Gender and sexuality Week 4

Gender and sexuality

Week 4

Some quotes from the text that really got the ball rolling for me; it was hard for me not to rip straight into a MASSIVE rant, so I created a little infrastructure to address the main highlight text in my resource book:

“Elegance does not necessarily increase sexual appeal – it may on the contrary be forbidding – and, paradoxically, exaggerated masculinity or femininity may be less than a sexual presence tinged with ambiguity…”

&

“Men impose punishing restrictions on women…”

It seems in institutions away from CIT men dominate the fashion world, however the independent strong and very intelligent women in our course seem to be an unusual population and paradox when compared to the international “Taste makers” of labels who in the majority are men. The super labels male designers groom and prime women into a image of beauty they themselves create despite being almost completely detached from the complexity of modern issues and ideals that have emerged from contemporary society, it seems these men are SO detached and numb to their outside world that they are haemorrhaging consumers. Still designing for women 25 – 35… in the 1940’s. We're crafted into the image of women through men, who want us to be them??? That's how i see it as.

“Chaos of androgyny”

My designs embrace a masculine edge, I love challenging opreconceived notions of what is female, what is male and what does she have the balls to wear I love challenging, and making the demographic uncomfortable, creating a aesthetic that many women identify and embrace, however boyish it is playing with the back and forth with genders.

“Change characters. How many fashions can you play?”

this one really got me, even in 1984, Vogue was categorising complex women into pigeon holes that they didn’t fit nor belong. It’s the mentality and restrictions that these magazines create that have completely skewed the everyday women into believing her individuality is justified, yet in reality is a marketed fabrication from these infrastructures.