Clothes Make the (Wo)Man: The Fashion Industry as a means of restricting Gender and Sexuality

My presentation, focuses on fashion as a social agent, with its artistic expression and continual reorganization of styles, has the power to exact social change, or whether it simply reinforces and reproduces social inequality. Through content analysis examples, this presentation examines various fashion experiences, looking for the social and political forces behind the experience of clothing. Exploring various sociological theories, including Roland Barthes's theory of fashion as a social code, Erving Goffman and Herbert Blumer's theories of symbolic interactionism, Max Weber's theories regarding class and society, and Georg Simmel's theories on fashion as a means of conformity, I argue gender performance is a social agent which contributes to the formal and informal socialization of members of a society.

Union College Schaffer Library Digital Projects

Union College Schaffer Library Special Collections, 807 Union St., Schenectady, NY 12308; 518-388-6620; https://www.union.edu/schaffer-library

Union College (Schenectady, N.Y.). Department of Sociology