Overview

In the 1930s, Freud observed that “when you meet a human being, the first distinction you make is ‘male or female?’ and you are accustomed to make the distinction with unhesitating certainty.” As Freud suggests, society is divisible by gender. We are taken to be either “male” or “female.” This notion seems to be fixed within our culture and is often unquestioned. In this dynamic book, fashion journalist Laura Cherrie Beaney examines gender as a concept and as a practice that is also challenged and contested in the fashion industry. While gender has been relatively fixed within our society, we are nevertheless entertained by “gender bending.” The media and entertainment industries now represent a range of gender identities. As much as it is a cultural phenomenon, gender is also an individual practice. Social theorists describe some individuals as “gender outlaws” for actively choosing to blend and shape their own gender identities. Fashionable clothing makes multiple statements about the wearer. It can identify social status and tell the viewer, “This is the type of person I am.” In contemporary culture, fashion designers, stylists, photographers, and other media professionals have been fascinated with the idea of gender and its ever-changing boundaries. In recent years, the fashion industry has also focused on ideas of unisex identity and androgyny. Indeed, the fashion industry seems to afford a decadent sense of power to alternative gender identities. Fashion designers and stylists have been inspired by alternative gender identities when creating images and when showcasing their designs. Crossing the Catwalk explores fashion to understand how this mediated image of gender equality in the twenty-first century relates to reality by examining cross-dressing and transvestism through the construction of personal style. By using case studies from a range of different sources, the book will give a clear idea of how the reality of cross-dressing compares to the glamorous and decadent images portrayed by the fashion industry. It will aim to uncover the true motivations for those who cross dress and analyze the construction of gendered personal styles in relation to fashion.

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9781680534825

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For more than a decade Tabari Artspace communications director, Laura Cherrie Beaney has divided her time between artists' studios, documenting the social experiences and artistic practices that encapsulate the contemporary moment in the Middle East and beyond. As a social anthropologist Laura conducts in-depth interviews with the gallery's represented artists in order know and relay the motivations behind their creative practices - social, cultural, political and psychological - more intimately. She has written extensively on the art of the MENSA region contributing to publications including Canvas Magazine, Tatler, and Harper's Bazaar Art. In 2019 she published her first book, Crossing the Catwalk: Transvestism in Contemporary Fashion and Culture with Academica Press. A passionate contributor to not-for-profit and humanitarian organisations Laura is currently supporting curatorial platform, Archaeology of the Final Decade (AOTFD), as a research assistant. The non-profit platform excavates and researches histories of nations condemned by social displacement, cultural annihilation or deliberate disappearance. Laura is pursuing a PhD at SOAS, University of London. Her interdisciplinary research focused on second-generation female artists in the Iranian diaspora, crosses contemporary art, gender studies and ethnography.

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