Fashionable Self

Style and fashionable sense of self is definitely something which matures over time and this is very closely linked to ones growth as a person.

Fashion reflects society. It reflects global change and in some movements in particular it can be an influence for change itself. One of the clearest examples of this is the link between women’s freedom and the manner in which gender defines clothing.

When the suffragettes first demanded the right to be acknowledged as full and equal member of society with the same right to vote among other aspects of life that men had at the time the only method they had at getting attention was by being somewhat provocative. This meant breaking social norms like … wearing pants (#gasp). At the time women and men dressed in entirely different ways and this enforced the divided between them. Today it might seem odd that a woman simply wearing pants was worth social outcry (possibly as odd as a woman not being able to vote?). Today there are still places in which women are prevent from voting or taking part in politics, namely Saudi Arabia and the Vatican City (oh and monarchs, dictatorships etc but that hardship is at least gender equal). One would not be surprised to note that in the mentioned areas along with restricted political freedom women’s dress code is also highly limited… guess what? No pants.

Another example of dramatic change occurred in and around the periods of world war where an emphasis on practicality and movement overruled elegance and delicacy as money disappeared and efforts were required from every person regardless of gender or wealth. Fabrics changed to decrease costs and women’s dress code evolved as they were forced into previously male dominated professions. This was reflected by pioneering men and women like Paul Poiret a Parisian designer who left behind strict corsets for free loose fitting clothes (on the very runway). He reflected the societal changes that were occurring in his designs and in doing so influenced massive change in the fashion industry.

Whenever a revolutionary step is taken whether it be in the liberty of a specific group of people, political unrest, religious rebellion or even global weather changes, fashion will simultaneously evolve.

This can even be seen in the role fashion plays in one’s life as an individual.

Being someone who is only 19 my style is definitely not absolute and has a very long path before reaching a stage of surety and until I get to that point the role my clothes play in my life is going to change as I change. How could I possibly have a set style when I haven’t even determined my internal set of morals or my position in society? What I am on the outside needs to reflect and build on what I am on the inside.

I was doing an interview in which one of the questions was “what is the most consistent colour in my wardrobe” and, although those of you who are regular readers will know that the answer is quite obviously black, it was not an answer which came to me so readily. This is not because I hold any resentment against black but rather that this colour is relatively new to me. When I originally showed a sustained interest in the fashion world I don’t think I owned a black item of clothing. To me colour was important and I believed quite heavily in the myth that pale people can’t wear black (this is very, very, VERY, false by the way). I wore lots of bright colours and plane blue denim jeans. I contrasted patterns and textures and focused on investing in interesting statement pieces.

At the end of last year however I rediscovered the beauty and power of basics and as this year has progressed most of those basics have been in the shade of black.

I don’t think that this has coincidentally transpired alongside my personal transformation as a young woman in society. I grew up, moved into a new place, and most importantly I actually started to confront my socially prescribed beliefs.

I have grown my knowledge on the world and have taken a step up as someone who speaks out and gets involved. This requires one to be assured of oneself, passionate and brave (the last of which I am still working on) and as I step up and represent myself and the ideals which I now stand for a larger more impressive stage I needed to be wearing something worthy of this and this new look is somber and dignified. Simple and composed.

But the clash and the craziness (and the passion) still holds a prominent place in who I am and how I dress.

All images by Justice Machaba (@justicemachaba)

What I am wearing:

Knitted Polo Neck Jumper – Woolworths (last season)

Black Over-sized Coat – Woolworths (last season)

Black textured stockings – the bottom of my sock draw

Rose Gold Chain – Vintage

Black (oh dear I can’t remember the name of these) Shoes – Edgars 

Black Gypsy Dress – MrP Clothing

“Fashion is about dressing according to what’s fashionable. Style is more about being yourself.”

Oscar de la Renta

x J

Girl Is Not Equivalent To Easy

Short and angry

I am always noting sexism around me, always pointing it out and telling people off for their offensive comments. Usually they are small, sleight of hand if you will, basic stereotypical and deeply entrenched sexist things but it is rare that I hear something blatant enough to enrage me.

Now understand the context of me being tired and overworked but also at the stage in my progression as someone striving for gender equality where I am tired of trying to explain why I feel dismissed in a calm eloquent manner which is more concerned with not offending the perpetrators than standing up for myself. However I am not trying to excuse what I did today. It doesn’t need an excuse as I do believe it was within reason.

Picture an engineering class, bored looks on their faces, sprawled about the room with no idea of order what so ever. We had a project due today and most people are tired or not there. There are about 15 girls and maybe 50 boys present. Now our lecturer asks for a volunteer to do an example on the board. Most of us don’t know what’s going on or really care at this stage, he isn’t a good lecturer, no one particularly likes him and it’s been a long day so as usual no body responds and after trying various people the only person who actually knows what’s going on finally ends his misery and goes to do the example.

