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Assessment 3 - 21st Century Fashion Visual Essay...

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Rationale It is now well established from a variety of studies that gender socialization begins as soon as a child is born. Although we wear clothes daily, we often do so as if by autopilot and display remarkable consistency in our choices. These choices are not based on our bodies’ essential requirements, but on socially constructed gender norms. Clothes are far more than simply garments that cover one’s body because it plays a vital role in people-to-people communication (Reis, Pereira, Azevedo, Jerόnimo & Miguel, 2018; Lunceford, 2010; Petersson Mcintyre, 2016). Clothes mark belonging and signal gender and behaviour expectations. In our patriarchal society, the preferred gender is male, so males mostly take gender for granted. Females are encouraged to dress ‘as the men’ if they seek to have a successful career. They adopt “sexual roles” and the masculine and feminine identities that accompany them in this sense because women are not automatically treated with more respect if they wear men’s clothing (Bornstein, 2013; Petersson Mcintyre, 2016; Oh, 2019; Reis, Pereira, Azevedo, Jerόnimo & Miguel, 2018). Gender is most likely a social structure that is acquired throughout our experiences in everyday life. We need to distinguish between having an identity and being an identity, and we need to unlearn gender in the same way that we unlearn other outmoded and/or harmful cultural imperatives. Even though we live in a mostly binary system, there is a diversity of other genders apart from feminine and masculine. This is because many people are searching for their own individuality and identity, even when it goes against the culture of the masses (Bornstein, 2013; Reis, Pereira, Azevedo, Jerόnimo & Miguel, 2018). It is frightening to be genderless. What makes it easier is a sense of humour, and that is where Camp comes into the picture. Camp is a uniquely queer experience, a sense of humour developed in response to oppression based on unique gender identity, and a minority of sexual orientation because fashion is not about the ability to directly affect or observe the physical world, but about the visual communicative ability of garments. Clothing does not have to have social and political implications, and Camp can be a leading edge in the deconstruction of gender because it wrests social control from the hands of the fanatics (Bornstein, 2013; Lunceford, 2010; Farren & Hutchison, 2004). I have chosen five images to go with my topic on 21st Century Fashion, they include Billy Porter wearing a remarkable gown to the 2019 Oscars, Alok Vaid-Menon showcasing what beauty means to them, Billie Eilish blurring the lines of the gender binary with androgyny, Aaron Philip, the first black, transgender, disabled model to sign with Elite Model Management, and Purushu Arie, an Indian fashion designer and blogger.

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Lang, C. (2019). Here’s Why Billy Porter Wore The Remarkable Gown To The 2019 Oscars. Retrieved from http://time.com/5537621/billy-porter-dress-oscars-2019/ This image shows Billy Porter, in a full-length gown with a bespoke tux-style top, by the designer and winner of “Project Runway” Christian Siriano (Eric Thomas, 2019; Syme, 2019). There is strong social pressure on men to conform to the cultural idea of masculinity, but Porter wants to challenge expectations, and change the molecular structure of the hearts and minds of people, and change the world (Vokey, Tefft & Tysiaczny, 2013; Lang, 2019; Variety; 2019). This look is not what Porter considers drag as he clarified that it was important that he was a man in a dress (Eric Thomas, 2019). It speaks to Porter’s amazing personality, as well as the message that we collectively want to send to the world about fashion fluidity, tolerance and acceptance (Patel, 2019). Therefore, the links between masculinity, status, and workplace roles are thus both multifaceted and self-perpetuating, as Porter said: “The industry masquerades itself as inclusive, but actors are afraid to play, because if they show up as something outside the status quo, they might be received as feminine, and, as a result, they won’t get that masculine job, that superhero job. And that’s the truth. I’ve been confronted with that” (Brescoll, Uhlmann, Moss-Racusin & Sarnell, 2011; Lang, 2019). Porter wanted to play with the gender binary and chose to wear the gown to melt the lines between masculine and feminine that red carpet conventions tend to reinforce (Syme, 2019). 2|P age

Cantarelli, L. (2019). La collezione di Alok contro gli stereotipi di genere. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2JYPBEn This image shows Alok Vaid-Menon, a gender non-conforming South Asian-American writer, educator, activist and community organizer (Jagota, 2018). Gender non-conformity is the display of characteristics usually associated with the opposite gender and has become the cornerstone of the modern political debate around identity and civil rights (Sharma, 2019; Logie, Newman, Chakrapani & Shunmugam, 2012). Same-sex attractions and gender non-conformity were correlated with psychological distress, and every day can be a struggle for a gender non-conforming person, as Vaid-Menon said: “I just want to disappear because the harassment I experience is so relentless and overwhelming” (Collier, Bos & Sandfort, 2013; Jagota, 2018). For Vaid-Menon, fashion has never been apolitical because they do not subscribe to this navel-gazing view of gender and instead focuses on destroying our notions of what’s ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ in favour of just being ourselves. Vaid-Menon shows people that another world is possible by sending the message on embracing gender non-conformity because our gender shouldn’t be determined by what we wear (Sawyer & Thoroughwood, 2017; Dazed, 2019). They also added that we should stop making women’s clothes and men’s suits and just make clothes, because “Beauty is actually about looking like yourself. Self-expression is what beauty is to me, not social conformity” (Cantarelli, 2019; Sharma, 2019). With the idea that gender non-conformity is embraced, women may feel free to express stereotypically masculine behaviours, such as being assertive, and men may feel to engage in stereotypically feminine behaviours, such as communality (Sawyer & Throughgood, 2017). 3|P age

Eilish, B. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/BmppZzDAYuy/ This image shows Billie Eilish, with her blank stares and baggy androgynous clothing (Rao, 2019). She didn’t choose between femininity or masculinity. She just stayed there, happily exploring the wide gender spectrum, and she is not shy when it comes to experimenting with fashion. Eilish’s performance of gender blur the lines of the typical binary, so much so that the music is what you notice first, her appearance, second (Williams, 2019). Androgyny allows characters to adopt non-traditional gender identities, giving women the freedom to participate in male-dominated contexts, and Eilish’s embraced fluidity in genre and gender norms extends to her edgy fashion, ranging from matching head to toe Gucci outfits to silky monochromatic pink tracksuits (Moon & Ogle, 2013; Chow, 2018; Galuppo, 2017; UMusic, 2018). On Instagram, Eilish has racked up 25.1 Million followers who eagerly watch her androgynous outfits oscillate between haute couture and skater trash, and her refusal to conform makes her a voice of a generation that desires authenticity (Chow, 2018; Bruner, 2019). Human advancement will arise not from space travel, but from promoting androgyny on Earth, harmonizing male and female minds, and Eilish has done so by utilizing androgynous clothing and appearance to create a non-traditional gender identity that she felt best embodied and reflected her sense of self, as she has one of the most unique wardrobes out there (Broder, 2019; Moon & Ogle, 2013; UMusic, 2018). 4|P age

Barksdale, A. (2019). Trans Disabled Teen Model Aaron Philip Is The Future Of Fashion. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2K1zKoC This image shows Aaron Philip, the first black, transgender, disabled model to sign with Elite Model Management (Barksdale, 2019). Philip is on a mission to break down stereotypes, and her journey on becoming a professional model was one she had to fight for as her rise to prominence would have been unimaginable just a few years ago (Young, 2018; Tsao, 2018; Holland, 2019). Philips entered the fashion world with intentions of making the industry more diverse, inclusive, and accessible because it is no secret that inclusiveness in the fashion world still has a long way to go, especially when it comes to adaptive clothing and disabilities (Philip, 2018; Rivas, 2018). Conversely, Philip also said: “My disability is a part of me, but it does not define my whole identity. It does not define my worth, my value, or what I can or cannot do” (Neal, 2018). Transgender rights have become a major focus in contemporary debates as transgender individuals increasingly enter roles of visibility and power, and the runway is slowly becoming more diverse, with the number of non-white, plus-size, transgender, non-binary, and over-50 models rising every year at New York Fashion Week (Hickey, 2019; Barksdale, 2019). Philip said she is doing what she needs to do to open up people’s minds and show them that diversity in fashion is not a trend, and she wants careers for black, transgender and disabled models to be attainable and sustainable (Rivas, 2018; Philip, 2018). 5|P age

Arie, P. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/p/Bhlwcvllo5J This image shows Purushu Arie, an Indian fashion designer and blogger. Arie launched the country’s first gender-neutral clothing brand, and it breaks societal expectations but leaves the wearer with greater freedom of self-expression (Styer, Graves, Graves & Kramer, 2012; Agrawal, 2016; Mariyam, 2017). He commented on how the existing gender norms of masculinity are very sensitive to fashion, as it takes something as simple as the colour pink to dismantle the entire notion of masculinity (Agrawal, 2016). Arie says gender-neutral clothing is a trend he feels is just the beginning of a bigger movement because the men and women of today live parallel lives and in most cases, their clothing needs to perform the same function (Crossley, 2017; Agrawal, 2016). Asserting his commitment to slow and sustainable fashion, Arie’s unconventional fashion label will only work towards producing ungendered capsule collections to reduce waste and use more upcycled materials (The Retail Times News Bureau, 2017; Crossley, 2017). Clothes are becoming trans-seasonal and lines are rapidly starting to blur, and social media influencers like Arie are commanding more power, making the relationship between gender and style freer, using progressive ideologies through a forward-thinking label, he is ready to change the fashion game forever in India (Anderson, 2018; Mariyam, 2017; Crossley, 2017). 6|P age

References

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