‘SLAY!’: WHEN WOMEN PROTEST WITH STYLES

The society that we are living in was built anchored with patriarchal ideologies — so many restrictive, exhausting, and unrealistic rules and standards for women! ‘You shouldn’t be like that’, ‘Don’t act like a man’, ‘Be like this’, ‘Be like that’ and ‘blah blah blah’, and if you wear fearless clothing, it’s your fault you get objectified for dressing up and expressing yourself through a piece of cloth. Where would you be in this society?

But wasn’t it that expressing yourself through clothes is entwined with fashion?

Dressing up is an expression, and each pop color and well-tailored fabric you wear, while accessorizing it with your favorite alluring jewelry, and headdress, would all scream your unique personality, mood, and voice that you can’t even utter loudly as a woman whose always been muzzled by this society — and that’s how powerful fashion is.

Fashion was born through the combination of fabrics, threads, and the flaming passion or it showed in the process of weaving as if it were a dance and a rhythm. And fashion isn’t just about dressing up as it contributes to the lives of individuals, especially women. This allows them to summon their character and wear who they are while being revolutionary against the constrictive standards bestowed upon them.

An Impactful Change Styled by Women

Women will always be connected to fashion, it is part of their womanhood. Women are more than just a beautiful face and their bodies, they possess brilliant ideas, they have souls, and they have power. And fashion was made out of undying love for it and great minds. Women and fashion have visible commonalities and once these two collide, do you know what amazing thing it could do to the world? A revolution.

Fashion evolves and changes as years go by, and from the long and conservative dresses, we have now come to mini skirts, shorts, and such fearless clothes. And that’s due to the amazing and brave women who protested for every woman’s rights while wearing their styles.

In 1960, mini-skirts were used by American feminists as a symbol of “liberation and rejection of traditional gender roles”.

After four years, Mary Quant introduced it in London which instantly made a cultural debate because of the idea that women should be modest and adhere to the tightly enforced dress codes, and the mini skirt was an effective way for women to protest to reclaim their bodies.

Later on, the mini skirt protests rose in popularity to the French student and worker protests of 1968. It was worn by demonstrators as a symbol of revolution and resistance for solidifying its place as an instrument of fashion protest for women.

In the same year, New York Radical Women and Women’s Liberation organized a protest, the Miss America protest on the Atlantic City boardwalk highlighting the objectification of women and confining beauty standards set by the pageants. It became an iconic moment for feminists. This protest was not like other rallies as this was executed by throwing the traditional feminine things like bras, lipstick, and girdles, they rejected into what they called “Freedom Trash Can”, which symbolized their rejection of the suppressive beauty standards.

Women never go out of style

Do you know why women never go out of their style? Because they are not just a trend, they are more than their faces and bodies, and they have proven it for ages. And at every chance that they get attacked and suppressed, the females would always find a way to stand and oppose the repressive system, even in the way women dress and express themselves. Once they fight back, they would do it with their best styles.