9-10:15 a.m.
Evangelically Feminine: The Social Rebranding of Women’s Societal Usefulness in Fashion Media, Veiled by Modesty Politics, Patriarchal Values, Glamorized Unpaid Labor
Cydni M. Robertson, Indiana University
Over the past decade, a collective re-brand of femininity and the functional aesthetics that define its purpose has become excessively prominent within social and print media (Schwartz, 2020). Observation of fashion history has found that communal regressions towards belief systems that hyper-fixate women’s appearance as an extension of women’s societal usefulness are commonly connected to periods of economic recession or global calamity. For example, during The Great Depression of the 1930s, hemlines of skirts were intentionally lowered, clothing color palettes were muted, and women experienced the double bind of needing to find work and take care of the home (McInnis & Medvedev, 2021). During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there was (and still is) a rise in “soft life” homesteading content, as well as the milkmaid or peasant dress (Elle Magazine, 2024; Glamour UK, 2024). These media messages, often created by women and sold to women, promote modest fashion choices, focus on dresses and skirts (opposite of masculinity), and prioritize home as the principal location of work and fulfillment. However, there are more significant messages that this type of media communicates, such as the promotion of conservative and religious standards for women as paramount, proximity to marriage and children is the definition of purpose, and prioritizing actions and aesthetics that serve the masculine counterpart, to achieve a comfortable or luxurious lifestyle. Overall, the concept of evangelical femininity is not too far removed from evangelism in religion; follow me so I can show you the correct way to live in hopes that you can achieve a presumably fulfilling life.
This research project used systematic literature and media reviews to analyze contemporary trends that promote visual and functional femininity in today’s society. Through a critical review of magazine articles, profiles of social media influencers, scholarly publications, and e-commerce fashion from 2014-2024, this research explores how femininity within fashion media perpetuates enjoying the removal of self-agency as a symbol of a luxurious laissez-faire existence. Through our preliminary findings, researchers argue that femininity in fashion media is positioned as an emancipatory framework, yet it is permeated with undertones of oppressive structures and systems.
Do blondes get more bids? Hairism and the sorority girl on #RushTok
Maureen Lehto Brewster, University of Maryland Eastern Shore
From Legally Blonde (2001) to The House Bunny (2008) and Scream Queens (2015-2016), American popular media depicts the sorority girl as superficial, hyperfeminine, often wealthy and White, and almost always blonde. This is also the dominant image of the sorority girl seen on “RushTok,” a TikTok community consisting of videos about sorority life. The recruitment and membership policies of Panhellenic sororities reward the performance of the “idealized sorority look,” which includes long, blonde hair (Arthur 1999; Rose 1985). This suggests that Panhellenic sororities perpetuate hairism, or the hierarchical stratification of hair color, texture, length, and style which privileges proximity to Whiteness (Eley, 2017).
In this study I explore hairism on RushTok and consider how this maps back to hierarchical race, class, and gender norms in Panhellenic sororities. I argue that RushTok content (re)produces blonde hair as “a euphemism for race and status” (McMillan Cottom, 2023) that provides a femininity premium (Hamilton, 2019) in Panhellenic sorority culture. Data for the study consists of interviews with 13 RushTok users and 97 RushTok videos collected in 2022 as part of a larger study on RushTok style-fashion-dress (Tulloch, 2010). I (re)turn to this data in this study to focus specifically on hairism in RushTok content. I consider how sorority hair practices enable potential new (sorority) members (PNMs) to (re)fashion themselves as sorority girls and assimilate into Panhellenic sorority culture: in other words, how they operate as practices of the self (Entwistle 2000; Foucault and Rabinow 1997). I also consider how these practices map back to the gender, race, and class norms of these organizations. This study extends scholarship related to hairism (e.g. Bellinger, 2007), blonde hair in popular culture (e.g. Burton, 2012), and gender, race, and class norms in sorority culture (e.g. Ortiz and Thompson, 2020).
To Be or Not to Be Modern: Fashion, Gender, and Ambiguity Towards Modernity in Early 20th Century Puerto Rico
Antonio Hernández-Matos, Rutgers University
Puerto Rican historiography still argues that Puerto Ricans resisted the modernity represented by the U.S. from the beginning of the change in colonial power. However, this paper argues that Puerto Ricans at the beginning of the 20th century actually had an ambiguous and tense relationship with a “colonial modernity” they both desired and feared. To support this argument, this paper examines two representations that coexisted in Puerto Rican periodicals: the first is the “masculinized” modern woman, portrayed as cold-blooded, egocentric, narcissistic, greedy, opportunistic, and calculating. The paper analyzes what critics perceived as the symbols of Puerto Rican women masculinization: the fading “art of crying” and the bobbed hair that crowned the head of so many chicas modernas. Critics considered Puerto Rican modern women to be in a process of masculinization and denounced fashion and modernity as the culprits, arguing that they were encouraging Puerto Rican modern women to dispose of any trace of sentimentality. The other representation analyzed is the “naked” chica moderna, depicted as lost in worldly pleasures and always being on the verge of corruption and damnation. The paper examines the representations of the gradual “stripping” of modern women’s bodies by fashion, focusing on the symbolism of three pieces of clothing: the tube dress, the short skirt, and the bathing suit. Critics and commentators correlated fashion’s unveiling of women’s bodies with a public display of eroticism on their part, which represented a problem for the keepers of social morality, secular or religious. The paper shows how these two opposite representations of Puerto Rican women are the best example of Puerto Ricans tense, ambivalent, and ambiguous relationship with the unforeseen consequences of a colonial modernity.
Fashioning the American Far Right: The Cultural Memory of the Alt-Right’s Smart-Casual Style
Elizabeth Kealy-Morris & Matt Porter, Manchester Metropolitan University and University of North Texas
Since the 2000s, far-right movements have been diversifying the ways in which they present themselves and influence culture through their activism. Given that the contemporary alt-right movement has leveraged virtual space, the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA served as a nucleation point whereby various alt-right groups brought their ideology to the real-life public sphere and began to be identified by a smart-casual dress style that consisted of variations of the polo, button-front shirts, and khaki trousers. This presentation develops sartorial case studies of two American alt-right groups, the Patriot Front and the Proud Boys, to examine the adoption of the Fred Perry black and gold twin-tipped polo shirt by the Proud Boys as compared to the non-branded garments of the Patriot Front. Through which, we demonstrate how alt-right politics are both consciously and unconsciously displayed, constructed, and embodied through the groups’ uniforms by looking to the past through nostalgia and cultural memory (Sturken 1997; Jenss 2013; Slater et al. 2023; Kealy-Morris 2023) and how these sartorial selections implicate brands, designers, and fashion communication practice (Benton & Peterka-Benton, 2019).