Abstract
This paper reflects the representation of gender in modern popular culture. Actually, the paper examines the fashion and beauty industry, visual culture and education to investigate the relevance of gender-abiding illusion. The paper describes the innovative project of Selfridges, which respond to the concept of agender. The project has the aim to provide its customers with a line of apparel ‘For All to Buy’. This paper describes one more example of the unisex tendency in fashion, which is ‘Le Smoking’ by Yves Saint Laurent. The implementation of the typical men apparel to female customers triggered a revolution in both fashion and gender relations. When talking about the beauty industry, the products to satisfy men are very rare. The paper describes a line of androgenic cosmetics, available for both men and women. ‘Enter Pronoun’ is the first in the make-up industry to claim that the tendency of androgyny is close to coming and becoming widespread. Additionally, the beauty industry establishes a requirement for women to remove their body hair in order to be beautiful. All these features of modern beauty industry reveal the traditional perception of abiding genders, which dominates in human society. Education, on the other hand, nowadays represent the blurring of gender boundaries because it offers the same conditions for both men and women. The paper also examines the tendencies of visual culture and its response to the genders’ perception of different colors.
Keywords: agender, gender, fashion, beauty, smoking, make-up, body hair, education, color
Gender
Unisex, agender, androgyny in Agender Selfridges
Agender is one of the newest ideas of Selfridges. Moreover, Agender is one of the most vibrant projects. Agender means something that does not reveal the features of any gender. This definition is close to such concepts as unisex and androgyny, as it does not require a person to place himself/herself in the boundaries of one particular gender. In terms of Selfridges (2016), Agender is ‘a celebration of fashion without definition’ (Agender, 2016).
The characters of the video firstly seem to be semi-male, semi-female, but then the right word ‘agender’ appears. The typical features of men and women are collected to create a third-gender people. For instance, long silk hair is connected to naked man’s chest; the layer of bright woman’s make-up masks a man’s face. The apparel, however, seems to fit everyone, which approves Selfridges Agender to be ‘For All to Wear” (Dystant, 2015).
The video proves the concept of gender to be easy to blur. Therefore, the idea of sex is easy to debunk too. The vitally important difference between these two definitions is that sex refers to a human’s physical building. On the other hand, gender is a state of mind. However, the traditional perception of how these two ‘worlds’ ought to be connected is not fair. A person, no matter, male or female, ought to follow his/her feelings, even though they withstand the traditional ideas of society. Nevertheless, people cannot change their physical body on request; however, people can change their perception. In these terms, the boundaries of gender and sex, as they cooperate closely, can be blurred.
Gender in Clothing
Human nature has always urged people to pay a lot of attention to the appearance. The external view could always tell a lot about person’s origins, income and interests. Therefore, the concept of fashion emerges to be vitally important. From century to century, new ideas appeared; some of these fashion innovations became revolutionary, triggering some integral moments in society’s development. In fact, such changes were usually concerned with the concept of gender, resisting the strict separation between male and female fashion. One of the most significant explorations of unisex fashion appeared in the late 60s when Yves Saint Laurent presented ‘Le Smoking’ (Rawsthorn, 1996).
Yves Saint Laurent has a number of significant fashion breakthroughs. Due to this prominent couturier, the fashion industry has discovered dark-skin models and advertisement photo sessions with naked bodies. However, even though all of Yves’ works were to make women believe, they are beautiful, ‘Le Smoking’ encouraged them to think of their power. ‘Le Smoking’ offered a line of men’s apparel for women.
Originally, ‘Le Smoking’ in performance of the Yves Saint Laurent consists of a jacket with accentuated waist, straight pants, chemise with a line of ruffles and a pair of narrow skin boots on heels. The jacket, made of elegant black wool, looked very similar to men’s traditional tuxedo; however, an accented waist was to correspond the demand to highlight women’s body. Women’s tuxedo with a wide collar opened the sight of a light chemise, not typical for men, still, looking very naturally. Pants and boots, in its style extremely close to men’s stylish outfits, added more elegance to the image of ‘Le Smoking’. The color of ‘Le Smoking’ is traditionally black to make the image looking more manlike (Basye, 2010).
Yves Saint Laurent somehow revolutionized the world of fashion language. After the presentation of Yves Saint Laurent ‘Le Smoking’, the word has changed its solidity. In the world of French fashion and in the language of apparel the word ‘smoking’ became an indicator of a tuxedo. From this now on, Yves Saint Laurent started a tendency of unisex male-female fashion existing as a valuable separate fashion (when ‘tuxedo’ is a traditional word for men jackets and ‘smoking’ as a part of women costume).
