F Bombs

Wonder Woman is a feminist fashion icon if there ever was one: the bustier, the hot pants (or is this a romper?), and of course her best accessory, her Golden Lasso of Truth.

“Is fashion feminist?” This is one of the most frequently asked questions I hear when someone finds out that I write about fashion.  And I have to admit that I find the question tedious – not because it’s not important but because it’s the wrong question. It may be why we’ve never directly answered this question – though all our posts are informed by a critical feminist perspective.  A better question to ask is: How is fashion an instrument of gender oppression and how is it a means to feminist liberation? I’ve compiled a short list of mostly popular, mostly online texts that address this question – some, more successfully than others. It should go without saying – but in case it doesn’t – this is hardly an exhaustive list of texts. Note, for example, that I haven’t included any full book-length studies on the topic and only a few scholarly texts. It’s meant to be a quick reference list, a pocket-sized digital guide to beginning a conversation about this topic.

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• Valerie Steele’s “The F-Word,” originally published in Lingua Franca (1991) and republished online here.
• Kaja Silverman’s “Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse,” originally published in Tania Modleski’s Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture (Regents of the University of Wisconsin, 1986) and then republished in Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss’ On Fashion (Rutgers University Press 1994).
• Angela McRobbie’s “Bridging the Gap: Feminism, Fashion and Consumption” in Feminist Review (Spring 1997): 73-89.
• Elaine Showalter’s “The Professor Wore Prada” originally published in Vogue (December 1997): 80 (3 pages).
• Showalter’s response to the academic backlash against her Vogue article, “Taming the Rampant Incivility in Academe” in The Chronicle of Higher Education (15 January 1999).
• Showalter’s “Better Things to Do” in Media History 6.2 (2000): 109-110. (Also a response of sorts to the Vogue kerfuffle.)
• Emily Raine’s “The F Word” in Worn: Fashion Journal issue 5 (Fall/Winter 2007): 37-39.
• lipstickeater’s “a brick . . . i mean, a book, in my handbag” (25 April 2009)
• Susie Bubble’s “Haters Gonna Hate” post on Style Bubble (22 January 2010)
• Meg Clarke’s Good Morning Midnight blog post, “Why Fashion is Worth Blogging About.” (17 February 2010)
• Lisa Armstrong’s Times (UK) article, “Fashion is Still a Feminist Issue” (3 March 2010).
• “Do Clothes Make the Woman?” in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 31.1 (2010): 166-171.

And finally, here are a few posts we’ve written on the subject of fashion and feminism in relation to, among other things, queerness, popular culture discourse,  and academia:

• Queer + Fashion (7 May 2009)
• Mind Over Malls or, Does Academia Hate Fashion? (3 August 2009)
• Shopping with Threadbared: A Conversation (11 January 2010)
• The Incensed Beauty Guru and Pop-Feminism (9 March 2010)

Feel free to add on to this list in the comments!