DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
‘YOU ARE WHAT YOU WEAR’
YOUNG GIRLS’ USE OF CLOTHING AND THEIR EMBODIED IDENTITY
CONSTRUCTIONS
ALEXANDRA ALLAN
CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
WALES, UK
Alexandra Allan, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Glamorgan Building, King Edward
VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3WT. Email: AllanA1@cardiff.ac.uk
1
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
Foreword: This paper is given as a basic outline for the presentation that I will be making in Lancaster. As it
was written over a year ago I feel that my theorising and thinking has substantially moved on since it was
developed. It is hoped that the presentation for the Girls in Education seminar will connect with the basic
argument of the paper but will move onto reflect my current thinking and theorising; to discuss some of the
ideas that I am developing for a new chapter in my thesis on the embodiment of girlhood.
The clothed body: some introductions
It has often been suggested that we live in an era characterised by visual images; a society that places
premium on the way things look, especially in how we present ourselves to others. Lasch (1979), in
particular, has argued that we live in a ‘narcissistic age’ where the presentation of self is important and the
body becomes a ‘fetishised commodity’ that can be attractively packaged and sold. Given this emphasis on
self presentation and appearance as central to modern society and to the way in which identities are
constituted, it is surprising that relatively little has been written about dress and adornment within sociology.
As Edwards (1997) suggests, sociology has generally tended to neglect fashion; viewing it as outside of the
social sciences and more in line with the arts. Similarly, Polhemus (1988) suggests that dress has
traditionally been viewed as a typically feminine pursuit that is irrational, trivial and unworthy of serious
sociological analysis. Entwhistle (2000) explains that, even when fashion has been considered by
sociologists it has tended to be reduced to simplistic overarching theories that rely on grand notions of
emulation (Simmel 1971, Veblen 1953) or of communication/symbolism (Barthes 1985) that do not account
for the complexity and contradictions of everyday dress. Gender, race and class all appear to have been
oversimplified in these theories. Childhood in particular is a social category that has received very little
attention in this literature. Although a small body of literature does now address this issue (Swain 2002,
Bodine 2003, Pole 2004), traditionally children have been regarded as inactive social agents and passive
consumers of clothing.
Perhaps the largest criticism that sociological fashion theory has had to endure is of its use and portrayal of
the human body. Many writers have argued that despite its obvious relevance to dress, the body has largely
been ignored in studies of clothing. Quoting Turner, Entwhistle (2000) argues that ‘there is an obvious and
prominent fact about human beings…they have bodies and they are bodies’ (Turner 1985:1). Furthermore,
human bodies are essentially dressed bodies; dress is a basic fact of social life, an individual act that prepares
the body for the social world. The neglect of bodies in the study of dress, Entwhistle (2000) believes, is what
has hindered our understanding of clothing and the importance that it plays in our everyday lives: ‘without a
body dress lacks fullness and movement and is incomplete’ (p10). Wilson (1985:1) also makes a similar
point when she comments on the ‘strangeness’ of dress without the human body:
2
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
For clothes are so much a part of our living, moving selves that, frozen on display in the mausoleums
of culture, they hint at something only half understood, sinister, threatening, the atrophy of the body,
and the evanescence of life.
Entwhistle (2000) proposes a move away from seeing dress as an object to seeing it as an ‘embodied activity
embedded in social relations’. She understands dress as a ‘situated bodily practice’ and her own work
provides a theoretical and methodological framework to understand dress as a social activity.
The aims of this paper – an embodied theoretical approach to dress
My own work begins from this understanding of dress as a ‘situated bodily practice’. This paper will seek to
explore the relatively under researched topic of children’s clothing use; it will concentrate on children’s use
of clothing to construct their various ‘childhood’, ‘gendered’, ‘sexualised’ and ‘classed’ identities. The paper
will suggest that although ‘class’, ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘age’ are useful lenses that we can view
children’s clothing practices through, in reality the process is much more complex. Indeed, the paper will
demonstrate that children can use clothing to transgress trouble and complicate identity boundaries; identities
are ‘fixed’ through clothing and they are ‘transformed’ and made fluid. Importantly, the paper also seeks to
explore clothing as an embodied identity practice. It aims to understand how children ‘live’ their clothing on
a daily basis and how they embody these identities through their clothing. A central concern of the paper will
also be to explore the ‘body work’ children participate in on a daily basis in order to negotiate the meanings
of their clothing and bodily appearance/identity. Dress, therefore, will be used in this paper as an analytic
tool; it is not clothing per se that this paper focuses on, but rather, dress as a visible marker/way of
presenting the human body to others.
This paper’s theoretical framework is influenced by Foucault’s work concerning the ‘discursive’ and ‘docile’
body. Foucault (1977) argues that through surveillance our bodies are made docile by institutions and
become subject to mass standards of behaviour, these standards of behaviour (or ‘discourses’) are then
internalised by individuals and govern the ways in which we use and understand our bodies. Foucault (1980)
also suggests, however, that people can act on their bodies in different ways and resist these normalising
discourses. He does not, therefore, see the body as an entirely natural entity, instead he sees it as discursively
produced and his work has been extremely important to an understanding of the socially constructed body.
Although, as Entwhistle (2000) suggests, Foucault has very little to say about fashion, his work can be
utilised to think about how discourses on dress discipline and instil meaning on the body. We can use his
theories to understand how and why people may dress differently and resist being seen as ‘normal’ in their
appearance. His theory is also important in understanding the ways in which dress can reproduce gendered
discourses on the body, for as Butler (1990) also suggests, gender is not an essential characteristic of the
body but a product of styles and techniques.
3
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
Two further caveats need to be discussed before moving on to detail the research this paper is based upon.
