The Saints

For Political Arts Initiative, “Questions about Some Women’s Bodies”

The Sphinx – collage for Political Arts Initiative

Hunger is a Two-sided Sword of Gold

Made for the Political Arts Initiative

intherightshoes:

So I have this semi-serious fashion blog now.

my friend J has started a pretty fashion blog :3

the Good the Bad and the Fashionable

this dress is great

the greatest part is where i’m pretty sure positive this color scheme is from a superhero costume, but WHO

(Source: asos.com)

rosalarian:

It is the height of irony that women are valued for our looks, encouraged to make ourselves beautiful and ornamental… and are then derided as shallow and vain for doing so. And it’s a subtle but definite form of sexism to take one of the few forms of expression where women have more freedom, and treat it as a form of expression that’s inherently superficial and trivial. Like it or not, fashion and style are primarily a women’s art form. And I think it gets treated as trivial because women get treated as trivial.

I really wanted to quote, like, every line of the thing. But, yeah, I agree with pretty much everything here. Especially the part about women’s fashion being more about showing off for each other rather than using it to attract men.

Another point of complaint I have heard before (possibly from the feminist side) is that women cannot be expressing themselves truly since most clothing is designed by men, and wearing clothes would therefore only be reaffirming and internalizing the feminine ideal by and for men.

I would like to think that there are plenty of designers who are not cis men, for one. For two, no matter who makes a piece of clothing, as soon as it’s away from the designer or shop, the piece of clothing is in a new context: your own. Whether you cut it up, restitch it, burn it, even when you just combine it with some other thing you bought, you’re doing far more than just answering to the ideal vision some designer might have had.

downlo:

jepangilinan:

[IWOULDWEAR] KOREAN FASHION WEEK SEOUL

Korean photographer Nam travels the world capturing stylish people for his blog Streetfsn. Recently he visited Seoul Fashion Week and found all these beautiful details to share with his readers.

SOURCES STREETFSN WOWSAN

Erm,…

greaterthanlapsed:

[Trigger warning for discussions of weight, diet, thin privilege, fatphobia, body policing.]

Great post that highlights to just what extent women can never be thin enough. It reminded me of Luisel Ramos, the model who died from complications of anorexia—while participating in a fashion show.

And the biggest problem is the complete loss of connection with one’s body. No matter how thin one is, the conviction of one’s Not Being Thin Enough to the point of no longer recognizing the state of one’s own body- this is what terrifies me, both at a level of general culture as well as up close and extremely personal.

Thanks to greaterthanlapsed’s link to the upsetting story of Luisel Ramos (and her little sister), I read another article on the starvation of models. Sadly, several men in charge of the fashion industry felt no sense of responsibility whatsoever.

From the article: Didier Grumbach, head of the Chambre Syndicale, the body that governs French fashion, says it is not the role of fashion to solve public health problems.

‘I think it’s a non-issue. You don’t solve public health problems by regulating the size of models,’ he says. ‘You know, fashion is only the reflection of what is happening in society. It is not the cause.’”

I do not believe him. I do not believe that girls look at pictures in magazines or online, watch movies or tv, or play with barbie dolls (or computer games), to observe the form of women in all these form of culture, only to remain unshaken and observe that these shows have got it wrong. Because girls are part of culture. Their mothers and fathers are. The boys who want a girlfriend -also those who don’t- are part of culture. It’s hard to pin down and easy to displace blame. At this point I guess I believe that sharing blog posts like this are a very small start of a discussion, a sharing of opinion, a deepening of consciousness.