Figure 23. “From ‘We Were Smart. ’”

Figure 23. From “We Were Smart.

According to Michel Foucault, ever since the classical age, the body has always

been a site to exercise power upon. The body is manipulated, shaped, trained, and it

obeys, responds, becomes skillful and increases its force. It is under the control of

powers that restrain it and make it docile. 108 In the factories that Smart youths worked

at in the 2000s, workers did their job by moving parts of their bodies repetitively to

accomplish one simple act every day on conveyor belts, sometimes in a toxic

environment that would make them physically ill. They had to fully concentrate on it

in case it went wrong, and if a worker got a hand cut, for example, he had to work

more to be able to pay for the medical treatment because the factory did not buy him

insurance. 109 Facing the restraints in the society, still people have the sartorial agency

to rebel against social norms. Although constrained by certain social expectations

when dressing, contestation and individual agency still find their way to exist.

110

108 Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison. New York : Vintage Books 1995. 109 Dai, Bin. Da Gong Ci Dian (打工词典). Beijing: Ren Min Wen Xue Chu Ban She 2011. 110 Woodward, Sophie. Why Women Wear What They Wear.

Borrowing Michel de Certeau’s concepts, it can be seen as the “tactics” employed by

individual users to challenge bigger “strategies. ” As he illustrates, “The space of a

tactic is the space of the other. Thus it must play on and with a terrain imposed on it

and organized by the law of a foreign power. [...] It must vigilantly make use of the

cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary

powers.

”111

For young people both in the 2000s and the 2020s, dressing in such styles is a

vital part of their identities, and it could be their tactics to challenge the social

structure. Fashion, as an important part of material culture, can reflect wider social

relations at certain times. 112 In turn, people creating their identities with clothes “is a

process of construction through the materiality of clothing; it is also the moment at

which the individual and the social and the ideal and the actual come together. ”113 It

is an ongoing process of one constantly interpreting their identity and others

interpreting them with visual and material cues, and both Smart and Y2K wearers

articulate their identities through the fashioning of their bodies.

114

However, even though both being rebellious with some similar visual styles,

Y2K and Smart are different in essence regarding their cultural backgrounds. Smart,

as shown above, belongs to the immigrant workers from rural areas who struggle to

pay for their livings. These workers use fashion as a means to express themselves and

to attract more attention. It is about the struggle of a particular social class in

111 de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life: 37. 112 Wilson, Elizabeth. “These New Components of the Spectacle: Fashion and Postmodernism. ” In Elizabeth Wilson (ed.) The Contradictions of Culture: Cities, Culture, Women. London: Sage Publication 2000. 113 Woodward, Sophie. Why Women Wear What They Wear: 30. 114 Kaiser, Susan B. “Fashion and Culture: Cultural Studies, Fashion Studies. ”