Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution
Jo B. Paoletti
Language: English
Pages: 216
ISBN: 0253015960
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Notorious as much for its fashion as for its music, the 1960s and 1970s produced provocative fashion trends that reflected the rising wave of gender politics and the sexual revolution. In an era when gender stereotypes were questioned and dismantled, and when the feminist and gay rights movements were gaining momentum and a voice, the fashion industry responded in kind. Designers from Paris to Hollywood imagined a future of equality and androgyny. The unisex movement affected all ages, with adult fashions trickling down to school-aged children and clothing for infants. Between 1965 and 1975, girls and women began wearing pants to school; boys enjoyed a brief "peacock revolution," sporting bold colors and patterns; and legal battles were fought over hair style and length. However, with the advent of Diane Von Furstenberg’s wrap dress and the launch of Victoria's Secret, by the mid-1980s, unisex styles were nearly completely abandoned. Jo B. Paoletti traces the trajectory of unisex fashion against the backdrop of the popular issues of the day―from contraception access to girls' participation in sports. Combing mass-market catalogs, newspaper and magazine articles, cartoons, and trade publications for signs of the fashion debates, Paoletti provides a multigenerational study of the "white space" between (or beyond) masculine and feminine.
1967 and 1973, and the battles over long hair, mustaches, and beards reveal the very different gender rules as they applied to men. The public response to each of these trends also gives us an indication of the differences between the cultural expectations of men and women. Femininity and masculinity are not simple opposites; they are more like two sports with a few commonalities but with totally different sets of rules. Consider, for example, figure skating and ice hockey. Athletes in both must
Nicholson expressed the dilemma of men’s clothing as “the problem of how to be individual without being funny.”2 Interestingly, and probably not coincidentally, this concept of vulnerability to ridicule also appears in the psychological research on modern male sex roles. In one of the earliest studies of clothing and human behavior, “fear of ridicule” was given as a motive in clothing selection more often than any other motive by men. For women, however, it fell below reasons such as “to appear
nostalgia in the fashion press for the elegance of bygone days. The eccentricity of the mod and hippie era was gradually replaced with trends that often broke as many rules, just not all in a single outfit. The leisure suit offered an alternative to jacket and tie for the new, more casual lifestyles of the 1970s. After several years of long, unkempt, and unstyled hair, men turned to hairstylists, who gave them a neater, well-groomed appearance. The prices were higher than in a barbershop, and he
Ehrhardt.10 Besides introducing and elucidating the very useful concepts of gender identity and gender roles to a generation of college students, Money and Ehrhardt’s book is best known for the story of John/Joan, an infant boy whose circumcision went terribly awry, leaving him with an irreparably damaged penis. The solution was surgical reassignment, conducted when the child was about a year and a half old, along with follow-up therapy and hormone treatments that Money claimed produced a
school officials to keep their minds on their own schoolwork, it is the beginning of a new revolutionary era of permissiveness in this country fostered by the judiciary.” Table 5.1. Court Decisions in School Long Hair Cases, 1965–1978 Tinker v. Des Moines did not open the door to riots in the schools, but it did open the floodgates on dress code cases. Students, their families, and attorneys saw an opportunity to broaden the narrow ruling, and administrators and school boards saw in the