Bodies in clothes, in motion

Did I mention that this is where I am researching right now?
When I entered the Salle Ovale at the Richelieu site of the BnF, I quite literally got the chills.

I am loving my research. I'm dealing with some theorists that propose new ways of thinking about bodies in space and in culture. From that, a couple thoughts for pondering:

(1) Is movement cultural? That is to say, would your body move differently if you had been brought up in rural China? or Ghana? or even Spain?

"[W]e—like all the world’s peoples—consign everything to do with out bodies to the domain of the ‘natural’. That is to say, the territory which is beyond the reach of culture. Always and everywhere the way ‘we’ walk, sit, squat, lean against a wall, stand, sleep, copulate, and so forth is seen as the way the body ‘naturally’ behaves.”[a]

(2) What influence does clothing have on the way we move and think? We traditionally think of clothing being an expression of some internal identity. I wear a skirt on Sunday because I'm a Mormon woman. If I were Senegalese I would wear a boubou.

An external sign of some internal identification, right?

Not according to an article I read yesterday on women's fashion in France in the 1920s. Mary Louise Roberts argues that women's fashion was not only a "marker" (an external sign) of feminist leanings, but a "maker" of cultural change.

What I'm getting at is this: our clothing choices can influence us. Adopting a certain style of dress can change the way we behave and move. I think our relationship to clothing is symbiotic: not only is our dress an expression of something internal, but it also shapes that internal state. Robert's argument is that the more mannish clothing women were sporting, thanks in large part to Coco Chanel, had the "effect of reversing or blurring the boundaries of sexual difference, causing women not only to look but to act (more) like men." [b]

I've seen this at play in my own sartorial choices. I am one of the world's biggest fans of jeggings, and I started wearing them, I thought, as an expression of my own identity and in large part in reaction to the (prudish?) aversion to them in BYU culture. But wearing jeggings changed the way I moved - I had more physical freedom than in traditional jeans and therefore manipulated space differently, which has had some implications for the way I think (though I'm having a tough time expressing exactly what those are...).

And I guess I'll 'fess up on this one, too: I gave up wearing bras about four months ago. Only if my top is diaphanous or form-fitting enough to make it evident will I put on that hated soutien-gorge.

Sometime in mid-October began the in/famous Friday Free Days, when I would literally throw off the clothing I found restrictive and pair jeggings with a flowing top that could hide my lack of a bra. And I began noticing that I behaved differently on Friday Free Days - I felt more relaxed and far more at ease in my own skin, perhaps because I was living more in that skin than I had before.

Sorry if my confession is a little too personal, but I am out in the open (pun intended) on this one.

Basically, I think that clothes really do make the wo/man.

NOTES

[a] "Dance, Gender and Culture," Ted Polhemus. Dance, Gender and Culture, ed. Helen Thomas. Macmillan Press: London, 1993. p. 4

[b] "Samson and Delilah Revisited: The Politics of fashion in 1920s France," Mary Louise Roberts. The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris Between the Wars, ed. Whitney Chadwick and Tirza True Latimer. Rutgers University Press: Piscataway, 2003. p. 73