She gets it all right, knows exactly what to do and ends up with the successful answer and probably teaches us more in those few minutes then he does in an entire lecture.

As she goes to sit down he pats her on the back and says to the class, “look guys, if this girl can do it, you boys can definitely do it too”….

The class expressed some surprise with most people noting that the sexist comment was well beyond acceptable even for those who do not particularly care. At first I didn’t realise what he had said. I suppose subconsciously I didn’t think I would hear such a comment in a university setting. As the lesson progressed I started to get angry.

To some it may seem that a comment, that an unthoughtful few words is too insignificant to get angry about and although there is much to do with sexism that is far more physically and emotionally harmful than this, this is a fundamental representation for how women are treated in our society… Especially in a degree like engineering.

With a few words he dismissed everything she had done, her work, her effort, and her brain were swept to worthless because of her gender. THIS IS WRONG.

I am taking steps in the direction of no longer keeping quiet and so after the lecture I went to him and expressed that what he had said was dismissive and offensive and that I thought it was unfair. I tried to explain that we already in the minority and we are already treated in a derogatory fashion and it does not help for someone of authority to add to this and teach our peers that this behaviour is okay.

I did succeed in making him uncomfortable and he did admit the error in his ways however did not apologise and it took most of the day for me to calm down in fact I think I am still shaking.

Some of my peers do think that I shouldn’t have said something. They think that it may jeopardise my academic success if I don’t keep quiet. My response to this is: Firstly, there are people who risk their lives for gender rights, I genuinely think this is the least I can do. Secondly if this does affect my academic relationship there are more than enough routes for me to protect myself and I stayed well within my rights. And thirdly, let us not get too melodramatic, I do believe his head is a little too big for me too affect him to such an extent.

What I do not understand is why I was the only person who said something? Why weren’t my peers similarly reeling in anger?

This treatment is NOT okay.

Being a girl means you have a specific body part. It does not mean that something must be easy if you can understand it. It does not mean we have to conform to specific roles or characteristics. It does not mean we can be silenced and dismissed with a few words.

We are supposed to be equals. We should be allowed the opportunity to prove ourselves as anything that we want to, whether it be an anthropologist, a financial accountant or even an engineer.

And NOBODY no matter what position you are in should be allowed to dismiss us.

The University Cape Town and specifically for me the Engineering department is not doing enough to prevent gender discrimination and exclusion.

This is not fair, and it is not right and it needs to change.

Doing something as a girl should not be synonymous with something being easy.

An Idealistic Women’s Month Rant

I have never wished to be a boy and I like who I am and what I am but I do find that I get treated differently and I don’t get treated at the standard that I would like to be which is increasingly frustrating.

Women’s Day (9 August) in South Africa exists to commemorate an event in our history where women stood together despite differences like race or religion and displayed strength and bravery. We are supposed to look back and learn, appreciate and try and utilise the characteristics that those women stood for. Sadly I don’t believe that this is really achieved at all. Women’s day for me was about a failing ANC Women’s league and a distasteful and rude stationary advert which symbolised the lack of forward progress towards equality.

#HappyWomensDay compliments of Bic Pens

To start with the latter… This was an advertisement by the company Bic, a blue pen staple, who, on Women’s Day, decided to put out a special message just for us. It read: “Look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man and work like a boss”

Um hello? I would like to know who was the idiot in charge who authorised it? There is no way to view this where it is not insensitive, infuriating and rude. I am not surprised that somebody came up with this what I am surprised at is that they thought it would be okay to publish this and that the appropriate moment was Women’s day.

I am angry. I am furious in fact and I am battling to come up with an eloquent way to call them sexist pigs.

This proved to me that we haven’t made much progress. Every day I fight to have words like “cunt” and “pussy” taken out of people’s vocabularies as an adequate way to degrade someone. Calling someone a vagina to make them feel insignificant is not appropriate. And because adolescent teenage boys are so self-absorbed that they couldn’t care less about how there selfish use of language could be adding to a socially accepted way to entrench the dismissal of women, I am constantly hitting a brick wall. Despite this I had faith that the more grown up version of society at least kept their ill-use of words to themselves but Bic showed to the entire world that this is not true and left much of equality-aware society reeling with shock.

The other issues is that of the ANC Women’s League. Now much like the Youth League they rarely come into much focus despite the desperate need for them and the very many problems surrounding their specific group of people.

