�I Kicked Those Babies Off and Put the Typical Lesbian Birkenstocks on:� Authentic Style-Fashion-Dress Negotiations of Lesbian Married Couples on Their Wedding Day

Courtney Morgan,Karen H Hyllegard,Jennifer Paff Ogle,Kelly L Reddy Best

doi:10.31274/itaa.8417

Abstract

We explored how lesbian married couples negotiated their style-fashion-dress on their wedding days, conducting in-depth interviews with 10 lesbian married couples. Our work was guided by theory exploring authenticity as related to self-expression through appearance. We analyzed our data using an abbreviated version of the constructionist grounded theory approach. Four themes emerged, including (1) ambivalence, re-negotiations, and labor surrounding the identity or concept of “bride” or what it means to be a bride; (2) gender expressions and experiences as central to the negotiation and construction of style-fashion-dress for the wedding day; (3) representations of the authentic self in wedding day style-fashion-dress; and (4) heteronormative experiences. The gender and other symbolic negotiations in the couples’ style-fashion-dress led to an authentic expression of self, resulting in feelings of empowerment for these couples on their wedding days, despite the fact that their style-fashion-dress sometimes prompted feelings of ambivalence, labor, re-negotiations and/or heteronormative experiences.

Highlights

We conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 10 married couples whose ages ranged from 27 to 66
Each couple shared wedding photographs, which were referenced during the interview
All participants responded to the recruitment call for “lesbian married couples,” they conceptualized their sexual identity in varied ways, including lesbian; lesbian/gay/ queer; lesbian/gay; bisexual, but responds to lesbian; gay; queer; queer, non-heterosexual, sexually attracted to both males (30%) and females (70%); lesbian or queer; bi/pan; pansexual with samesex tendencies; and lesbian or lez-be-honest

Summary

Introduction

The ruling prompted the development of several queer-focused fashion brands (e.g., Saint Harridan, Tomboy Tailors) catering to participants in LGBTQ+ weddings (Reddy-Best, in press), as many women in the LGBTQ+ community push gender boundaries in their appearances (Geczy & Karaminas, 2013; Reddy-Best & Pedersen, 2015). We conducted an in-depth, exploratory study on how lesbian married couples in the US negotiated their style-fashion-dress (Tulloch, 2015) on their wedding day.

Results

Conclusion