Firstly, it is necessary to note that this research is based upon a study of ‘female bodies’. Very little has been
written in mainstream sociology about women’s bodies and indeed Foucault has also been criticised for
failing to account for gendered bodies in his analyses (McNay 1992). It has been left to feminists to account
for the very different ways in which women experience their bodies (and indeed their clothes) in comparison
to men; they have made the personal body political (Bordo 1995). As Frost (2001) suggests, in a study of
girls it is necessary to account for the different experiences girls have of their bodies and to remain aware of
the fact that they live in specific bodies with very real, material constraints. Therefore, it is not just any
‘dressed bodies’ that this paper seeks to explore but the gendered, feminine bodies of young girls. Secondly,
these girls are also children and this has consequences for the ways in which their bodies will be perceived in
society. As James (2000) argues, children’s bodies are subjected to discourses of normality, growth and
change and any account of their bodies must appreciate the ways these temporal discourses are inscribed on
the body and the ways in which children learn to negotiate these meanings in their everyday lives.
My own research – an ‘embodied’ ethnography
This paper draws on research carried out with one class of twenty five girls (aged ten and eleven) in a single
sex, private girls’ school in the South West of Britain. The main emphasis for this research was to explore
the ways in which girls manage and negotiate their gender identities as ‘girls’ with their academic identities
as ‘pupils’. However, it was recognised that a major part of this project would be concerned with the visual
re/presentation of identity through the body and clothing, this paper is concerned with that data.
My research was an ethnographic project that utilised a number of different methods. Some of these methods
were specifically chosen to access the topic of embodiment and clothing. In particular, photographs were
used to encourage the girls to re/present themselves visually and to talk about their clothing and appearance.
Some of the girls joined a lunchtime photography club that I ran in the school to get the girls to look at
photographs critically and to see how other people were visually represented. This involved looking at
photographs by various professional photographers and writing monologues and stories about the girls they
saw in these pictures. The girls were encouraged to create their own photographic diaries to portray things of
importance to them and they were also invited to take part in a one day photography workshop where they
worked alongside a professional photographer to produce a range of portrait prints that visually expressed
their various identities. But as Emmison and Smith (2000) remind us, photographs are not the only method
capable of capturing visual aspects of society. Through observation I was also able to make notes of the girls
clothing and its usage in everyday situations as I spent time with them in the classroom and on school trips.
The girls were also interviewed in their friendship groups and were asked specific questions about their
bodies, appearance and their clothing. My role as an embodied researcher was central to all of these practices
4
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
(Coffey 1999). As a researcher it was important to be aware of the impact my body and clothes had on the
children in my research. The clothes that I wore imbued my body with specific meanings, the way I wore my
clothes had particular significance and the children drew on my own dressing habits as a way of expressing
their own ideas about dress.
Fashioning femininity: using clothes to construct a feminine identity
Entwhistle (2000) remarks that ‘fashion is obsessed with gender’. It could also be argued that the girls in my
own study were relatively obsessed with the ways in which clothing could demonstrate gender. Their
primary concern was not, however, the demarcation between male and female clothing but the much subtler
differences clothing could illustrate between different femininities. The girls talked to me in interviews about
the various identities they felt were available to them as girls and when explaining these identities to me they
could rarely distinguish between them without resorting to talk of clothing:
G: I am not a tomboy I am a girly girl. I hate wearing t-shirts and trousers.
L: Tomboys wear trousers and baggy Mosher clothes. Girly girls wear dresses and look all lovely.
G: But tomboys are not moshers.
AA: What are moshers then?
L: Moshers wear baggy and all black and they are disgusting and they mope around and smoke.
A: Tomboys wear plain jeans and blue tops and things.
But it was not just the types of clothing that were important to the girls; colours were considered equally or
even more important. ‘Girly girls’ were linked with pink items of clothing where as tomboys told me that
they preferred to wear blue. This was clearly illustrated in one of the photographs the girls constructed as
part of the photographic workshop. In the photograph two members of the group (who described themselves
as tomboys) dressed themselves in neutral colours and sat against a stark, black backdrop. They asked one of
the other girls to kneel before them in a pink dress and blow a kiss to the camera. At the front of the scene
the girls also arranged an array of pink and blue products. The idea behind the photograph was to show the
stark differences between tomboys and girly girls in the way that they dressed and the colours they wore. The
girls summarised these feelings in a caption they wrote to accompany the photograph:
Not all girls have to wear pink lipstick and skirts. Some do and some don’t and there is nothing you
can do about it. Why make us all stereotypes when we can be unique individuals.
Experimenting with clothing – changing meanings and changing fashions
5
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
Although most of the girls recited these clothing ‘rules’ to me in interviews, in reality the meanings of
clothes or colours were not quite so fixed. There was often confusion over clothes in colours like green,
yellow and purple. These colours were seen to be fairly neutral and so could be adopted to compliment a
range of identities. Often the meaning of clothes and their colours were negotiated locally and depended on
the context in which they were worn. When I questioned a girl who saw herself as a tomboy about wearing a
pink fleece she told me it was okay for her to wear it as it was an ironic statement. This clearly fits with
Finkelstein’s (1991) idea that clothes can be misappropriated to fracture, parody and satirise conventions.
The colour black could also be ambiguous and worn by a number of different girls. In interviews the girls
told me that it was mainly worn by Goths, tomboys and moshers and generally signalled some sort of
resistance to a ‘girly girl’ identity. Holland (2004) also suggests that black clothing is associated with
resistance (especially to traditional feminine dress). However, she also believes that over time black clothing
has changed in meaning (from mourning to Chanel’s little black dress) and it now has many other uses. This
was certainly the case in my own study where some of the girls simply wore black clothing for practical
reasons. Gabriella reached this conclusion in the course of one of the interviews where she reasoned with the
other girls:
Okay black is worn by Goths but what about if I wore a black dress I wouldn’t be a Goth then would
I? Oh and remember that black suit Elsie wore to Katrina’s party with a turquoise top she looked
really nice…she was really pleased with her self because she said it went with everything and she
felt really smart.
Often the girls relished the fact that clothes were ambiguous and could shift in their meanings (Gleeson and
Frith 2004). The girls felt that this gave them a chance to experiment with their clothing and also in their
identities. Laurel, for example, insisted she could ‘play’ with her identity and that it could not be pinned
down; she could be a Goth, a girly girl or a tomboy depending on her mood. She told me that she used her
clothes to reflect her change in identity so sometimes she wore pink dresses and other times she would wear
black trousers. Other girls could recall times when they had adopted different styles of dress due to changing
friendship patterns, as Gabriella told me:
Well like this one time in year five I sat next to Gale and I got talking to her and I actually got quite
friendly with her but it just goes to show all of a sudden I got more boyey…like I didn’t act like that
but I did start wearing baggy trousers…it is part of growing up and experimenting to see who you
want to be.
Some of the girls were avid watchers of the television clothes makeover series ‘What not to wear’ and so
they too would experiment with their clothes, makeover their image and come to school with a radically new
style. As Guy and Banim (2000) suggest, clothes contain a fantasy element; people can use them to describe
6
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
and imagine the person they would like to be. Clothes were an important way for the girls to re/present their
identities visually and to fix themselves into certain ‘feminine categories’ but they could also be used to
transform identities and suggest multiple re/presentations. Clothes were used as a powerful and enjoyable
way of remaking the self through the body.
Clothing restrictions – gender and bodily limitations
Despite this playful use of clothing, it was not simply the case that the girls could try on any clothes (or
indeed any feminine identity) that they fancied (Butler 1993). In their everyday use of clothing the girls were
subject to some very real, material restraints generally imposed on them by their bodily shape. Laurel, for
example, despite referring to herself as a ‘dib dab’ (someone who was able to change their clothes and
identity frequently) would often be positioned by others as a tomboy because of her larger bodily frame.
Many of the girls told me that she was ‘too big’ or ‘too fat’ to be a girly girl: ‘can you imagine those legs in a
skirt! No way, she is not girly!’ Laurel’s larger build appeared to limit her in her presentation as an
‘authentic’ girly girl. This was not the case for all girls as some were able to ‘work’ with their bodies to
imbue it with different meanings or to change the ways in which they were seen by others, as James (2000)
suggests their bodies could be used as agents of ‘self help’. Vanessa, for example, was a larger girl than
Laurel but her keen interest in sport stopped her from being seen as big or fat. Vanessa also came from an
extremely wealthy family and she was able to use her economic capital to buy the current fashions which
helped her gain cultural capital and retain her popularity in the ‘girly girl’ group at school.
The girls also appeared to be constrained in their use of clothing to construct their gender identities by
dominant feminine discourses of female attractiveness. The girls did, as McRobbie (1994) argues, have a
number of clothing options open to them to express and explore their identities as girls. It could also be
argued that they were not simply presented one image of what a woman is in the media. Instead they were
presented with an ‘array of contradictory representations, which produce multiple meanings and therefore
afford myriad sites for identification’ (Ussher 1997:14). Within popular literature, for example, the girls were
keen on reading Jacqueline Wilson books because they felt these books offered them a number of different
‘feminine roles’. However, even with these multiple options available to them, the girls were still concerned
to create and present an ideal ‘feminine look’. Even the tomboys, who were openly critical of a hyperfeminine presentation and wished to visually represent themselves as different, were keen not to be seen as
‘ungirly’ or ‘masculine’. In fact, they were openly critical of girls who did appear to present themselves in a
masculine manner. For example, in the photography club there was one particular photograph (taken by
professional photographer Sally Mann) that the girls referred to as the ‘boygirl’ photograph. All the girls
were critical of this photograph saying the girl looked ‘manly and ugly’, ‘weird’, ‘with funny eyes’ and a
‘boy hairdo’. Brownmillar (1984:3) explains this reaction when she states:
7
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
Femininity always demands more…to be insufficiently feminine is viewed as a failure in a core
sexual identity, or as a failure to care sufficiently about oneself, for a woman found to be wanting
will be appraised (and will appraise herself) as mannish or neutered or simply unattractive, as men
have defined these terms.
In fact, the girls positioned as tomboys would sometimes employ ‘recuperative strategies’ to reassert their
femininity (Holland 2004). Laura, for example, made it quite clear to me that although she was a tomboy she
would still wear dresses because ultimately she wanted to be seen as feminine. For other girls their hair was a
way of ‘flashing their femininity’ to others (Holland 2004). Ingrid told me how she had once been referred to
as a ‘little boy’ when she was younger because she had cropped hair. From that day onwards, she told me,
she had always worn her hair longer so that she could not be confused in the same way again. Holland (2004)
also suggests that hair has particular feminine significance and she reminds us of the many images and
stories of hair that have been told throughout history (such as Rapunzel and Lady Godiva). Holland (2004)
believes that it is now easier for girls to wear their hair in shorter styles but for some there is a prevailing
discourse that states a lack of hair indicates a loss of femininity.
(Hetero)sexual clothing – seeing and being seen by others
Clothing and appearance do not just indicate our femininity they also illustrate and constitute our sexual
identities (Davis 1992). The girls concern to look feminine and not too ‘manly’ was also about a need to
present their bodies as heterosexual and heterosexually desirable. The dominant discourses that limited their
use of clothing and inscribed meanings on their body could be described as ‘heterofeminine’; the girls were
expected to construct a bodily image that reflected both a heterosexual and a feminine identity (Ingraham
1996). Because the girls attended a single sex school, the need to present a heterosexual image was perhaps
even stronger than it would be in a co-educational setting, as Katrina told me: ‘I went to Staples the other day
and a boy said to me that I looked like a lesbian in my uniform! I hate that…why do we have to wear gay
uniforms…at least when we wear our own clothes out of school we can be our real selves’. But some of the
girls in my study clearly enjoyed dressing up and attracting (hetero)sexual attention. Elsie, in particular,
would talk to me about the new outfits she had bought to ‘go up town and test out on the lads’. For Elsie
dressing up and going into town was about ‘being seen’ it was a performance in order to gain attention from
boys.
And the girls did not just dress up to go into town at the weekends. Big events like school discos were also
used by the girls to be seen in their outfits. Sarah told me the day before one of the school discos that she was
going for a ‘sex goddess’ appearance that night because she had heard that several boys from the local school
would also be there. Sarah told me that to construct such an image took a great deal of work – she would
have to do her hair, buy a new outfit, have a bath and do her nails. She also told me that the clothes she
8
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
would wear would have to be carefully considered too. Although she already knew she was going to wear a
short skirt and tight top she was not sure which one it would be until the evening itself: ‘It just has to be
right…you know feel right…you know like sexy and you might feel fat or something so I’ve just got to wait
and see what I feel like on the night’. Having said that Sarah continued to tell me that she would probably
wear her new ‘silky camisole’ top her Mum had bought her at the weekend because she liked the feel of it on
her skin: ‘it’s so silky and slinky!’ As Sarah’s talk illustrates, making an effort and being seen in clothes was
important to the girls. As Best (2004) suggests, these events are often more about the process of getting
ready for the dance than the event itself. Different outfits are chosen to ‘set the self apart’ and body work is
collectively articulated to ‘share the burdens and pleasures of beauty’. Even the structuring of these events
are planned with a performative element so that girls can be seen and simultaneously see others (Best 2004).
‘Dressing up’ and ‘making over’ - clothes/gender as bodily performance and masquerade
Sarah’s talk also illustrates the fact that the body is important in this (hetero)sexualised performance of
dressing up. For Sarah’s clothes did not just adorn the body or ‘reflect a pre-sexed body’; they also infused it
with sexuality and sexual meaning (Entwhistle 2000). Sarah’s sex goddess appearance was not just about
dressing up or putting on clothes it was also about the way clothes felt on her body and enhanced her frame
(Candy 2005). To complete this image Sarah used shower gels, body lotions and perfumes which suggest
that it was more than a look, it was also a smell. The girls investments in their bodies and this ‘sexualised
cosmetic culture’ could be interpreted as them internalising the ‘male gaze’ (Holland et al 1998). As Skeggs
(1997:113) states: ‘femininity becomes the ultimate legitimator of masculinity…it offers to masculinity the
power to impose standards, make evaluations and confirm validity’. Even the tomboys, who claimed they
had no desire to attract boys’ attention, still wished to be recognised as attractive and (hetero)feminine. The
fact that the majority of these girls felt a need or a desire to ‘flash’ and perform their femininity through their
clothing or bodily appearance also tends to indicate that the body is not naturally gendered, as Tseelon
(1995:38) points out:
The effort to be ‘authentic’ implies a twofold paradox which suggests that originally ‘one is being
what one is not’. In other words: a woman is not originally authentically feminine but one can
become one with effort. Second, ‘being authentic implies an act of objectifying oneself, of seeing
oneself through the eyes of the Other. And a being which is for-others can not be for-itself.
The girls’ (re)constructions and (re)presentations of femininity can be seen as masquerade (Riviere 1929,
Holland 2004). Their use of clothing on the body highlights the constructed nature of gender and shows how
cultural products, bodily postures and stylised acts can be used to create a feminine identity on the body’s
surface (Butler 1993).
9
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
‘Common’ or ‘classy’ – using clothes to create ‘classed’ identities
Although many of the girls in my study wished to represent themselves as heterosexually attractive they
could not do so at any cost. There appeared to be a fine line between being ‘flirty’ in fashion and being
‘tarty’:
M: I think a bit of tart is alright…I mean you want to look good.
J: Yes you want to look good but no tart is never alright!
C: Yeah I mean Claire from my junior school…no offence to her but she was really tarty! She had
these huge hoop earrings and you could literally put your arms through them!
J: Yeah you are a tart if you wear those earrings and short skirts and stuff. It looks really
common…my Mum says it looks like you have not been properly looked after!
As this extract shows, the girls often closely regulated each others appearances and those found to be ‘too
sexual or ‘tarty’ were disciplined. But dressing ‘too tartily’ was not just about being sexual it was also related
to class differences; the girls took it to indicate a particular type of working class identity. Girls who dressed
in an overtly sexual manner were also sometimes referred to as ‘townies’. The word ‘townie’ is generally
used to refer to people who keep closely to mainstream culture and fashion (Holland 2004). In this context
the term townie did also mean mainstream but it was generally used to denote a particular type of working
class, promiscuous sexuality. The terms ‘tarty’ and ‘townie’ were used interchangeably to shame those girls
who did not cover their bodies in an ‘appropriate’ manner. Renold (2005) also found this in her study, that
overtly sexual presentations were not deemed acceptable from middle class girls. This is not to suggest that
all girls that dressed ‘sexily’ were considered ‘working class’, for as Sarah’s case study shows this ‘flirty
fashion’ discourse can earn girls a tremendous amount of social and sexual capital (Renold 2005). The girls
that managed to ‘pull’ this particular identity off, however, usually had strong friendship group backing. But
perhaps even more importantly, it was about the way these girls wore clothes on their bodies; they were
confident and self assured, they ‘strided not strutted’, they ‘flicked their hair out’ but would ‘never wiggle
their bum’, they could exhibit flesh but also retain modesty.
Classed distinctions and ‘designer’ femininities
Many fashion theorists have commented on peoples’ ability to use clothes to denote a distinct classed
identity (Veblen 1953, Simmel 1971, Bourdieu 1975). The girls in my study also told me that they wished to
make class distinctions through their clothing and not all of them were made in terms of sexual display. The
10
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
girls often made distinctions between themselves as (middle class) girls who wore ‘classy’ clothes and
(working class) others who wore ‘common’ clothes:
K: I mean my Mum would never let me out looking common!
A: What is common?
K: I don’t know…well like wearing those massive hoop earrings.
A: Yeah like some of those girls at dance that we call the handbag girls
K: Yeah their handbags are like tiny and they have nothing in them…and they walk around like this
(wiggles her hips) and some girls gel their hair up in a bobble everyday. It is quite bad.
Designer labels were also an important way for these girls to make distinctions from other people. As Swain
(2002) notes, it was important for these children to have the ‘right stuff’. On the end of term residential trip I
witnessed first hand the girls’ desire to wear labelled goods. The girls wore a range of brands and I was
astounded by both the quantity of clothes the girls took on the trip and the amount of money that must have
been spent on them. On the trip the girls also spent time comparing the labels of their clothes, negotiating the
recognised value of each brand. Bourdieu (1979) has written a great deal about designer clothes labels and he
explains that:
The label…operates a process of transubstantiation of the material object to which it is applied,
which then takes on the high value attached to the name. The label does not change the materiality of
the product, but its social characteristic.
(Cited in Rocamora 2002:348-9)
In a similar manner it could be argued that the girls felt that the social or symbolic value that the clothing
labels they wore represented was transferred to them through the process of wearing; their bodies were also
invested with this symbolic power. In just the same way, some of the girls felt that if they wore ‘good
quality’ clothing it would make them look more distinguished. Douglas and Isherwood (1996) refer to this
process as ‘symbolic consumption’ where goods are endowed with value through the enjoyment of sharing
names. By comparing items of branded clothing, the girls in my study were recognising and reinforcing the
symbolic value attached to their clothes and in turn their bodies.
However, branded clothing is arguably more than a simple class distinction (Crane 2000). Certainly these
girls had the economic power to invest in designer clothing and their clothes were used as a way of ‘flashing’
their money and status. But as Swain (2002) argues, branded goods are not only valued or worn by ‘middle
class’ people. ‘Working class’ people also desire and purchase branded goods which are no longer
unreachable or unaffordable because they have been popularised and become part of mass fashion
(Rocamora 2002). In any case, most of the girls in my study were not buying ‘avant garde’ goods that would
11
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
distinguish themselves from others. Often, they too bought into mass, popular fashion and when they bought
designer goods they would often be ‘derived’, cheaper goods (like socks, hair bands and purses); couturier
items that have been made more widely available to everyone through magazine marketing (Rocamora
2002). And so, although the girls in my study did value some brands of clothing more highly than others,
often this recognition of value was much more than a simple class distinction. It was also about the social
pleasure of sharing names and enjoying wearing ‘good quality’ items as Lipovetsky (1994:145) suggests:
‘Consumption by and large, is no longer an activity governed by the quest for social recognition; it is
undertaken in an effort to achieve well-being, functionality, pleasure for its own sake’.
‘Posh’ and ‘pretentious’ – styling the ‘upper class’ body
In addition, the girls also told me that presenting social class through clothing was much more than simply
wearing clothes with big, bold names emblazoned on the front, it was often about reflecting much subtler
differences (Davis 1992). Social class, they told me, could also be recognised from the ways in which clothes
were used in conjunction with the body. Erin, for example, was one girl who was regarded as the ‘fashion
expert’, the ‘queen of clothes and hand bags’ and the ‘class stylist’. She was also regarded as the ‘poshest’
girl in class; the girl with most money and most ‘upper class’ status. These attributes were pointed out time
and time again to me in interviews:
C: Oh Erin is very poshy and she loves her handbags…she is obsessed with handbags. I have been to
her house and she has one for every outfit!
I: Oh yes she has a cupboard full of shoes.
L: You know the importance of being Ernest? She is the lady with handbags out of that! She is
her…she is always going off to the shops for new clothes…high fashion…smart clothes. We were
walking in from break once and she was like ‘Oh no!’ and I was like ‘what?’ She told me she had
forgotten her evening bag, she had left it on the field. I mean an evening bag at school!
Erin certainly had the financial backing from her parents to buy a tremendous amount of clothes, a number of
which were from ‘top class’ stores such as Harvey Nichols, Harrods and (for less important occasions) John
Lewis. It could be argued that Erin was of a higher social class than the majority of girls in her class and that
her elite, upper class ‘taste’ in clothes was what distinguished her from her friends (Bourdieu 1996). But it
was not just the brands of Erin’s clothes that earned her respect and ‘social capital’ for her look could not
easily be identified as ‘upper class’. In fact, I was surprised when the girls pointed her out to me as a ‘poshy
fashion expert’ because on first glance she looked unkempt, with scuffed shoes and ‘wild’ un-styled hair. It
was not just her clothes that signified her social standing it was also her ‘body work’: ‘it is just like the way
she talks I suppose, like this (puts on a haughty tone) and the way she flicks her hair. She moves like this in
class (glides elegantly) and she even bends her hand when she speaks!’ Bourdieu (1996) proposes that only
12
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
working class bodies experience the world physically. He suggests that middle class bodies are simply ‘sign
wearers and sign bearers’ that ‘show but never feel’ (Rocamora 2002). But as Erin’s case study suggests:
‘one’s sensual experiences with cultural forms cut across class’, the body is more than a sign bearer, it
‘becomes a legitimate site of aesthetic experience’ (Rocamora 2002:355). Erin’s use of designer clothing and
‘elegant’ body work were both needed; to combine on the surface of her body and to present a distinctly
upper class appearance.
Teen, Tween or child - negotiating ‘aged’ identities through clothing
The girls, however, were not the only ones who used clothing to construct and distinguish between various
class and gender identities; parents and teachers were also central to these evaluations (Renold 2005). In
many ways the girls in my study were restricted by adults in their use of clothing and some of them felt that
they had ‘no say’ in what they wore, as Ellen told me:
My parents always control what I wear like they hate the fact that I wear black and they keep on
going and saying ‘you don’t always need to wear black’, but I do want to because it matches my
moods.
Other girl’s bodies could be seen to be used by parents to display their own class values or material wealth;
the children were quite literally their parent’s trophies of material success (Pole 2004). Jennifer was one girl
who resented her body being used for such a purpose. She was always dressed head to toe in designer
clothing yet she told me: ‘I just don’t care about my clothes. I think my Dad buys them for me because he
likes them and also because he feels guilty about leaving my Mum’. The school also heavily restricted what
the girls wore on a daily basis. A number of people have written about the significance of school uniform as
a form of disciplining unruly bodies (Swain 2002, Bodine 2003). But in this school context uniforms were
used as a means of class distinction, as one teacher told me:
These uniforms are really expensive. They are constantly redesigned so parents have to buy newer
and better gear every term and they always include items like straw boaters so they distinguish our
kids from those that attend less expensive schools.
The girls also told me that this was the case, saying that: ‘Mrs Engles always tells us to be upper class…to
tuck in our shirts and to pull up our socks. She is like ‘Oh my God Jennifer those flashing trainers are so
common!’ Teachers could also be seen to regulate clothing in terms of ‘sexual excess’ as they told the girls
not to wear their PE skirts outside of the school building:
J: I am not allowed to wear this PE skirt home.
13
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
AA: Why aren’t you allowed to wear it?
E: Because the builders and perverts look at our beautiful legs!
I: It is so strict I got told off for rolling up my skirt once!
And the school also restricted the girls’ clothing outside of school on trips and non-school uniform days.
Before going on trips the girls had to sign forms that said they would wear appropriate dress. One day I sat
through a lesson where some of the girls were being told about an induction day they would attend at the
senior school. A large part of the lesson was spent talking about the clothes they could wear on this day. The
girls were asked their own opinions about what they thought would be suitable attire and although the girls
were not explicitly told what to wear an emphasis was put on making a good impression. This was ‘not just
any impression but a good first impression’; a need to wear ‘something that says look at me I am
comfortable, smart and hard working’. The girls’ main objections to this adult imposed dress were for
reasons of comfort. The girls made similar complaints about their uniforms: the skirts were ‘too tight’, the
jumpers were ‘too itchy’ and the shirts ‘pulled around the neck’. The school’s values concerning smart
clothes were rejected by the girls who saw clothes as a bodily imposition; they hindered their bodily
movement and expression on a daily basis.
Adaptation, resistance and production – children negotiating their own style
However, not all of the girls felt that adults’ guidance/control of clothing was useless or unhelpful. Some
girls actively valued their parent’s advice. For example, Genella told me: ‘my Mum just really knows what
suits me. She knows my personality so she gets me clothes to match. I always like what she buys me.’
Indeed, as Martens et al (2004) suggest, the consumption relationship between children and their parents is
more complex than it may appear. Parents do not simply ‘hand down’ their tastes in clothing to their
children. From my research, it appeared that the child/adult clothing consumption relationship was very
much a two-way process. Children would tell their parents what to buy and what they thought suited them
(as well as the other way around) as they had their own distinct tastes. Teachers dress was also evaluated by
the children. On one occasion I witnessed this first hand, when a group of girls told their teacher that her
leopard print jumper would ‘have her arrested by the fashion police’! The girls told me with great delight
later on in the study how they had never seen her wear the jumper ever again.
Furthermore, the girls were able to actively resist adult control of their clothing. Most of this ‘resistance
work’ was accomplished through the adaptation of uniforms. These adaptations were generally small and
took the form of key rings, hair styles and rolled up trousers or skirts. But the children took great delight in
making these adjustments, especially if they could get away with them. The girls also told me of skills they
had learnt in order to negotiate their own use of clothing: clothes could be bought in exchange for good exam
results and short skirts could be worn if their friends were allowed to. But perhaps even more importantly,
14
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
the girls controlled their own clothing by creatively buying and producing it for themselves. Some of the
girls had jobs for a couple of hours a week that allowed them to have some of their own money. Other girls
made their own jewellery because they could not afford to buy it themselves. And between them the girls
would swap their possessions with others to create ‘new’ looks even if the products themselves were secondhand.
Blurring the boundaries – ‘Tween’-age clothes
Indeed, Cook et al (2004) have recognised the fact that children are earning more than ever before and that
they have been offered a new ‘Tween’ age-based space in the clothing market. They suggest that this Tween
category has led to a blurring of the boundary between adult/child items of clothing and sometimes
behaviour. Many of the girls in my own study delighted in being able to wear what they called ‘mature’ or
‘grown up’ clothing – items like strappy tops, short skirts and particularly bras and thongs. Some girls
actively made age-based distinctions between themselves and other girls in their peer group. Girls who were
able to wear bras ‘properly’ were talked about with great respect in interviews; their ‘mature’ clothes and
bodily shapes were equated with ‘mature’ personalities. Some girls even tried to replicate these girls’ curvy
figures for themselves by wearing push up or padded bras and many of them gained a great deal of power
and pleasure from wearing these items of clothing. ‘Tween’ or ‘grown up’ clothing certainly seemed to
present these girls with a great deal of freedom to consume/wear what they wanted with fewer adult
limitations.
On the other hand, as Cook et al (2004) suggest, the ‘Tween’ discourse is not entirely powerful for children
because it is still caught up in older notions of adult anxiety about self presentation and sexual behaviour.
This notion was summed up neatly by one girl in my study who said: ‘well my Mum just says that I am still a
child right now and that I should enjoy being one…she says I can choose what to wear when I grow up but
for now I need to wear what suits me’. And so even though a number of different ‘grown up’ items of
clothing were available to buy in shops, the girls in my study were not always allowed to buy and wear
exactly what they wanted. Tween clothing did afford these girls more options in the way that they dressed
and did sometimes allow them to transgress adult/child boundaries but they were still very much bounded by
older childhood discourses; discourses of ‘too much too young’ and discourses that stated they were still in
the process of becoming adults and so had to await full human privileges.
And in fact, it was not only adults that imposed these age-based discourses of dress onto children; the
children took them up and acted on them by themselves. Some girls talked about actively wanting to look
like a child. Jessica for example told her friend: ‘well sometimes you do want to look little girly’. When her
friend disagreed Jessica replied: ‘yes I do want to look like a little girl, the difference is that one is cute and
the other just looks like a tart’. It was quite clear that the girls would move between adult/child dress (and
15
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
identities) when and if it suited them. But some girls had no choice but to be positioned as a child or
childlike. Cathren, for example, was a girl deemed particularly short and slender for her age. Some of the
girls told me that her ‘personality matched her size’ she was ‘small and immature’ and would ‘fit in well in
the nursery class with other people her own size’. Cathren tried desperately hard to look older, often wearing
make-up or jewellery to try and create an older image but where as other girls could often be praised or
complimented on their use of bodily adornments Cathren was criticised for ‘trying too hard’, ‘getting the
look all wrong’ and simply looking ‘immature’. Cathren’s petite body size appeared to limit her in her
presentation as a ‘mature’ girl. She could wear the same clothes as the other girls and ‘work’ on her body but
she was still not accepted as ‘grown up’; it appeared that there were some boundaries that even clothes could
not transgress.
Embodied identities as ‘fixed’ and ‘fluid’ – some conclusions
This paper has primarily been concerned with young girls’ use of clothing to ‘fix’ embodied ‘classed’,
‘gendered’, ‘sexualised’ and ‘aged’ identities for themselves. It has also sought to explore the ways in which
girls use clothes in their ‘border work’; to see how girls transgress, trouble and complicate the boundaries of
different identities. In this sense then, it would appear that I am drawing two quite different and contradictory
conclusions from this paper. On the one hand, suggesting that clothes can be empowering; that they allowed
the girls in my study to play with identities and embodied representations, to experiment and to transgress
identity categories. The paper has demonstrated the complexity of constructing identities through clothing,
showing that they are negotiated locally, that they are temporal and fluid and that the boundaries are not
fixed. Especially in terms of childhood it was argued that it is not a straight forward process. Childhood is
not a simple ‘progression to an ever closer copy of adulthood’ but a period of multiple transitions that can
and will be reversed, transformed and inverted by children (Prout 2000). The girls in my study used clothes
to blur the boundaries and actively work at the borders between adult and child identities. However, they also
actively chose to move back to and sometimes remain within the space of childhood.
On the other hand, this paper has also demonstrated the constraining nature of clothing. It has shown how
girls’ bodies could place very real, material limits on their identity constructions and representations. It was
not simply the case that these girls could dress in any clothes or assume any identity of their choice; their
bodies limited the ways in which clothes could be seen and valued by others. Certain dominant discourses
were also shown to place restrictions and limitations on the clothed body. And although girls could
sometimes resist these discourses most of the time they were still limited to clothing that
reflected/represented themselves as ‘authentic’ feminine, middle class children. It could be argued, therefore,
that this paper (like many others) points to the ambiguous, ambivalent nature of clothing.
16
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
However, as Bordo (1995) suggests, ambivalence is not always helpful as it does not allow us to come to any
solid conclusions. Furthermore, it could also be argued that these two conclusions are not contradictory but
are two parts of the same answer; both fluidity and fixity or agency and constraint are needed in order to gain
a better understanding of children’s embodied clothing practices. It is, as Davis (1992) suggests, important to
celebrate the multiple, fluid nature of identity and body work as we have come a long way from simple
binary conceptions. However, it is also important that we understand the fixed/stabilised nature of embodied
identities and take into account the context and history in which these identities are constituted. It must be
recognised that some of the girls in my study actively sought to ‘fix’ identities for themselves built on
dominant social discourses. For example, some of the girls actively sought to construct ‘heterofeminine’
identities for themselves. It was quite clear that the girls were not ‘passively duped’ into accepting these
identities, for they were quite capable of naming and recognising ‘heteronormative’ practices. It was simply
the case that some girls actually ‘chose’ to remain within these identity spaces even if they were
deconstructing them from within or working at their borders.
Finally, it would appear that in order to bring these two conclusions together it is necessary to adopt an
additional conceptual tool. One notion that is particularly useful is Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’. This
concept allows us to take into account people’s personal histories and experiences and to understand the
ways in which discourses are internalised by girls and used to guide their future actions. Indeed, the context
or field in which my research took place was essential to understanding how these girls constructed their
identities. In many ways the girls were extremely empowered and free to construct their identities or
embodied representations as they wished. They had a great amount of social capital as they were taught and
expected to be ‘mature independent thinkers’ and they also had access to a tremendous amount of economic
capital that literally allowed them to ‘shop’ for and ‘buy’ into identities (as they bought clothes that
re/presented them). But even these girls were limited in their freedom and it is an understanding of both their
freedoms and constraints that has allowed us greater insight into their everyday embodied experiences.
NOTES
1. The photographs used in the photography club were produced by the professional photographers Cindy
Sherman and Sally Mann. Cindy Sherman is famous for her photos ‘Untitled Film Stills’ that present women
in a variety of different roles. Sally Mann is famous for taking photographs of children and her collection of
photographs entitled ‘At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women’ are supposed to show what it is like to be a
twelve year old girl on the verge of adulthood.
2. The ‘tomboys’, ‘girly girls’, ‘Goths’ and ‘Moshers’ were all self-identified groups that the children talked
about in group interviews.
3. Jacqueline Wilson is a well-known British children’s author who writes books that portray girls in a range
of different roles. The readers of her books are also mainly female.
17
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
4. Cook et al (2004) suggest that ‘Tween’ is a concept that has emerged since the early 1990’s when clothing
makers tried to define a market space for age based goods and meanings. ‘Tween’ is generally regarded to be
an ambiguous age group although it mainly accounts for children aged 9-12 and it is a predominantly
feminine category.
