"Putting on My Feminist Pants": How Academic Feminists Use Clothing to Construct Professional Identity

Abstract

Feminism has traditionally been concerned with issues of women's bodies; however, an examination of women's bodies in clothing has been largely overlooked, especially in relation to feminists themselves. Constructing identity for professional feminists in the context of clothing calls into question the traditional feminist binary of privileging the mind over the body. While many feminist writers discuss a rift between second and third wave feminists concerning views on clothing, no one has produced data to show that these views are still held. This paper investigates how second and third wave professional feminists view clothing in relation to the mind/body binary using the classical rhetorical notions of ethos and terpsis. The data revealed that even among professional feminists, the mind/body binary still privileges those qualities associated with the mindand that dressing as a professional feminist means dressing for authority and the political expression of feminist values, specifically economy and comfort.