Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: This thesis explores different disciplinary studies and discussions of dress, and more specifically, the use of dress in constructing a gendered identity and sexual identity. To conduct this research, I performed a literature review and referenced various social psychological, sociological, and/or feminist theoretical frameworks. I argue that dress cannot serve as any sort of innate or accurate indicator of sexual identity; rather, the meanings associated with dress are socially produced and vary across time and place. Evidence for this argument emerges only after a literature review, as one can recognize a common theme linking the literature, or perhaps a commonly overlooked theme in some works of the literature review. In arguing this, I hope to better peoples’ understanding of how dress is feminized, the role of identity in the production of dress, how it works to reinforce and/or resist gender (in relation to race, class, and sexuality) binaries, divisions, categories and inequality. I also hope to address how people use dress as a form of social resistance and as a means to form community.
Author: Jean Stevens
Institution: Syracuse University
Language: English
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Gender equality
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W205749373