchally-approved Standard Two-Gender System. It expresses the extent to which you have internalized the woman-hating doctrine of femininity.

Fashion, to sum up, expresses your obeisance to patriarchy.

"Excuse me? Patriarchy?" your fashion statement says, having spotted its idol in the shoe department at Nordstrom's, "Omigod! It is you! I hate to bother you, Mr. Patriarchy, but I'm just such a huge fan! I mean, all your work, like "Millions Of Women Suffer And Die In Poverty," or "The Slut Asked For It,"  it's totally awesome, and I really loved you in that "Nomination Of A (Male!) Veterinarian To Head The Women's Health Section Of The FDA" show the other day, but my all-time favorite has got to be "Compulsory Motherhood!" Would you mind--I mean, could I please get your autograph? What? Oh! Oh, sure, of course I'll suck your dick first! What? Oh, god yes, I'd be honored if you used my head as a beer caddy! It's just such a thrill to to meet you!"

Next: the consummate stupidity that is the teeny satchel handbag
Previously: Partial Feminist Analysis of a Sick Mail-Order Catalog

Thanks to Judy for the Molly Ivins link

Comments

[d.e.i.x.i.s.]

Corset piercing! I love those. I know a local Suicide Girl who has one & it's really hot. It's just so impractical because they will inevitably reject & then you just have some nasty back scars. But it's cute while it does last!

[feel free to shred that paragraph]

As for the rest of it, I'd be lying if I said I didn't agree. I'm just not prepared to stop expressing my affiliation with a particular cult or my loyalty to consumerism.

[AndiF]

It's official -- I am an old fart.

I think that corset piercing has got to be the stupidest, ugliest, and most pathetic surrender to the patriarchy I've ever seen (yes, it's an exaggeration and I don't care) and that anyone who tries to justify by claiming that it is a ironic statement about fashion/the patriarchy is suffering major self-delusion (along with self-mutilation).

[emjaybee]

I have inadvertantly not been a fashion follower because truly fashionable clothes don't really exist in my shape/price range. If it's exploitation of the Third World that's bad, though, you don't have to follow fashion to be guilty of that...even the least hip piece of clothing you own was probably sewn by a Malaysian 10 year old.

You can't even sew your own clothes and be guilt-free, because the fabric, needles, thread, and the sewing machine itself probably employed some sort of sweatshop labor to create.

Apparently, nakedness is the only way to go. Kind of rough in the wintertime, though.

[Xavier Harkonnen]

Misogynist gay guys? That sounds like radfem projection. Women who hate men are much more likely to become homosexual than men who hate women. Though I'm sure that most lesbians are lesbians because of a lot of testosterone in their uterine environment, just like most gay guys.

[Hissy Cat]

Oh. My. Lord. I have never seen this "corset piercing" before. I don't understand. How does that work? When did it start? Where is it fashoinable?

[Q Grrl]

FTR Xavier: most lesbians are lesbians b/c they like women. It has nothing to do with men.

[Sam]

Hissy cat, you've been given the answer in D.E.I.X.I.S.'s post. Suicide Girls is a pornography website, and no one demands painful mutilations of the female body quite like pornographers.

[woojzee]

The corset piercing is so over the top stupid -the obvious factor at work here is that women must go to great lengths to please, please, please.

But what consistently kills me is the subtle S&M BARE factor.

Monitor one night of TV, a movie or magazine
Flipping and see how rare it is for both sexes to appear to be in the same climate zone.

If I were from another planet I would swear that the females here are impervious to cold - seeing men dressed in three piece suits in all the media while women are almost always practically bare. Even on the street girls are wearing impossibly skimpy tight clothes while the young men wear bagy,baggy slouchy stuff.

In my former office we had a war, males Vs females, to control the thermostat.
We women literally had to wear winter coats
indoors to keep comfortable in Texas! It is my belief that women are rarely more able to tolerate cold than men.

I understand that cold is part of the stress strategy used towards prisoners to "soften them up" Abuse, torture them, whatever.

style is smart.
fashion is stupid

[Xavier Harkonnen]

I agree, Q GRRL. The vast majority of lesbians are lesbians for reasons of attraction, not ideology, with a likely ultimate cause being hormone levels in the uterus. However, It seems that while an identifiable minority of lesbians (at least in the past) have chosen their orientation for ideological reasons, it is harder to find gay men who have "chosen" their preference for men. There were feminists, especially in the 70's and 80's, who considered it treasonous for women to have romantic attachments with men. Maybe that is no longer the case.

[Twisty]

Misogynist gay guys? That sounds like radfem projection. Women who hate men are much more likely to become homosexual than men who hate women. Though I'm sure that most lesbians are lesbians because of a lot of testosterone in their uterine environment, just like most gay guys.

This is dumb.

[Former Jose]

Of course there's misogynist gay guys. Just because you belong to one minority group, all the ways you ARE privileged suddenly disappear? Nonsense.

Just ask any lesbian involved in GLBT activism, and she'll tell you all about just how misogynist a lot of gay guys are.

[Josef K]

That "exposure to testosterone in the womb" thing is rubbish, surely? How do you explain women like me, who are attracted to women but have none of the spatial skills associated with testosterone exposure in the womb?

[Mrs. Coulter]

Ugh. I have most certainly met misogynist gay men. I don't think they were gay because they were misogynist, but not every gay man has a gaggle of female best friends. They are shaped by the patriarchy, too, you know.

