Follow me!
Gender Mystique

Leggings and accessories on the High PLains.

10/28/2016

0 Comments

 
Day three of my research trip was a real eye-opener. I am still settling in and feeling my way around, so what I learned was pretty random, but still interesting.
  • I has on the phone talking to a Washington Post reporter about a dress code story involving leggings, and I started noticing how many of the women in the coffee shop were wearing them -- ALL OF THEM, except the two women wearing skinny jeans.  I could have packed my skinny jeans after all.
  • The same woman, who is probably 8-9 years older than I, does all of her shopping locally, mostly at Christopher & Banks at the Platte River Mall. She is particular about fit and hesitates to trust online sources.
  • One of the staff members at the library taught at the high school in the 1960s and 70s, and shared her recollections of dress code issues from that era, especially girls' skirts getting shorter and shorter, until pants became the more modest alternative.
  • I met the owner of the local clothing store, and mentioned that I felt overdressed because I was wearing a decorative scarf. "Yeah, we aren't much for accessorizing here", he said. So my impression has been confirmed.
0 Comments

Questions for North Platte

10/25/2016

0 Comments

 
For the next few weeks, I will be visiting my old home town, North Platte, Nebraska, in search of answers to a long (and growing) list of questions. Some of the questions are personal, and I will be blogging those elsewhere. But they intersect with questions related to my current book project about women, fashion, and identity across the life course. Those questions -- and whatever answers I find -- will be posted here.
Intersectionality -- defined as "the complex, cumulative manner in which the effects of different forms of discrimination combine, overlap, or intersect" -- has played an increasingly important part in my research. Decades ago, it was sufficient to focus on gender and sexism, but the realities of discrimination and have led scholars to also incorporate racism, classism, and other oppressive ideologies into their work. My interest is in how ageism works in these mixtures.

At the same time, I am fearful of trying to take on too much -- too many variables. So this trip reduces the complexity to the intersectional life courses of white women of my own age, but with whom I share a common origin. I lived in Nebraska for the first eight years of my life, seven in the bustling railroad town of North Platte. How would my life have been different if my family had not moved to the New Jersey suburbs, and then to rural New England? What was it like to grow up in North Platte?

Specifically, I expect to begin with questions like these:
  • Who have been their style influencers/icons?
  • Where do they shop?
  • Do they sew or knit?
  • What were high school dress codes like in the 1960s?
  • What do they wear to work? To church? Grocery shopping?
  • What do they think of Advanced Style
0 Comments

"A size, not an age" (conference proposal)

10/1/2016

0 Comments

 
It took me a while, but I have settled on the paper topic I will be presenting (fingers crossed) at the Popular Culture Association conference in San Diego next April. Since I am in the middle of a giant research project, I had lots of choices, but this one kept calling to me. Here is the abstract I submitted. What do you think? 
​Women's clothing sizes are complicated. Despite decades of attempts to standardize them based on measurements, female shoppers still must navigate a confusing, chaotic system of categories, vanity sizing, and proprietary sizing schemes. In this presentation, I will add to the confusion by tracing the shifting relationship between age categories and size categories (junior, misses, and half or plus sizes, for example).  

This fraught relationship dates back to Lane Bryant's maternity designs, which found a market among "stout" women, especially those over fifty. Similarly, junior sizes, once designed for the slim, high-busted figures of women in their teens and early 20s, became the size range of choice for women of any age who retained their "girlish" figures. (Thus "A size, not an age", the theme of a 1957 fashion show at Saks Fifth Avenue.)

I will discuss this quandary from the point of view of women over fifty, who must search for "age appropriate" clothing based on their body type.
0 Comments

    Jo Paoletti

    Professor Emerita
    ​American Studies
    University of Maryland

    Picture
    Picture

    Archives

    January 2023
    February 2022
    May 2021
    June 2020
    February 2020
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    February 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    June 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010

    Categories

    All
    1920s
    1950s
    1960s
    1970s
    1980s
    Aging
    Ask Jo
    Baby Cards
    Baby Clothes
    Baby Dresses
    Beyond The Us
    Book 1
    Book 2
    Book 3
    Boys
    Button On Suit
    Button-on Suit
    Child Consumers
    Children And Consumers
    Children As Consumers
    Color Symbolism
    Creepers
    Culture Wars
    Design Details
    Dress Codes
    Dress Up Play
    Dress-up Play
    Ethnicity
    Fashion And Age
    Feminism
    Garment Details
    Gender Binary
    Girls
    Hair
    Layettes
    Men
    Middle Childhood
    Neutral
    Pants For Girls
    Pink
    Pink For Boys
    Prenatal Testing
    Princesses
    Que Sera Sera
    Rants
    Research
    Rompers
    Sexuality
    Stereotypes
    Teens
    Toddlers
    Tomboys
    Transgender
    Unisex
    Unisex. 1970s
    Women
    Writing Updates

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.