Femininity and Fashion: How Women Experience Gender Role Through their Dressing Practices

Abstract

The aim of this article is to outline how the aesthetic experience of individuals constitutes nowadays a way of doing gender for them (West and Fenstermaker, 2006). Using the results of a qualitative survey carried out in France between 2013 and 2014 (32 women, 28 men), we will focus on one type of aesthetic practices: the dress choices of women. Ever since their childhood, women are encouraged to think about the image they express themselves through their clothes. This is why, their reflexivity on this subject is intense. After presenting the normative precepts that frame feminine appearance today, after highlighting the importance of aesthetic gender norms that promote certain dressing practices and condemn others, we will bring forward the multiple ways of living their gender role via their dressing practices of the women we met. Through their dressing choices, women appropriate their bodies. Whether they are in a process of adequacy or distance with the gendered beauty standards, their speeches and practices reveal how the construction of a certain appearance via clothing (moving during their life) is a central element of their identity building.