'The Clothes I Wear Help Me to Know My Own Power’: The Politics of Gender Presentation in the Era of Women’s Liberation

Luther Hillman, B 2013, ‘‘The Clothes I Wear Help Me to Know My Own Power’: The Politics of Gender Presentation in the Era of Women’s Liberation’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 34, no. 2, pp.155-185.

This article explores the politicisation of hairstyles, dress and self-presentation as a way that women challenged traditional beauty standards and gender roles within the cultural politics of second-wave feminism, focusing on the movements early years in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Detailed are debates and conflict about the issue between different facets within feminism, groups that were divided by sexuality, age, class and race. Some saw the focus on dress and gender presentation as a distraction from more important issues, such as efforts towards legal and legislative change that would promote equality for women. Debate from outside the movement focused on what constitutes femininity, seeing the feminist preference for androgynous dress as demanding a choice between feminism and femininity. The article details changes in attitudes and fashions chronologically, with a focus on the National Organisation of Women (NOW), however little is discussed beyond a US context. Unspoken is the idea of gender panic and the author seems to appropriate judgemental language (such as “gender deviant”) that ignores what could have been an intersection between feminist gender expression and transgender expression. While quite readable, the article is overly long, and the author avoids asserting her opinion on the issue.