Bodies, Power and Fashionable Femininity in Designer Fashion Boutiques: Between the “Panopticon” and the “Confessional”

Abstract

Fashionable femininity is a complex discursive terrain. Multiple discourses compete to assert meanings for fashionable femininity and these discourses influence women’s experiences of their bodies. This article focuses upon oppressive and celebratory discourses as two powerful forces within designer fashion boutiques. From philosopher Michel Foucault, I consider how these discourses operate through a boutique “panopticon” and “confessional,” with this analysis illuminating complexities of power within the pursuit of fashionable femininity in boutique settings. This inquiry draws from a study that combined autoethnographic memoir and in-depth interviews with 18 women working in designer fashion boutiques in Melbourne, Australia. I argue that the duality of panopticon and confessional dynamics intensifies lived tensions between oppressive and celebratory discourses beyond the boutique. With fashion part of contemporary ideals of femininity, boutiques become political sites of discursive contest creating contradictions in how the fashionably feminized body is experienced, necessitating constant negotiation without the possibility of reconciliation.