REFERENCES
Barthes,R. (1985) The Fashion System. London: Cape.
Best,A.L. (2004) ‘Girls, Schooling and the Discourse of Self-Change: Negotiating Meanings of the High
School Prom’, in A.Harris (ed) All about the Girl. London; Routledge.
Bodine,A. (2003) ‘School Uniforms and Discourses on Childhood’. Childhood, 10 (1): 43-63.
Bordo,S. (1995) Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. California: University of
California Press.
Bourdieu,P. (1996) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Sage.
Brownmillar,S. (1984) Femininity. London; Paladin.
Budgeon,S. (2003) ‘Identity as an Embodied Event’, Body and Society, 9 (1): 35-55.
Butler,J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.
Butler,J. (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London: Routledge.
Candy,F.J. (2005) ‘The Fabric of Society: An Investigation of the Emotional and Sensory Experience of
Wearing Denim Clothing. Sociological Research Online, 10 (1): 1-16.
Coffey,A. (1999) The Ethnographic Self: Fieldwork and the Representation of Identity. London: Sage
Publications.
Cook,D.T. and Kasier,S.B. (2004) ‘Betwixt and BeTween – Age Ambiguity and the Sexualisation of Female
Consuming’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 4 (2): 208-227.
Crane,D. (2000) Fashion and its Social Agendas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Csordas,T.J. (1994) Embodiment and Experience: the Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Davis,F. (1992) Fashion, Culture and Identity. London: University of Chicago Press.
Douglas,M. and Isherwood,B. (1996) The World of Goods. London: Routledge.
Edwards,T. (1997) Men in the Mirror: Men’s Fashion and Consumer Society. London: Cassell.
Emmison,M. and Smith,P. (2000) Researching the Visual. London: Sage Publications.
Entwhistle,J. (2000) Fashioning the Body. Oxford: Polity Press.
Featherstone,M. (1982) ‘The Body in Consumer Culture’, Theory, Culture and Society, 1:18-33.
18
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
Finkelstein,J. (1991) The Fashioned Self. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Foucault,M. (1977) Discipline and Punish (trans.A.Sheridan), Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Foucault,M. (1980) ‘Body/Power’, in C.Gordon (ed), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other
Writings 1972-77. New York: Pantheon Books.
Frost,L. (2001) Young Women and the Body: A Feminist Sociology. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Gleeson,K. and Frith,H. (2004) ‘Pretty in pink: Young Women Presenting Mature Sexual Identities’ in A.
Harris (ed) All About the Girl. London: Routledge.
Goffman,E. (1971) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: The Penguin Press.
Guy,A. and Banim,M. (2000) ‘Personal Collections: Women’s Clothing Use and Identity. Journal of Gender
Studies, 19 (3): 313-327
Holland,S. (2004) Alternative Femininities: Body, Age and Identity. Oxford: Berg.
Holland,J., Ramazanaglu,C., Sharpe,S. and Thomson,R. (1998) The Male in the Head: Young People,
Heterosexuality and Power. London: Tufnell Press.
Ingraham,C. (1996) ‘The Heterosexual Imaginary: Feminist Sociology and Theories of Gender, in
Henessy,R. and Ingraham, C. (eds) Materialist Feminism, London: Routledge.
James,A. (2000) ‘Embodied Being(s): Understanding the Self and the Body in Childhood’, in A. Prout (ed)
The Body, Childhood and Society. Basingstoke: McMillan Press.
Lasch,C. (1979) The Culture of Narcissism. London: Abacus.
Lipovetsky,G. (1994) The Empire of Fashion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Martens,L., Southerton,D. and Scott,S. (2004) ‘Bringing Children and Parents into the Sociology of
Consumption’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 4 (2):155-182.
McNay,L. (1992) Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and Self. Cambridge: Polity Press.
McRobbie,A. (1994) British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry? London: Routledge.
Merleau-Ponty,M. (1981) The Phenomenology of Perception. London; Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Pole,C. (2004) ‘Researching Children and Fashion: An Embodied Ethnography’, conference paper presented
at the Oxford Education and Ethnography Conference. 13th-14th September , St Hilda’s College, Oxford.
Polhemus,T. (1988) Bodystyles. Luton: Lennard.
Prout,A. (2000) (ed) The Body, Childhood and Society. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.
Renold,E. (2005) Girls, Boys and Junior Sexualities: Exploring Children’s Gender and Sexual Relations in
the Primary School. London: Routledge Falmer.
Riviere,J. (1929/1986) ‘Womanliness as a Masquerade’, in V.Burgin, J.Donald and C.Kaplan (eds)
Formations of Fantasy. London: Methuen.
19
DRAFT PAPER – NOT FOR QUOTATION – COMMENTS VERY WELCOME
Rocamora,A. (2002) ‘Fields of Fashion: Critical Insights into Bourdieu’s Sociology of Culture. Journal of
Consumer Culture, 2 (3): 341-362.
Simmel,G. (1904/1971) ‘Fashion’, in D.Levine (ed) On Individuality and Social Forms. London: University
of Chicago Press.
Skeggs,B. (1997) Formations of Class and Gender. London: Sage Publications.
Swain,J. (2002) ‘The Right Stuff: Fashioning an Identity Through Clothing in Junior School. Gender and
Education, 14 (1): 53-69.
Tseelon,E. (1997) The Masque of Femininity. London: Sage Publications.
Turner,B. (1985) The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Ussher,J.M. (1997) Fantasies of Femininity: Reframing the Boundaries of Sex. London: Penguin Books.
Veblen,T. (1899/1953) The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. New York:
Mentor.
Williams,S.J. and Bendelow,G. (1998) The Lived Body: Sociological Themes, Embodied Issues. London:
Routledge.
Wilson,E. (1985) Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. London: Virago.
20