FASHION PERFORMATIVITY

By: Mia Petersen

Why is it still considered questionable when men dress in feminine-coded clothing? The theory of performativity helps understand our own perception of clothing belonging to a gender. In this article, I analyze two cases to show how performativity relates to gender and to fashion, and why we should break away from putting things and people into (gendered) boxes. Mark Bryan and Myles Sexton show us a different way to approach fashion. Both men, one gay, the other straight, use skirts and high heels (typically coded as feminine) as their daily attire, breaking away from gendered stereotypes and empowering others through their social media channels.

Gender Ideology and Hegemony

Today’s fashion industry is still dominated by the belief that there are only two genders. We see it with the use of pink and blue colour codes at gender reveal parties, in baby and kids’ stores, as well as in most retail stores, designer boutiques, and department stores. But what we believe to be girly or boyish is an idea that is socially and commercially constructed in that we believe that clothing and colour belong to a specific gender, and that the two genders are supposed to act in a certain way. Yet, you can be feminine without having a female gender or sex, or be masculine without identifying as a man or having masculine body parts - or be somewhere on that binary spectrum without identifying with any gender. We naturalize cultural myths as biological facts because it suits material consumption practices, political ideologies, colonial exploitation, or gender-based discrimination and exclusion.

We naturalize cultural myths as biological facts because it suits material consumption practices, political ideologies, colonial exploitation, or gender-based discrimination and exclusion3 .

We think about the body through the heterosexual lens and understand that to be the normative identification of who we are.

Gender Performativity

Judith Butler argues that we are not our gender - we do (or perform) our genders. Performativity investigates the way we do our gender and how gender exists because of our cultural and social understanding of it. Biological sex has nothing to do with gender identities and in fact, because gender is socially constructed, there may not be such a thing as gender at all. Performativity also questions the categorizing and the psychological meaning of fashion. Feminine and masculine are tied to expressions and codes of being male or female, which are culturally imposed understandings of gender and sex. These codes prescribe that if you identify as female, you must be feminine. But our identity is not shaped by our sex or gender, but rather a moisaic of expressions across the binary spectrum that manifest how we see ourselves. But social constructions and codes of clothing, fashion, and gender norms are presented to us in terms of what is seen as “correct”, which can have the isolating effect of making us feel wrong in our own body, clothing, culture, and communities. Yet, if gender is performative, then we act, dress, or talk in a certain way that is expected of us to conform and perform as feminine or masculine because of social codes and expectations and not because it reflects our true selves. Gender identity is an act you do or perform, made up of social forces throughout history. So, if the gender norms of our society are imaginary, why can the way we dress not reflect our own imagination, creativity, and self-expression and why do we have to keep fitting in? Butler also argues that gender is not a noun but a verb. Our language plays a big role in the understanding of how we describe and see gender. Because we see it as a noun we think it exists on its own. Gender becomes something through practices of gendering that involve the body in a psychic and material way, often through fashion choices, repetitions and variations of performativity.

Fashion is the most direct way in which we define, express, and perform our identity. Fashion is used to express ideas, norms, culture, values, beliefs, politics and so on, because “clothing is a basic element of the particular situated system of activity”. We use clothing as a representation of ourselves. The repetition of the way we use clothing gives an impression of how we identify ourselves. Fashion is the structure of the use of clothing that is affected by culture and society. Clothing is therefore where the inside meets the outside. Since “identity is what allows us to recognize a thing as the same thing despite the passage of time”, I argue that the same goes for performativity.

Mark Bryan

Mark Bryan is in his 60s, a working engineer living in Germany but born and raised in the US. He usually wears the typical business attire of shirts and ties with various skirts with high heels everyday and documents his outfits on his Instagram account. He stated that he wears high heeled shoes because it makes him feel more masculine. He sees himself as taller with a better posture when wearing high heeled shoes. Mark Bryan does his gender in both masculine and feminine ways. He uses feminine clothing and shoes to appear more masculine. I argue that Mark Bryan illustrates how his gender identity is performative through his clothing, which allows him to play with the binary between what is considered masculine and feminine, and shows that clothing does not belong to a gender because gender is fluent. Moreover, playing with gender binaries allows us to feel more empowered in our expressions of identities.

Myles Sexton

Myles Sexton identifies as a man, and also uses clothing that is typically coded as feminine to express his identity. In an interview, he explained how he wants to reclaim masculinity; how he looks at the history of fashion and wants the idea of high heels and makeup to be considered masculine as it has been before. He does not want to do his gender identity in the normative and prescriptive way that society expects. Myles understands that there are many genders and ways of dressing and that the mixing of gendered clothing and fashion is ever changing because of culture, society, and history. Myles performs his gender identity by reclaiming traditionally feminine-coded clothing and fashion that have in fact not always been associated with femininity.

Fashioning Identities

There are many other inspiring examples of people breaking with the gender binaries and fashioning their diverse identities in creative and inspiring ways (Alok Vaid-Menon, Harry Styles, Måneskin, Kid Cudi, and Lil Nas X just to name a few), but how can we all make a change in the way we see gender, and clothing as belonging to a particular gender? We need to see these uses of clothing, by Mark Bryan and Myles Sexton, as a call to re-educate ourselves about gender, sex, clothing, fashion, and performativity of self expression. We need to be more open-minded about what fashion and clothing can be - that a skirt and high heels can be empowering for men, just as powersuits can be empowering for women, and just as gender-fluid or non-gendered clothing can be empowering for non-binary people. We need to remember that clothing does not belong to a gender and that gender does not belong to a sex. We need to deconstruct the idea of sex and gender belonging together, and of clothing as gender-coded. We have seen the changes of gender roles and of clothing functions across the binaries throughout history and geography, but many people still struggle to accept social change. But Gen Z has taken the idea of performativity to heart, understanding that gender and fashion do not define them and can rather be used as creative tools of self-expression. Responding to Harry Styles posing in a dress on the cover of the US Vogue, Alok Vaid-Menon argued that it is good to see this gender-bending, but we also need to understand that there is so much more in between the gender binaries of male- and female-coded fashion. The representation of trans- and gender-fluid people is still not as widely accepted or mainstream as the men who choose to wear “feminine” clothes for self-empowerment. But as more and more people demand change and deconstruction of gender and gender-coded clothing, more people will understand that gender is constructed and performed and choose their outfits according to their own choice, rather than social expectations.