This organisation is a subcategory to the current leadership of our land and is intended to represent the issues specific to women and try and draw attention to gender equality within the decisions made by our government. Now on a whole this group doesn’t really do much. Occasionally they get involved but it is rare that the general public sees any kind of representation or results.

It is very difficult to make a comment on this because of the complex political association and for the most part this isn’t really comment about the ANC. Women are one of the groups of society which are not yet at a level of equality to their counterparts and so in decisions made by whatever group in any part of society their needs to be a consideration of the effect this will have on gender rights now the ANC women’s league is supposed to be representing us in government.

On Women’s Day for the first time in months the general public were exposed to the organisation and this was in celebration of women and the only thing that really come out of it was the idea that maybe South Africa could have a female president for the next round. I felt like I couldn’t really celebrate anything because in the last year, in fact the last couple of years we still haven’t made much progress in gender equality in this country (hence Bic’s ability to publish such an incredible failure of an advertisement) and so I felt the celebrations were sort of self-congratulatory and unreasonable and put a damper on the day for me because it simply emphasised the lack of achievements we’ve made recently in the struggle to uplift our gender. Although without looking at the general politics of it, it is about time that South Africa got a female president from whatever party.

On a more personal level women’s day did allow me to appreciate the strength that some women manage to show despite adversaries and a lack of encouragement but it also made me sad that even in my own degree there still is such a low inspiration for young women in this arena that we still only manage to make up a quarter of our classes.

I want to not acknowledge myself as a woman but as a person and I don’t want the fact that I am female to define the choices people make in viewing me or dealing with me. However this is an idealistic view and I cannot live in this society and expect it to come true on its own without dealing with it.

And so I will claim my gender (or sex depending on how you define the words) and I will claim my right to being treated equally to my counterparts.

But why would I place such an issue alongside a fashion post? The connection may not be an obvious one but to me it is crucial. Fashion has for many years been a fundamental part of the so called female-culture and it is linked to much of the dismissal and issues associated with our struggle. Religious control is maintained by female dress code, media created body image is entrenched by clothing, even rape is excused based on women’s outfits. And yes I will not deny that male stereotypes are effected by outer dress as well but I do not believe it is executed to the same degree.

Fashion has formed a part of ever leap of empowerment that women have made. With freedom came pants, short skirts and bikini bottoms and today they may seem trivial in some cultures although in others with more entrenched gender inequality we still note women whose freedoms are even dictated in there dress sense.

For me clothing has never acted as a way to fit in with the commercialized norm but has rather been a tool for me to fight stereotype and express myself physically.

Fashion, like most art forms, can be utilized on the path to revolution. At the moment fashion is being abused as a way for women to be shoved into stereotypical roles and their supposed freedoms abused. Whereas I’d like to inspire a generation (of men and women) who use their clothing to express rather than conform and to break gender defined roles.

When I cut my hair I got questioned, dismissed, and left out. My decision was not accepted or liked and most girls and guys did not appreciate what I was doing. To my peers it was strange and required bravery and stupidity but why is this so? My male friends are going through stages of growing their hair which they now have the freedom to take control of (something I believe they should have had in school too). But, if they one day decide they are bored and cut it off to what is considered the standard, no body bats an eye or cares. It’s there decision and their haircut doesn’t seem to have the magically Rapunzel like properties that ours does (this might be because princess stories -also deeply sexist- weren’t a major focus of their childhoods).

Girls should be allowed to make decisions about their looks without being judged. Currently we tend to make fashion choices based on the dictation of society, a male run society, but I yearn for the day when we can choose to wear whatever we want and it not be questioned. Where you can wear a short skirt because you feel good in it and not have your motives interrogated or your body judged.

In this particular look I am wearing an old trench coat, new MRP Shoes (which have been declared to me as guys styled shoes but I don’t think any style should belong to a specific gender), my favourite pair of TopShop Mom jeans and my usual sweater-and-collar look.

I probably drink to much coffee on a regular basis

Now many aspects of this look could be described as boy-ish or masculine which I have two issues with. This first is that I genuinely believe that a choice in clothing should not have to be defined by gender. What do your sexual organs have to do with your clothing? And secondly the description of something as being that of a gender which is not your own is often intended to be off-putting and derogatory. Boys tend to not like be called feminine and girls tend to not like being called masculine. I wish for a society in which we do not fear being associate with another gender. Gender should not define our thoughts about ourselves or others.

There are plenty of colours in the world other than Pink and Blue.

“All through life there were distinctions – toilets for meb, toilets for women; clothes for men, clothes for women – then, at the end, the graves are identical.” – Leila Aboulela in Minaret

All photos on Middle Campus of The University of Cape Town by Refiloe Mokgele from allzuri.blogspot.com