Getting dressed or why feminists should take this question seriously

The article deals with demands made upon women about their appearance in the 21st century, comments made by, and about, women and the ways in which they dress. That is the suggestion that there is a greater plurality about dress in the contemporary world than it was in the world of our grandmothers. But in place of the former strictures there are others: demands about youth and youthfulness, of forms of self association either for or against class and racialised others, of representing a human, dressed, version, of the “new”. All represent aspirations for identifying – or not – the self through dress. The question of who do we want to look like is one that is unavoidable.