FYI, Twisty, I love your series on fashion! You are ripping shallow do-me feminism to shreds. However, I find myself wondering if there is any position we can take that is not compromised by contact with the patriarchy. I mean, sometimes I feel like we're veering into "the only proper thing for a feminist is to be a shlumpy man-hatin' lesbian" territory. Or can we just make compromises, knowing all the while that they are tainted?

[Beth S.]

I hope you will include footwear in the Fashion Week postings. Shoes in which you can't actually walk have got to be the patriarchy's crowning achievement.

[BitingBeaver]

Ugh, high-heeled shoes *growls softly*, the apex of Patriarchal torture devices, those hideous, nightmarish things which leave you open to ankle injuries, arch problems and arduous hours of kneading the frigging charlie horse out of your calves.

Gotta love our century's ode to foot binding.

I second you Beth. Twisty, we wanna see you turn that cutting wit onto high heeled shoes *grin*

[robin]

If all the men in the world suddenly ceased to find women in feminine drag (abnormally large breasts, high heeled tight foot-killing shoes, tight, chaffing constricting pants and shirts, gooey make-up, etc) appealing, you can absolutely bet the women would abandon the uniform in an instant. Women who say it's just a fun, creative way to express themselves are more likely finding it fun to imagine the appoval they'll get from men in such attire and the attention-by-proxy they'll get from women, than to be expressing their creative selves through the sex-uniform.
I do believe that dressing, decorating and adorning one's self can be a creative act, but not in the fashion-misogynist way that women have to taught to believe is "fun."

[SneakySnu]

Xavier, what the hell are you talking about??? Care to back up your pseudo-science with some facts? What a bunch of crap.

Twisty, I'm curious to know what you think about (blank's) distinction, "Style is smart, fashion is stupid." Is there an outside to fashion? Dress is so thoroughly coded by the patriarchy that it is difficult to imagine a form of dress that could negate it. I mean, is it enough to be unfashionable? Style is difficult to negotiate as well, since it is fashion's purpose to consume all style and spit it out as "trend"; meaning that if you've found something cool and anti-patriarchal to wear, the patriarchy probably already knows about it and is sending out its troops to include it in the next Fall collection.

I'm way out of the loop on recent feminist cultural studies. (Sigh.) If you're reading something that has sparked your recent thoughts on fashion, I'd love to have the citation.

This is a great series. It's a fascinating and important discussion.

[Rene]

>

Isn't that true of everything, though? Nice cars, iPods, Les Pauls, free-range chicken -- all the little luxuries that separate us from the self-flagellating self-deniers? Why is it more bogus to imagine that you're expressing your identity through clothes than it is to imagine that you're expressing it through any other item that you buy that you don't absolutely need? It's all a sad delusion, and we're all tainted.

That said, I'm not going to get my back pierced, no fucking way. I often regret getting my ears pierced. My mom begged me to get them pierced when I was about 10 years old -- I think she actually bribed me with cash. She wasn't any more a tool of the patriarchy than anyone else; I think she just thought that it would improve my self-esteem. Ha.

Rene

[Megan Good]

Wait, corset piercing is a fashion now? I thought it was still a pain/power play thing, and not gendered at that (there were some very nice pictures of beribbonned men before Suicide Girls had ever heard of it). Goddamn patriarchy, turning fun into stupid.

[AndiF]

Robin, I'm sure you're right. I'm a computer consultant so I go to a lot of different companies all over the country and clearly, 'business casual' has exposed what women will wear when they aren't pressured to conform to a standard -- almost all the women at these companies wear slacks and comfortble shoes (btw, they are managers and technical staff).

[Mandos]

Here's a big conundrum I find in all of this: yes fashion is oppressive in multiple directions. But at the same time, to go as far as you do, it suggests to me that you have to commit to the notion that "visually pleasing" is necessarily patriarchal, seeing as it is always to some extent a mixture of cultural environment some presumably innate (?) sense of order. But part of cultural environment entails group belonging. So you'd also have to say that "group belonging signifiers" are inherently oppressive and patriarchal.

I'm entirely unconvinced you can have a world where people don't sacrifice to be approved by a group.

[Tony Patti]

It's like everything else in life; once you realize how insidious the whole issue of fashion is, you can partake of it without at least being complacent about the power play involved. Suddenly your choices are less influenced by standards you don't agree with, and this relaxing of standards leads to just a few less 'needs' in your life.

I'm not going to be able to start a revolution by ignoring fashion but it sure makes me feel more secure to see the insanity of the hipper-than-thou artifice of it all when I please my body with clothing that feels good first and looks like whatever it needs to look like to feel that good.

But I draw the line at Spandex.

[deja pseu]

OK, y'all can call me an old fuddy-duddy now, but when I looked at the "corset piercing" photo, I assumed it was one of Twisty's brilliantly bizarre photoshopped creations. I can't believe someone would actually DO this to their body. No wait, I can, but it still sickens me.

[Twisty]

Mandos (Mandos Mandos), attractiveness isn't an absolute, and beauty standards do not exist independent of the patriarchy, they imposed for the purpose of male titillation. If, say, high heels were actually an example of absolute beauty, men wouldn't look stupid in'em. Men look stupid in high heels because they are the footwear of the submissive.

The desire for "group belonging" to which you allude is a function of the dominance/submission dynamic characteristic of all relationships emerging from patriarchal oppression. I don't see much chance of dismantling this system, but a girl can dream.