fashion and politics

Fashion Is Political: Dress, Resistance, and Agency

• By HelenTurton
• 14 June, 2011
• No Comments

One may not immediately think that there is a relationship between politics and fashion, choosing to think of dress as simply something we do, yet what we wear has political implications and can and does turn the body into a site of resistance. Fashion then is an arena of political contestation and not just taste.

When we decide what to wear when we leave the home to present ourselves to others may seem like an innocuous decision, but it is one that is conditioned by social conventions. What we seemingly ‘choose’ to wear is often dictated by the environment we enter. This ‘free choice’ is made in concordance with the norm. Breaking these by for example wearing a ballgown to the supermarket, pajamas to school, a wetsuit to a wedding, trainers to a nightclub, clothes that are usually worn by the opposite sex, a headscarf in France, shorts in Saudi Arabia, trousers in Sudan leave us exposed to disapproval, ridicule, violence and even punishment. We are all bound by social convention meaning that politics happens every time we wake up and get dressed. We abide by power conventions and conform to certain expectations or if we defy these norms we face numerous consequences, some even life threatening.
As such dress is a powerful speech act, not only is it an expression of identity but also due to social conventions it is a performance of thought. The potential political implications of the way we dress – violence, prejudice, marginalization – means that we can then turn the body into a site of resistance, and use clothes as a means of protest and resistance. Dress can allow us to express and fight injustice, voice our disapproval with government or our support for the opposition; we can use it as a way to highlight government intimidation and repressive regimes. DRESS MATTERS.
These resistant acts can occur through breaking the norm or through adopting a certain ‘forbidden’ item of dress. For example, in July last year police in Sudan arrested 13 women in a café and later flogged 10 of them in public. Why? Because these women were wearing trousers and thereby violating Sudan’s Islamic Law. In response to the law and it’s seemingly selective enforcement many women, the above 13 included, have taken to wearing trousers in public to register their dissatisfaction with the current government, using dress as a symbol of protest and resistance.  If arrested many women, such as journalist Lubna al-Hussein, have then used their situation to create a public platform to further highlight and draw international attention to their plight. Fashion was also instrumental in the campaign against Proposition 8 in the United States. Many gay rights advocacy groups designed t-shirts, which were worn by members of the public and celebrities alike to voice their discontent with Prop 8. The most famous t-shirt in the fight against position 8 was FCKH8, whose motto was “tell people what you think, take a stand in pink”. Though proposition 8 was overturned by Judge Vaughn Walker, much to their delight, the FCKH8 movement still continues to fight against homophobia and campaign for gay rights through using dress as a means of protest. You can order your t-shirt here!
At the recent International Studies Association annual convention in Montreal there was a panel entitled ‘Being Fab in a Dangerous World’ which addressed the international politics of fashion and how dress is a place where international relations is enacted in many different ways. This panel was thought provoking, critical, insightful, intellectually stimulating and innovative. It examined how dress can be a reflection of our security environment, how it can be used to reconcile difference in world politics, how fashion can help provide a way out/beyond the disciplinary impasse and exclusions that exist, and how dress can be used as a means to resist. I mentioned to a number of colleagues that I would be attending this panel and the reactions I received were rather surprising considering the critically minded nature of my peers. Laughs were exchanged, gender biases thrown about, and all in all the panel was quite scoffed at. Upon reflection I do not think (and hope) that the incredulity was due to gender, or the topic of fashion and the connotations (and prejudices) surrounding it’s intellectual merit, but rather the skepticism that surrounds human agency and individual acts of resistance.
One doesn’t have to take an interest in fashion, subscribe to Vogue, wear uncomfortable heels, or be a feminist to realize that the way we dress matters, and that fashion has political implications. But one has to believe in the power of individual agency to realize that fashion can be a form, and the body a site, of resistance. A belief that, I think, has dissipated among not only some of my colleagues, but also the majority of my students, friends and family. The belief in the individual having an impact, taking a stance, causing change I think has been gobbled up by feelings of powerlessness and/or that solutions lay in the power of social movements and collective action; the common maxim being international problems need international solutions. Yet these ‘global solutions’ have to begin at the individual level, for a social movement/organisation is nothing without the sum of its parts. We seem to forget this or negate the power of individual acts, as evidenced by my colleagues response, and belittle that fashion, or even graffiti, or music or a photo can be resistant. Yet it is to these individual acts that Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri turn in order to escape our present situation, they look at how individuals can find their own space and ways to resist within Empire.  We need to remember and harness our individual agency and believe that individual’s acts of resistance can have an effect, and can change the way people think, and dress is one powerful medium in which to make our voices heard.
So when you get dressed in the morning stop and pause and think about what you are doing, the social conventions you are abiding by, the power relationships involved and the potential implications of your decision, for as Yves Saint Laurent said “dressing is a way of life”.