What do you think?
Rate this book
Why Women Wear What They Wear
Presents an intimate ethnography of clothing choice. This book uses real women's lives and clothing decisions-observed and discussed at the moment of getting dressed - to illustrate theories of clothing, the body, and identity. It provides students of anthropology and fashion with a fresh perspective on the social issues and constraints.
- GenresFashionNonfiction
178 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 1, 2007
3 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 28, 2020
Three stars for my casual/curiosity read, but if you were doing any kind of research that intersected with this topic, the book would be invaluable. It's clear, not too academically-phrased but still on a solid theoretical foundation, interesting and on-topic, and not longer than it needs to be.
August 18, 2018
Introduction
p.17 – The Embodied Self – That women may judge their own bodies so critically is hardly surprising given the current proliferation of television programmes, magazines and advertisements which promote the increasingly unrealistic ideal body. The expectation on women to “appear” (Berger, 1972) involves not only having the right outfit, but also having the right body underneath it. Cultural norms of femininity and beauty construct and define what the ideal body should look like and also show women how to attain these bodies. Much contemporary feminism is characterized by paradigms pointing to the performativity of gender (largely influenced by Butler 1990, 1993) which occurs in the context of normative expectations regarding gender roles. Clothes are part of the way, in Butler’s sense, gender is performed. This performance takes place in a climate of social expectations regarding correct dress codes, and when women conform to these they both cite the norms and reinforce them. In terms of women’s identities, in Butler’s model, individuals are both “subjected” to the expectations of femininity and are “subjectivated” (Butler 1993:535) by them, as these norms are also the potential domain for agency.
p.18 – Whether women are measuring their bodies in relation to beauty norms therefore depends on their “project,” in de Beauvoir’s terms.
If the body is a “situation,” de Beauvoir has also argued that the body in turn is “situated” in other social parameters such as class, ethnicity, family position, occupation, gender and sexuality. These categories intersect, as “if one “is” a woman, that is surely not all one is. (Butler 1990:3).
p.19 – Identity positions are specific to particular locations and to a specific moment in time and space (Anthias 2005:43).
p.20-21 – Dressing involves considerations of whether clothing is socially suitable for the occasion and the age, status and occupation of a woman; in turn, these considerations must be balanced with whether a woman feels an item “is her.” As such, notions of roles and expectations are negotiated with items that touch her body, and it is impossible for such concerns to remain entirely social. The concerns over social expectations are largely engaged with in terms of how the body looks, as women see themselves through the eyes of others. Choosing what to wear becomes the act of constructing the “social individual” (Mead 1982:102).
p.28 – The anxieties fashion produces are only one factor women have to consider when choosing what to wear: they also might have to worry about “getting it right” for woman their age or for a new social situation. Participation in fashion is predicated upon requisite knowledges and the “knowingness” (Gregson, Brooks and Crewe 2001:12) that allows women to experiment with new looks and styles. These anxieties and knowledges are complex and multi-layered, as dressing also involves fundamental cultural competences. It also involves the expectation that women will dress appropriately at home, for taking children to school and in the workplace. The images of the fashionable body in magazines are, therefore, always situated in wider cultural norms and expectations over, for example, what is acceptable for older women to wear or what to wear for a first date.
Given the multiple roles women are called upon to occupy, and such evidences of ambiguities and anxiety, getting dressed involves considerations of all of these.
p.29 – When women choose what to wear, their considerations range from social roles, their femininity, whether they look fashionable, their sense of self, their relationships and family.
Conclusions
p.154 – The centrality of this dialectic between safe, easy acts of dressing and the desire to be different and creative means that the act of constructing an identity through clothing is an ambivalent one. This notion resonates with discussions over fashion more broadly, as the constant fluctuations in styles have led to it being characterized as ambiguous in its shifts between innovation and conformity (Simmel 1971), revealing and concealing the self (Sennett 1971), sexuality and modesty, androgyny and femininity.
p.156 – Part of the “safety” that habitual clothing offers is that women know how to wear these items, and they know the outfit looks good on their body. In specific instances of dressing when women’s sartorial sense of themselves is disrupted, women have to consciously engage with their image, body and who they can be through clothing.
Because clothing forms an extension of the self and thus women know what clothing they like, they have a sense of who they are through clothing. On certain occasions when this sense of self is questioned, women may come to see not only their bodies but also their sense of self as inadequate.
