Objectives:
- Evaluate personal values and paradigms around body decoration and physical beauty.
- Investigate how physical appearance affects definitions of identity and belonging.
- Analyze values and belief systems of physical appearance across cultures, sub-cultures and generations.
From: February 9th 2014
I am someone who takes a good deal of care with how I adorn my body, specifically based in how I dress. I have always had a love of clothing because I feel it is a very important form of art as expression. I am interested in unique designs, styles and fits. I often even alter and adorn clothing I buy from second-hand stores to create unique looks. However, I do not have a consistent style from day to day, rather, I treat every different occasion in my life like an opportunity to wear a costume. I am very cautious that I am respectfully and appropriately dressed for every occasion, but I like to do so in a way that also illustrates my personal style.
I developed my value of appropriate dress from my mother. In her first job out of college, she was working for the Forest Service in Alaska. She was young and did not have much work experience. She was the lowest level of government employee in an office dominated by males and was trying to work her way up. One day, she and her close girlfriend were sharing their frustrations with some of the gender discrimination they faced in the workplace. They decided that day to use some of their savings to order two suits each from a Talbots catalog. My mother still insists this was one of the best investments in her life. She and her female friend and colleague showed up the day after the suits arrived in professional attire in an office full of men in muck boots and jeans. After people got over the initial shock of their immediate outfit changes, they were treated with much more regard and respect. My mom and her friend climbed the levels of government employment very quickly and both ended up leaving the office to go to graduate school. This investment in herself and the way she presents herself to the world showed people that my mom valued her work and wanted to be taken seriously.
She told me this story a lot growing up and explained the importance of donating to the nonprofit Dress for Success. Now, because of this, my mother still insists that it is always best to be overdressed than underdressed. For events like weddings, funerals, and even things like job interviews it can be difficult to always determine what the appropriate attire is. However, one thing you can be sure is that overdressing for the occasion will always be less uncomfortable and send a better message than underdressing. This is because dress and appearance is integrated deeply into our culture, and the way people present themselves sends a message to other people. By dressing in an appropriate and respectful way you can say, without words, that you respect other people, value your personal wellbeing, and that you take things seriously.
However, all that being said, its important for me to also have fun with what I wear on occasions where it is appropriate. For example, Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays because it is an opportunity to be creative and show people another side of you. I have always preferred homemade costumes with a funny twist to ones that are “cute”. For example, last year I was Moes Shrute, the beet farmer brother of Dwight Shrute from The Office. I choose costumes like this because it gives me a chance to make connections with other people who understand the joke.
Another aspect of using creativity in dress is my hobby of altering and adorning clothes. My best friend and I have very similar values whe it comes to body adornment and clothing, specifically. We buy a lot of our clothes from second hand stores because we both value being fiscally responsible, especially at this point in life when we have very limited financial resources. However, just because my clothes are not new does not mean they cannot be interesting or beautiful. I also value creativity and art and love the opportunity to integrate it into my daily wardrobe. Together we have designed and created my own jewelry from craft supplies around our houses. I have purchased sweaters and embellished them with different buttons and decorative trimming to make them unique and more interesting, and I have even painted old pairs of shoes to create new looks. One snow day in high school we got together with pairs of old white Ked’s shoes and used a dye kit to create a tie dye pattern covering the shoes. We wore them to homecoming and even created pairs of our dates. Because we love the craft of clothing as adornment, my friends and I want that to be the focal point of our creativity and thus do not wear much makeup and often do not even paint our nails or do other typical feminine body adornments.
My style has changed over the years and has been inspired from a variety of influences from my mother’s fashion, to magazines, to old music videos. However, the one thing that has remained constant is my love of clothing as a creative outlet and the value I place on dressing appropriately for each occasion.
Reflection:
The above video is a trailer for a documentary about women who use fashion as an art form. This documentary was posted by one of my favorite bloggers. After watching it I found that some of the women were able to express their value for fashion as a form of art in very articulate ways. I was able to relate to these women because of the carefree way with which they approach their style choices and appearances. They are not hindered by their concern for the judgment of others. They are not worried about fitting in. They just want to have fun. One quote from the documentary that stood out to me most was the woman who mentioned, “I dress up every day for the theater of my life”. This message is present in my reflection essay when I discuss my love of seeing each event as an opportunity to wear a costume. Another woman stated, “you get treated nicer if you’re well dressed”. This sentiment is also echoed in my paper from this week as I explain my mother’s experiences in the workforce as a professionally dressed woman. Overall my choices in dress go back to Dissanayake‘s explanation of making special. She states, “Moreover, one intends by making special to place the activity or artifact in a ‘realm’ different from the everyday” (Dissanayake, p 92). For me, making special is buying mens clothing and articles from the 90’s and altering them at home.
In this week’s self-reflection essay we were given more freedom to write about ourselves, without the push to include academic articles. While I seized the opportunity to talk about my love of unique and creative fashion as a form of expression, I veered slightly from some of the guidelines listed in the assignment. I failed to give a detailed account of how the core beliefs of my family and my peers are reflected through bodily adornment because I had a hard time considering the people in my life as adorning themselves. My friends and family are pretty “typical”in appearance compared to the diversity displayed in the week’s presentation. They do not have facial piercings or dress in a noticeable way. However, after completing the assignment and reading some of the blogs of my classmates, I came to understand that adornment doesn’t have to be an explanation of how one differs him or herself from others. Rather, it can be a discussion of how that presentation of self relates to the value systems of the individual. For example my dad doesn’t stand out from the crowd too often but has a love of wool beret‘s. My mother is insistent on wearing goofy University of Oregon accessories during, before, and after football games.
Learning Goals:
My main goal after this week’s assignment is to better understand how people’s dress whether their style stands out from others, or not. Individuals are inevitably conveying something by the way they present themselves to the world because any type of presentation requires a choice. Further, my goal is to continue to explore my own fashion choices and the choices in adornment of others as it relates to belonging. This is a concept I did not explore with great length during my reflection essay, but it is one of great importance.
Bibliography: