Dressed for Work: The Sartorial Representations of Working Women in Early 21st-Century American Primetime Dramas

Emilia Nodżak

doi:10.17951/nh.2021.6.130-145

Abstract

The present study is theoretically located in the field of critical feminist studies of the representation of women in the mass media. It discusses the ways in which working women characters construct and express their occupational identity in selected American primetime TV dramas of the early 21st century. The observed strategies, which range from highly restricted self-expression to unbridled sartorial liberty, appear to be heavily correlated with the prestige of the presented occupations and their levels of masculinization/feminization. Moreover, the self-limiting sartorial choices of high-achieving professional women, frequently containing their femininity, result from the competitive nature of prestigious yet traditionally male-gendered occupations. However, it is also pointed out that working women are generally depicted as determined to accentuate the physical aspects of their femininity regardless of the established dress code or traditional gendering of their occupations. Thus, the sartorial choices made by the female characters at the workplace serve in the analyzed TV shows as symbolic manifestations of women’s growing confidence as players on the job market in their own right.

Highlights

IntroductionThe aim of this paper is to examine what clothing practices are used and how, and determine whether female characters performing traditional and non-traditional occupations are shown as manifesting or suppressing their femininity through sartorial choices available to them
It is pointed out that working women are generally depicted as determined to accentuate the physical aspects of their femininity regardless of the established dress code or traditional gendering of their occupations
The sartorial choices made by the female characters at the workplace serve in the analyzed TV shows as symbolic manifestations of women’s growing confidence as players on the job market in their own right

Summary

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to examine what clothing practices are used and how, and determine whether female characters performing traditional and non-traditional occupations are shown as manifesting or suppressing their femininity through sartorial choices available to them. For the purpose of this paper, I subscribe to the notion that gender is a cultural construct that includes norms, behaviors, and roles associated with being a man or a woman, whereas gender identity is one’s internal sense or experience of one’s gender. The latter may or may not correspond to the biological sex determined by such physiological aspects as reproductive organs, chromosomes and hormones. Traditional and non-traditional occupations refer to jobs and professions that have been historically dominated by the representatives of one sex and conventionally associated with either feminine (traditional) or masculine (non-traditional) stereotypical attributes (“What Are Nontraditional Occupations?”)

Sartorial identity markers

Professional uniforms

Quasi-uniforms

Sartorial freedom

Clothes and femininity in the televised workplace