There are man ways to be different. Today you wear jeans, t-shirt so you can allow yourself to jump, run, do some exercises, to feel yourself young. Tomorrow you can wear beautiful dress and all the sudden your movements are different and you act different. The style dictate your behavior. Thanks a lot to feminism movement because now we can wear whatever we want. Feminism is smart. Fashion is pretty. No wonder the two are hesitant to meet.
The reality is both concepts are much more complicated. Women have fought for access to the same rights, opportunities — and, yes, clothing — as men since the beginning of the feminist movement. Today we fight against the notion that women should be judged simply on their outward appearance. If you own a pair of pants, for example, you can thank a feminist. Fashion is meaningful, and an important aspect of feminism is self-expression. We are all complex human beings. Fashion gives us a way to express our inner selves to the outside world, but it is still an outer shell, and by no means the entire sum of who we are.Fashion, like so many other things associated primarily with women, may be dismissed as trivial, but it shapes how we’re read by others, especially on the levels of gender, class and race. In turn, how we’re read determines how we are treated, especially in the workforce—whether we are hired, promoted and respected, and how well we are paid. That most ordinary and intimate of acts, getting dressed, has very real political and economic consequences.If feminists ignore fashion, we are ceding our power to influence it. Fortunately, history has shown that feminists can, instead, harness fashion and use it for our own political purposes.
When the rhetoric of equality fell on deaf ears, suffragists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries made quite literal fashion statements. Green, white and violet jewelry was a favored suffragist accessory, but not because of any aesthetic imperative: The first letters of each color— G, W, V—was shorthand for give women votes.
A century later, in the 1980s, women appropriated men’s styles of dress in an attempt to access the social and economic capital that lay on the other side of the glass ceiling. So-called career women practiced power dressing, wearing tailored skirt suits with huge shoulder pads, approximating the style and silhouette of the professional male executive.
The fact that even the most politically and culturally commanding women must walk a razor’s edge between looking powerful and still appearing “appropriately feminine” underscores visual theorist John Berger’s concise description of mainstream society: “Men act and women appear.” In other words, men are judged by their deeds; women, by their looks.
Away from the workplace, in everyday life, fashion policing of women is also racially stratified. Women of color who wear “ethnic dress” are often read as traditional, unmodern and, in some instances, conservative. When similar garments are worn by white women, they signify global cosmopolitanism, a multicultural coolness.
My sense of style is a part of me, as is my sense of humor, my intelligence, my spirituality, and my commitment to gender equality. I am forever thankful for the feminists who helped give me the freedom to explore and express all of these parts of myself. When I was 15, I died my hair in crazy color and got a crazy haircut because it was cool at that time. My parents were not mad on me. They were hoping that soon I'll change. Thanks a lot to them. Later I changed. Today I don't want to be like everyone else. I want to be myself. I have one favorite dress that my mom bought me for high school graduation party. I keep it nice because I remember that my mom was so happy and proud when I wore that dress and walked down the hall to get my diploma. This dress has kind of magic power. When I am sad or depressed sometimes I'm taking it out of the closet, put it on and look in the mirror for couple minutes and all my bad thoughts go away, giving a call to my mom and...everything comes back to normal. Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.
