Growing up, I have never been popular or even well-liked. I was always treated as the odd one out. This all started around 5th grade, when every other girl began to dress girlier and I would stay in my t-shirt and pants so I could run around and get dirty with the guys. I was outcast, since my hometown is an extremely judge mental environment, and that began to chip away my confidence. Around 7th grade, after I had tried dressing to fit in, my reputation didn't change and neither did people's attitudes. this caused me to enter a phase in my fashion life that my mother did not approve of.
(Photo to come)
I had decided that I should at least play the part these people saw me as. I dressed as they expected, and they stopped calling me fake, but other names came flying out. One problem had been fixed but another had arisen. What I wore affected me because it changed the perception of me that others had and the actions towards me.
Now, this has not only happened to me. In the introduction to her book, Cunningham states that women's fashion limited what women could do and therefore the impact they had on society. Women throughout the history of fashion have been expected to wear dresses or corsets or generally less comfortable clothes than men. How could anyone expect a woman in a whale bone lined corset and a dress that weighed at least 10 pounds to be productive when she could barely breathe? The truth is that the standards set for women's fashion helped dig them into the hole that we are still trying to dig out of. The uncomfortable out fittings changed everyone's attitude, including the women, to think that men could do more and therefore were better than women. Now, I'm not saying that men and women are completely equal, but women are no better than men and vise versa.
Another example is seen by most people every day. When someone is going to work in a suit, or a blazer for women, and they look clean-cut they are generally regarded as powerful and smart. If we took one CEO and one blue-collar worker and had them switch wardrobes for a day and walk around the city, even go see their friends, both of their attitudes would be different by the end of the day. You can clearly see this on the tv show "undercover boss." When the CEO is working the hard jobs of his company, he is required to dress like the men and women he is working with. Those of whom he is working with treat him as any other person starting the job, causing the CEO to earn his respect instead of immediately recievig it. This will change a person, since that respect that they automatically have simply from their appearance is gone. It is very interesting to see the change in attitude that occurs when people need to live in a different fashion for a few days.
All in all, I am not alone in my belief that fashion is not only a display of your attitude but an instrument in changing attitude. It has been so not only for myself, but for many others and it will continue to be so for a long time.
Kim
Reforming Women's Fashion, 1850-1920: Politics, Health, and Art by Patricia Cunningham
http://advocate.jbu.edu/?q=node/1313
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_Boss
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