‘Le Smoking’ was only one sight of Yves Saint Laurent performing to blur the boundaries of gender in fashion. In fact, this particular designer nowadays is a symbol of unisex fashion. This fact seems to be obvious, as couturier’s ideas were an example to follow up to the twenty-first century. The goal of this fashion innovation was to empower women and bring them to the level of men. In terms of gender relations of that time, it was a brave idea. Actually, Yves Saint Laurent started a revolution in fashion, which influenced the gender revolution. However, ‘Le Smoking’ not only demonstrated the possibility of gender equality; it offered an idea of resisting the illusion of abiding to one gender or another.
Gender in Body Hair
Nowadays an image of a beautiful woman is much influenced by what popular culture offers its audience. For instance, the Brand Victoria Secret, where all the models are top-class models, who are already famous due to their work in different fashion houses previously, establishes obvious requirements. All Victoria's Angels are thin, even skinny, with ideal skin and complexion (The Models of Victoria's Secret: People.com, 2016). The project 'I'mNoAngel' by Lane Bryant came even further; the standards of this brand obviously oppose the established standards of such brands as Victoria Secret etc. ‘I'mNoAngel’ hires overweight models with unideal facial features (Fashioninsta, 2015).
Even though Modern fashion has learned to oppose the monolithic image of beauty, there is one point, which people are not ready to accept yet. Body hair is a feature, which is to separate men from women. Today, almost all women have a habit of removing their body hair as it defines female body to be dirty and disgusting. On the opposite, society does not require men to remove their body hair, as it is an indicator of their strong and powerful selves. A traditional perception of weak still beautiful females as an opposite of strong and unsophisticated males created a concept of abiding one's gender. Nowadays the separation of genders created by the appearance of body hair or its absence displays the fact that our society is not ready to accept full gender equality.
Gender in Make-up Beauty Products
It seems to be obvious that the beauty industry has always aimed to reach women’s interests. Almost all kinds of cosmetics are to help women look better. The traditional perception of modern society expects the woman to reach the peak of their beauty by all possible means. At the same time, men have to aim for success and power without trying on any obvious beauty products. Even though it is also considered that men ought to look after their beauty, almost no cosmetics exists to satisfy men’s interests.
Androgyny is what changes the perception and influences the market of beauty products. Not only in fashion, but also in cosmetics androgyny tendencies start to occur and gain authority. For instance, there even exists a special neutral-gender line of make-up products, which is ‘Enter Pronoun’ (Stunell, 2012).
‘Enter Pronoun’ appeared because the market of make-up products was not able to meet the requirements of both genders. However, this may happen because such a demand is not high nowadays. In terms of modern society, such a tendency display a stable stereotype of men not requiring any make-up. Nevertheless, ‘Enter Pronoun’ is the first step of androgyny in the world, where the conception of abiding gender self is still powerful.
Gender in Education
Society's integral tendencies derive from historical tradition and make the tone for the future decades. Nowadays all the processes of communication have the reflection of the century-long patriarchal organization. Males were empowered, males were dominant and males were prominent. Actually, before the year 1903, women had no worldwide scientific awards. It was Marie Curie, who started an epoch of women scientific achievements. In fact, she was the first woman to obtain a post in the European university (Goldsmith, 2005).
Actually, the fact that Marie Curie has become the first female to become famous due to her knowledge and intelligence does not mean that women were less intelligent than men were. In fact, they were less educated. Nowadays it is not as common. Males and females usually study together, without separation in the way this knowledge is delivered. Modern society learned to blur the obvious boundaries between genders at least in the field of education.
Gender and color
The popular culture of modern life makes a high accent on visuality. Colors, shapes, and composition have become the most important criteria of modern interior and exterior design. Such a role of visual effects developed because of human ability to digest most of the information visually. A lot of research appeared to approve the difference between genders' response to different colors. For instance, Thomas, Curtis, and Bolton (1978) revealed that women has warmer response to bright colors (Thomas, Curtis and Bolton, 1978).
Such psychological tendencies are close to what our popular culture offers. Fashion, makeup, interior and exterior design offer a wider range of colorful female products. However, with the growing tendency of androgyny in clothing and make-up, the boundaries between male and female start to blur. In terms of predomination of color distinguishes in popular culture, the concept of abiding one's gender seem to become more illusionary.
Conclusion
Modern world still follows the traditional perception of two genders being separated by the means of sex. However, such concepts as agender, unisex and androgyny start to occur, especially, in the fields of fashion, beauty, education and visual culture.
References
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