Ohh, tell me more
Throughout human history fashion has been incredibly expressive regardless of how many genders a civilisation had or whatever garments, textiles, colours or outlines were associated with whatever gender roles. Throw a dart at a global map and look into traditional clothes of the peoples who lived there, and chances are you'll find an expressive mix of cuts, materials and colours. Doesn't even really matter what time period or wherever you are; the vividness of humanity is reflected in thread and dye.
There's an exception though. Which is that communities dominated by maritime & agrarian labourers tend to produce fashions with far more emphasis on practicality than expression, which also tends to correlate with more defined and distinct gender roles. E.g. in Qing dynasty China, the Han Chinese have lots of variety in colour, cuts and garments for men and women, and in particular women's fashion experiences a lot of experimentation and evolution in styles. You also see the practice of foot binding, as well as government enforced gender-specific fashion laws relating to hairstyles and fashions of men. But compared to the Hakka Chinese in the same period, where they are largely farmers and fishermen, where both genders are expected to contribute to the demands of labour. The fashion is shirt and trousers for both men and women. The outlines are the same, as the focus is on long straight cuts which are easy to sew and easy to fix. Colourful dyes or expensive silks are prohibitively expensive. There's no foot binding practiced because everyone needs to be healthy and fit to work the fields or boats. Fashion follows function, whereas in the city function follows fashion.
Pre-French rev France had a similar distinction between the labourers and the landowners. But post-revolution fashion gets utterly buggered because;
- The concept of a national people having a national folk dress causes people to start viewing fashion as a static feature of national identity, and not something constantly in motion. E.g. kilts are Scottish and drindls are German. Fairly harmless until you see the consequences 200 years later where folk fashion gets put in a museum and stops being a living thing people view as normal, and any attempt at keeping it alive by adapting the fashion is seen as a violation of an "authentic" version. It's especially grating when a piece is actually put in a museum as an "authentic" piece of a culture's fashion, since it reinforces this curious notion of "normal fashion evolves, abnormal foreign fashion is static." Reminds me of the disastrous attempt by Japanese kemono makers to export kemonos to white Americans getting shut down for cultural appropriation, despite being a sincere attempt at cultural exchange.
- The concept of gendered fashion gets kicked up a considerable notch with the end result being men's fashion gets obliterated in terms of diversity and experimentation. Pre-French rev it's completely normal for the total spectrum of men; paragons of masculinity, effete men, androgynous men and all in between, to wear fashions incorporating all garments, colours, cuts and so on. To wear tights, jewelry, high heels, skirts, gowns and so on today is a daring challenge of masculinity, but for Henry VIII it was no challenge at all, nor would it'd have been for any working man. Amongst children too, both boys and girls would be commonly dressed in gowns or dresses, and this was not some epic culture war as it is today, it was just an ordinary fashion which wouldn't even bear remark. Post French-rev one of the lasting attacks on aristocracy was the attack on aristocratic fashion; everything associated with the upper class fashions was derided for being womanly, compared to the manly working man. French fashion became the model for American fashion, and between the European colonial empires and the American 20th century, the Euro-Merrican models of fashion became from Chile to Japan the global idea of "normal" fashion, displacing all other fashions as remarkable expressions and not ordinary expressions. Whereas women's fashion continued to play with outlines, materials and colours, men's fashion reduced in complexity, colour and cuts, even losing the hat and waistcoat until just the trousers, shirt and boots remained acceptable. The practice of raising boys in dresses also died out come the turn of the 20th century, and with it the idea of gender neutral or even masculine fashion became something radical and novel - all because the scars of "lace, silk, heels and the rest are aristocratic," never healed.
The end result is men's fashion is still really hard to push outside of its confines for the world; because you can transgress the confines, but you have to have justifications and be constantly prepared to defend your choices - similar to how a Han Chinese person wearing Hanfu in Beijing is seen as clearly making a "statement," a man wearing anything besides a shirt and trousers is seen as making a "statement." The confines are so well-defined and ingrained that it almost seems like it has always been this way for all eternity, but actually it's itself a young concept in the history of mankind.
That's why I think the end-goal for "gender is a social construct" is not transgender presenting as a radical act, but unfucking the social construct until there is no transgression, and however you present yourself gender-wise becomes an ordinary occurrence, not a revolutionary one. I am also optimistic, in that if fashion can change so rapidly once before, then it can also change rapidly once again. This would also be a change that benefits everyone, since everyone can appreciate more choices, even choices they have no intention of using
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Topic: LGBTQ+ Thread (Read 52093 times)