Fashion has been seen a device for confining women
BA Hons Technical Effects for the Performing Arts"Fashion has been seen as a device for confining women to an inferior social order." (Finkelstein, J. 1996 After a Fashion Melbourne: Melbourne University Press p.56)Why? Do you accept these arguments. Illustrate your argument with reference to specific examples. The male and female body shapes are physically different, therefore clothing for each gender has to be tailored to fit these variations. Women's clothing generally incorporates more darts to accommodate the bust and hips, while men's clothing has a more rectangular shape to cover their less curvaceous body. If these curve accommodating darts are the only adjustments necessary to make male clothing fit females, we have to ask why men and women's fashions have been so different throughout history? Can different still obtain equality? Are women confined to a lower social order? If so, what confines them? There are many different views to these questions, but no right or wrong answers, just opinions. I will be discussing some of these opinions, as well as contributing my own to help give a broader view of how, and indeed if 'fashion has been a device for confining women to an inferior s
Women from the upper and middle class were not expected to earn their own living, that was the job of their husband. Men are expected to conform to wearing clothing that is deemed by the society in which they live to be masculine, and women, feminine, for example, during the 1950's men wore suits that comprised of trousers and a hard-edged jacket to accentuate their broad shoulders and in turn their physical strength. The bust has been a major part of the female body accentuated by fashion. In addition to physically reshaping the female figure, the corset also subconsciously reshaped the way in which she was judged by society. I agree with this as it can be seen in many other fashions other than the corset. Wearing a corset was perceived as moral and it apparently symbolized discipline, respectability and good social etiquette. Norman (2000) also states thatAnthropologist Donald Symons tells us. However, this theory implies that if our body (male or female) doesn't naturally have the ideal body for procreation, we are therefore inferior because we don't have the physical traits of good genes? If this is true, and I hope it isn't, fashion doesn't confine women to an inferior social order, it is instead, our innate drives that subconsciously confine some men and some women to an inferior social order due to absences of physical qualities that indicate bad reproductive genes, and fashion certainly highlights these inequalities. The clearest femininecue to fertility is the curving contours created by the contrast between waist and hips.
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