Fashion, Style & Popular Culture - Marginalized Identities and ADH Abstracts, Mar 2024

Non-stigmatizing depictions of plus-size lovers of fashion are not easily found in traditional mass media, but in social media, fat fashion enthusiasts can readily be found. The purpose of this study was to investigate the little-studied phenomenon of plus-size YouTube content creators who make videos about fat fashion. To that end, thirteen individuals who wear plus-size women’s apparel took part in semi-structured interviews. A major theme found in the data analysis was transgression. Interview participants were staunch advocates of breaking discriminatory, unspoken societal rules that constrained them, especially in relation to dress. Three subthemes were found in relation to transgression: visibility, representation and agency. Embracing visibility, as seen in interviewees’ performance of fatness in public and in social media, may help to portray fatness as a human characteristic that is just as ‘normal’ as thinness. Serving as a positive role model to others was also embraced by participants, who hoped to assist their viewers in dealing with the consequences of living in the fatphobic US culture. The interviewees demonstrated and promoted agency through fashion, in marked contrast to their past experiences of being powerless and disparaged because of their size. Through celebration of mainstream, conforming fashion, the fat fashion vloggers are transgressive by joyfully wearing styles which previously were discouraged or often unavailable for plus-size consumers.

In this article I critically examine the history of nylon stockings in the United States through the lenses of race and gender. Drawing on visual and material culture examples related to nylon and nude colours, I show how whiteness was standardized and presented as the unmarked norm. Employing an intersectional feminist approach, my archival research expands the narrative beyond these exclusionary practices, highlighting how in ensuing decades individuals and companies marketed and crafted nylon foundationwear for a wider range of consumers. These examples offer a vital counter-history to nylon’s normalization of bodies and mass production that mobilized a standard ideal of womanhood as white, thin, heterosexual and cisgender. The legacy of the creation of ‘nude’ colours that standardize whiteness as the norm can still be seen today in foundationwear branding and everyday items like bandages. However, this has not gone unchallenged and there are increased efforts to address this, particularly among Black-owned businesses like gc2b, Nude Barre and Browndages. It is important to historicize the emergence of standard practices, such as singular definitions of nude and limited sizing practices, and how they serve to reinforce norms of racialized gender. Deconstructing these practices and critically examining less documented alternatives uncovers and addresses embedded power structures within standardization.

Following 9/11, some young Muslim American women have been wearing hijabs to assert their Islamic identities. They are also seeking fashionable modest clothing, yet, despite their growing buying power, the US modest fashion market targeting Muslim women appears underserved. The purpose of this study was to critically examine how niche modest fashion brands in the United States target Muslim women while drawing upon theoretical concepts centring on oppression and agency related to the long history of gendered Islamophobia Muslims have experienced. We analysed eleven brands’ websites and social media applying the constant comparative method and identified four themes: empowering Muslim women, reclaiming modesty as modern and beautiful, meeting fashionable modest wear demand, and rejecting and perpetuating colourism. In our analysis of the digital discourses of US modest fashion brands, we revealed that these brands emerged to meet the demand of young Muslim woman in the United States who are embracing the hijab and modest clothing as a potent symbol of resistance against western ideologies, the fashion system’s oppressive acts towards Muslim women and traditional Islamic dress codes. Yet, their advocacy-centred messages – empowerment, reclaiming modesty as beautiful – operate within a profit-driven system, which we theorize as a fashion-advocacy-capitalistic-façade. The fashion-advocacy-capitalist-façade concept helps explain the slippery slope that fashion brands are tiptoeing as they aim to empower Muslim women, offer trendy modest clothing, reject traditional Islamic dress codes for women and create space in the fashion market for this unmet demand. Although these brands aim to promote a positive sense of self for Muslim women, they cannot be withheld from critical examination and potential interpretations when operating within the capitalist-driven industry that is so often plagued with significant injustices.

Fat fashion blogging has largely been celebrated for its resistance potential. Historically, much of this blogging was collaborative with a focus on sharing information and counter-aesthetic images on plus-size fashion. With the rise of the advertising-driven social media platform Instagram, individuals can capitalize on fatshion blogging by becoming social media influencers who promote brands and encourage purchasing decisions. This article uses visual semiotic analysis and critical discourse analysis to show how two fat Black fashion influencers use fashion, flaunting and fat discourse to resist weight stigma. We argue that these efforts complicate our understanding of fat resistance due to the neo-liberal intensification of the entrepreneurial self. Exploring the fat fashion Instagram phenomenon opens new avenues for reflecting on digital resistance to weight stigma and how this is undermined by capitalist interests.

Mass manufactured garments for women have been around since the beginning of the twentieth century. With mass production, a ‘standardization’ of sizing was needed. Standardization of clothing was difficult as bodies were (and still today) not statistically proportionate and clothing was not one size fits all. To tackle the ‘difficult’ to fit – fat women, known as stout – manufacturers and retailers devised myriad sized numbering systems to accommodate different shaped fat bodies. They introduced half, odd and extra sizes along with stylish, stubby and old-fashioned stouts to create perfectly proportioned and specially designed garments to fit stout women with little to no alterations. These systems were confusing for consumers, retailers and manufacturers as no sizing system corresponded with any sort of standardization among businesses. This frustration further relegated fat women to the fringes of the apparel industry as undesirable and unfashionable.