Women’s sense of confidence engendered through wearing clothing all the time is therefore not absolute because it is subject to change.
Shifts in women’s tastes always involve this dialogue between the woman they know they are habitually and the possibility of who they can be. Changes are not just imposed from an external fashion shift, but rather the constant novelty fashion offers is a means through which women can extend themselves through clothing.
p.158 – As the wardrobe is accumulated over time, dressing is also an act of making present aspects of a former self, as a woman may wear an idem of clothing from her past in a new combination. Choosing what to wear is, therefore an act both of “surfacing” and also of “presenting” disparate aspects of the self; it is also an act of “drawing in” relationships, as women wear gifted or borrowed items and extend themselves through relationships.
If one considers the wardrobe to be an extension of all the diverse former and current aspects of the self, then it is apparent that the self is extremely contradictory: simultaneously conformist and individual, un-thought our and reflexive. The interplay between these factors is the underlying logic to the act of getting dressed, as women strive to both be themselves and to make choices they “know” are them, yet to still be creative. This interplay between the need for security and a desire to be changing and dynamic recapitulates the dynamic between individuality and conformity that Simmel (1971) identified as the core dynamic of fashion. What my ethnography demonstrates is that this is also women’s fundamental relationship to clothing and is a key tension within the self. When women wear an outfit, they have to commit to one “look,” and therefore these contradictions and ambivalences are not always apparent in the self that is presented in public. This dialectic of dressing the self is only accessible through observing how women choose what to wear.
Bibliography
Anthias, F. “Social Stratification and Social Inequality: Models of Intersectionality and Identity,” Rethinking Class, Culture, Identity and Lifestyle, ed. by F. Devine et al. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Berger, J. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin, 1972.
Butler, J. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge, 1990.
Butler, J. Bodies that Matter. London: Routledge, 1993.
De Beauvoir, S. The Second Sex. London: Vintage, 1997 (1949).
Mead, G. H. The Individual and the Social Self: Unpublished Work of G.H. Mead. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
p.17 – The Embodied Self – That women may judge their own bodies so critically is hardly surprising given the current proliferation of television programmes, magazines and advertisements which promote the increasingly unrealistic ideal body. The expectation on women to “appear” (Berger, 1972) involves not only having the right outfit, but also having the right body underneath it. Cultural norms of femininity and beauty construct and define what the ideal body should look like and also show women how to attain these bodies. Much contemporary feminism is characterized by paradigms pointing to the performativity of gender (largely influenced by Butler 1990, 1993) which occurs in the context of normative expectations regarding gender roles. Clothes are part of the way, in Butler’s sense, gender is performed. This performance takes place in a climate of social expectations regarding correct dress codes, and when women conform to these they both cite the norms and reinforce them. In terms of women’s identities, in Butler’s model, individuals are both “subjected” to the expectations of femininity and are “subjectivated” (Butler 1993:535) by them, as these norms are also the potential domain for agency.
p.18 – Whether women are measuring their bodies in relation to beauty norms therefore depends on their “project,” in de Beauvoir’s terms.
If the body is a “situation,” de Beauvoir has also argued that the body in turn is “situated” in other social parameters such as class, ethnicity, family position, occupation, gender and sexuality. These categories intersect, as “if one “is” a woman, that is surely not all one is. (Butler 1990:3).
p.19 – Identity positions are specific to particular locations and to a specific moment in time and space (Anthias 2005:43).
p.20-21 – Dressing involves considerations of whether clothing is socially suitable for the occasion and the age, status and occupation of a woman; in turn, these considerations must be balanced with whether a woman feels an item “is her.” As such, notions of roles and expectations are negotiated with items that touch her body, and it is impossible for such concerns to remain entirely social. The concerns over social expectations are largely engaged with in terms of how the body looks, as women see themselves through the eyes of others. Choosing what to wear becomes the act of constructing the “social individual” (Mead 1982:102).
p.28 – The anxieties fashion produces are only one factor women have to consider when choosing what to wear: they also might have to worry about “getting it right” for woman their age or for a new social situation. Participation in fashion is predicated upon requisite knowledges and the “knowingness” (Gregson, Brooks and Crewe 2001:12) that allows women to experiment with new looks and styles. These anxieties and knowledges are complex and multi-layered, as dressing also involves fundamental cultural competences. It also involves the expectation that women will dress appropriately at home, for taking children to school and in the workplace. The images of the fashionable body in magazines are, therefore, always situated in wider cultural norms and expectations over, for example, what is acceptable for older women to wear or what to wear for a first date.
Given the multiple roles women are called upon to occupy, and such evidences of ambiguities and anxiety, getting dressed involves considerations of all of these.
p.29 – When women choose what to wear, their considerations range from social roles, their femininity, whether they look fashionable, their sense of self, their relationships and family.
Conclusions
p.154 – The centrality of this dialectic between safe, easy acts of dressing and the desire to be different and creative means that the act of constructing an identity through clothing is an ambivalent one. This notion resonates with discussions over fashion more broadly, as the constant fluctuations in styles have led to it being characterized as ambiguous in its shifts between innovation and conformity (Simmel 1971), revealing and concealing the self (Sennett 1971), sexuality and modesty, androgyny and femininity.
p.156 – Part of the “safety” that habitual clothing offers is that women know how to wear these items, and they know the outfit looks good on their body. In specific instances of dressing when women’s sartorial sense of themselves is disrupted, women have to consciously engage with their image, body and who they can be through clothing.
Because clothing forms an extension of the self and thus women know what clothing they like, they have a sense of who they are through clothing. On certain occasions when this sense of self is questioned, women may come to see not only their bodies but also their sense of self as inadequate.
Women’s sense of confidence engendered through wearing clothing all the time is therefore not absolute because it is subject to change.
Shifts in women’s tastes always involve this dialogue between the woman they know they are habitually and the possibility of who they can be. Changes are not just imposed from an external fashion shift, but rather the constant novelty fashion offers is a means through which women can extend themselves through clothing.
p.158 – As the wardrobe is accumulated over time, dressing is also an act of making present aspects of a former self, as a woman may wear an idem of clothing from her past in a new combination. Choosing what to wear is, therefore an act both of “surfacing” and also of “presenting” disparate aspects of the self; it is also an act of “drawing in” relationships, as women wear gifted or borrowed items and extend themselves through relationships.
If one considers the wardrobe to be an extension of all the diverse former and current aspects of the self, then it is apparent that the self is extremely contradictory: simultaneously conformist and individual, un-thought our and reflexive. The interplay between these factors is the underlying logic to the act of getting dressed, as women strive to both be themselves and to make choices they “know” are them, yet to still be creative. This interplay between the need for security and a desire to be changing and dynamic recapitulates the dynamic between individuality and conformity that Simmel (1971) identified as the core dynamic of fashion. What my ethnography demonstrates is that this is also women’s fundamental relationship to clothing and is a key tension within the self. When women wear an outfit, they have to commit to one “look,” and therefore these contradictions and ambivalences are not always apparent in the self that is presented in public. This dialectic of dressing the self is only accessible through observing how women choose what to wear.
Bibliography
Anthias, F. “Social Stratification and Social Inequality: Models of Intersectionality and Identity,” Rethinking Class, Culture, Identity and Lifestyle, ed. by F. Devine et al. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Berger, J. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin, 1972.
Butler, J. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge, 1990.
Butler, J. Bodies that Matter. London: Routledge, 1993.
De Beauvoir, S. The Second Sex. London: Vintage, 1997 (1949).
Mead, G. H. The Individual and the Social Self: Unpublished Work of G.H. Mead. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
February 4, 2017
Womens' relationships with clothes- fascinating case studies of several women and how and why they dress in certain things. Read and prepare to reflect on your own wardrobe. I read this mostly in my 'home clothes', sometimes pyjamas. Just so you know.
March 20, 2021
I really did enjoy this book.
It concerns my area of interest and takes a clever dive into why women wear what they wear. There is a solid academically foundation yet the core content is easy to comprehend. That said, as British is not my primary language I found the first 30 pages or so rather difficult to read hence understand. But with a good dictionary I soon got an understanding of the unfamiliar words and as stated I really did enjoy the book.
It concerns my area of interest and takes a clever dive into why women wear what they wear. There is a solid academically foundation yet the core content is easy to comprehend. That said, as British is not my primary language I found the first 30 pages or so rather difficult to read hence understand. But with a good dictionary I soon got an understanding of the unfamiliar words and as stated I really did enjoy the book.
November 22, 2024
Good study I read for class, covers something interesting that not many people would think about in their everyday lives. Just hard to focus on sometimes because of the academic style of writing and what felt like the same thing being said over and over.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews