Clothing Choices Research Articles

The Influence of Anime on Contemporary Art

The Influence of Anime on Contemporary Art Kristine Somerville Click for larger view View full resolution Mitsume, © 2022 MITSUME [End Page 91] Click for larger view View full resolution Mr., A Day When Many Dreams Come True, 2016. © 2015 Mr. /Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. Courtesy of the artist, Kaikai Kiki Co., and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London In fall 2000, when I stepped into the classroom as a new professor of English and creative writing at a women’s college in the Midwest, the moment resembled Dorothy opening the door of her small farmhouse to reveal the magical land of Oz. I first noticed the hypersaturated colors of my students’ clothing and then the distinctive styles of their outfits. They wore thrift-store frocks layered over blue jeans and ballet slippers, schoolgirl uniforms with knee socks and loafers, and baby-doll dresses with Mary Jane pumps. I knew from reading Vogue that their clothing choices were inspired by Tokyo Street fashion, a look that was more [End Page 92] Click for larger view View full resolution Mr., In a Corner of This Town, 2018. © 2018 Mr./Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. Courtesy of the artist, Kaikai Kiki Co., and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London overgrown preschooler than college girl. Images of cherry blossoms, Pokémon characters, and Hello Kitty covered their book bags, and while I lectured, they busily doodled in their notebooks. They filled the pages with illustrations of stylized characters, mostly female, who looked gently suggestive with dilated saucer eyes, gravity-defying hair, and slinky [End Page 93] Click for larger view View full resolution Hiro Ando, Kohaku & Flag, 2009, courtesy of CrazyNoodles art collective dresses. After class they talked excitedly about the newest episode of Sailor Moon and shared mochi candies. No one had warned me that many of my students were swept up in the anime craze. My students’ interest in anime mystified me. They seemed to be re- creating a fantastical version of childhood, a time in my life that I couldn’t wait to leave behind. Truth be told, I have always disliked cartoons. I never wanted to see Disney movies, but my father insisted. [End Page 94] Click for larger view View full resolution Hiro Ando, Red Traffic, 2009, courtesy of CrazyNoodles art collective While he was moved to tears by the pleading eyes of Bambi, Dumbo, and Pinocchio, I was left cold. On Saturday morning, my brothers kept the channel tuned to Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, The Woody Woodpecker Show, and The Roadrunner Show, programs I found loud and stressful. In junior high, I wanted to kiss Ricky Bradley, so I accepted an invitation to his house after school to watch Spider-Man. After an unspectacular kiss, I declined future cartoon-watching sessions. It just wasn’t worth it. Fortunately, in college during the 1980s, there was little mention of cartoons. Most English majors were anglophiles caught up in dreams of visiting Stratford-upon-Avon, Canterbury, and Bath. We accessorized our Laura Ashley knockoffs with worn copies of Austen and Brontë under our arms. So as a new professor at a women’s college, I had looked forward to sharing stories of productions at West End theaters and visits [End Page 95] Click for larger view View full resolution Hiro Ando, Ola, 2010, courtesy of CrazyNoodles art collective to the British Library. Instead, I was lost amid a lively anime culture; my students’ conversations were peppered with references I didn’t understand and stories of activities I knew nothing about. I began to question why anime was such a dominant force in Japanese culture and how it had achieved mainstream status among young people around the world. What I learned began with the simple fact that in Japan, anime isn’t a genre; it is a medium. Based on the adaptation of manga (comic books), light novels, and, later, video games, its popularity began to flourish after the country’s defeat in the Second World War. As an inexpensive, versatile form of entertainment that suited every age [End Page 96] Click for larger view View full resolution Jimmy Yoshimura, Blueyes, 2009, courtesy of CrazyNoodles...

The Prospect of Non-sexist Clothing in the Future Clothing Market

The style and development of non-sexist clothing shows people's aesthetic orientation and social values in today's society. By studying the characteristics and development of non-sexist clothing, analyzing its prospects in the future market, can help provide people with more comfortable clothing choices, and promote the concept of being brave to express oneself and get rid of gender stereotypes, as well as provide innovative ideas for the future clothing production. This article describes the current development of non-sexist clothing and its forecast in the future market, and takes the non-sexist clothing as the main research object and proves it by looking for different brand cases. In this paper, the concept style of non-sexist clothing, the current development situation in the clothing field and the future market forecast are respectively explored. Finally, the conclusion is that the prospect of non-sexist clothing in the future clothing market is quite optimistic, with great development potential.

Hidradenitis Suppurativa: The Influence of Gender, the Importance of Trigger Factors and the Implications for Patient Habits.

Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a debilitating, chronic, inflammatory skin disease primarily affecting apocrine gland-rich areas of the body. On the one hand, the presence of triggering factors-some identified, others only hypothesized-may initiate or perpetuate the pathogenic process of HS. In addition to cigarette smoking and diet, other trigger factors, including choice of clothing, are frequently observed in clinical practice. On the other hand, the presence of disease may influence habits of HS patients. Indeed, high incidences of sexual and sleep impairment have been reported in these patients. Consequently, alcohol and substance abuse may be a coping strategy for the emotional and psychological disease burden. Furthermore, a greater awareness of gender differences in HS may be important for dermatologists in their own clinical practice (i.e., pregnancy and breastfeeding). Consequently, in this loop interaction, comprehensive knowledge of all factors involved is crucial for the management of HS patients. Thus, the objective of this review is to (i) discuss the influence of gender on HS, (ii) summarize the most frequent triggering factors of HS and (iii) analyze the impact of HS on patient habits.

Sartorial Objects, Transgender Bodies and Destabilized Meaning: A Study of Kaushik Ganguly’s Nagarkirtan

Kaushik Ganguly’s 2017 film Nagarkirtan narrates the story of Puti, a transgender belonging to a hijra group in Kolkata, who desires for a gender reconfirmation surgery. Puti’s sartorial choices help her construct or emulate the appearance of a body she longs for but cannot avail due to her poor financial condition. On one hand, her sartorial choices help her to express her felt gender; on the other hand, it betrays her by either limiting her identity or giving out misinformation about the body that lies beneath. The paper uses Butler’s idea of impermanence of meaning behind signs and Halberstam’s idea of ‘trans’ being a destabilizing element of societal norms to present a qualitative analysis of the trans protagonist’s social performances through sartorial preferences as depicted in Nagarkirtan. Since the film under discussion shows its transgender protagonist at various stages of life, the paper also discusses her clothing choices throughout the years to explore the complex relationship among the clothes, the trans body and societal expectations. Spectrum, Volume 16, June 2021: 195-206

How Might Stoic Virtue Ethics Inform Sustainable Clothing Choices?

ABSTRACT This paper explores sustainable fashion choices from a Stoic philosophical perspective. Ancient Stoic teachings can help us reexamine our relationship with clothes in the 21st century and provide direction for the considerable number of people that are influenced by contemporary Stoicism. Stoicism provides a clear justification for sustainable living, given its call to live in harmony with Nature. Given the environmental facts, contemporary Stoics would do well to reduce the size of their wardrobe to what is necessary and functional. They should mindfully select clothing made of organic natural fibers, which are of sufficient quality as to reduce wasteful practices.

Fashioning Gender in Asia and Beyond

Fashioning Gender in Asia and Beyond

A Brief Discussion of Asian Women in Leadership

As never before, women are rightfully in positions of political power, and into the maelstrom of mass media challenges to their fashions and their right to govern. Fraught narratives surround the clothing of women in leadership in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, and Indonesia. There is an enduring relationship between women and dress which needs to be examined in regard to how clothing choices inform and articulate the ways in which women remain represented as either suitable or not for public office, how they may be lauded or damned when they are in power. In Women and Power: The Politics of Dress it is argued by several authors that political dress for women in the Asia-Pacific expresses a complex set of political and cultural legacies as it impacts their style of government and appearance. Cultural legacies are, in some cases, determined by choice or rejection of ethnic clothing of the past. When Myanmar leader Aung San Sui-Kyi chose to wear versions of her native costume, she offered the physical appearance of her commitment to government by the people, rather than the military (124). She was deposed from office and imprisoned after a military coup in 2021, and Myanmar currently remains under military rule. Interesting examples of ‘native costume’ in politics include: the former ‘first lady’ of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos, and her use of the classic Filipina ‘butterfly dress’ (122), and former Chief Executive of Hong Kong Carrie Lam’s adoption of the ancient Chinese ‘qipao’ or ‘cheong sam’ (129). Other legacies include the very strict set of attire worn by brides entering the Japanese royal family, and further honorifics as exemplified by the wedding clothes of Princess-by-marriage Masako and her subsequent rise to Empress of Japan (63-72). Contrary to country- and cultural-specific clothing for much of Asia, political dress for women includes the overwhelming impact of western culture on garments through mass media, such as television and films, and more recently, the socials. (130). Theories regarding political attire of non-Western women in leadership risk the notion of ‘stereotyping’ through the Western view of the ‘exoticism’ of women through ‘Oriental costuming’ (121). As noted above, there is a legitimate option for Asian women to select their garments to express both cultural traditions alongside their employment of Westernised or popular fashion, or even haute couture. For instance, more Avant Garde designer clothing was important to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and others (128). Further, clothing worn by women in politics offers the opportunity to express not only the political aspirations of their country and its role in global negotiations. Women politicians' use of distinctive country-based designers in India, Pakistan, Japan, Indonesia, and China (PRC) when on the global stage has been defined as ‘sartorial diplomacy’ (13). Promoting the fashion of one’s native country has also been defined as ‘soft power’ (13). Likewise, the use of ‘native’ or country-centric costume has offered women in leadership to mix a national form of identify politics as befits their nation’s goals (13). Finally, meeting nationalistic goals within the bounds of a culturally-based sense of women’s proper roles in society, i.e. placing family and children first can be challenging, if not impossible, with their own wishes to display their own identity through the adoption of contemporary fashion. Finally, how women leaders dress is subject to critical commentary through mass media and the socials, where appearance takes on a disproportionate level of importance (16). Women who rise to political prominence will need to continue to ‘call out’ inappropriate commentary on their attire that undermines their authority to govern their countries as men have done without question. Excerpted from the following: Denise N. Rall (ed.). Fashion, Women and Power: The Politics of Dress. Bristol: Intellect / Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2022. Author Biography Denise N. Rall, Adjunct Fellow – Research [pending], in Humanities & Social Sciences, Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW, was awarded her PhD in 2007. Since 2008, Denise relocated her academic and artistic interests to fashion and textiles through a critical lens to view the sociology of clothing and its role in society. Latest book: Fashion, Women & Power: The Politics of Dress published in 2022.

Wearing Your Worth at Work: The Consequences of Employees’ Daily Clothing Choices

Wearing Your Worth at Work: The Consequences of Employees’ Daily Clothing Choices

A STUDY ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR OF URBAN INDIAN WORKING WOMEN TOWARDS OFFICE WEAR OUTFITS AND SUSTAINABLE FASHION

The lifestyle of today’s urban consumers has dramatically changed due to various reasons which has led to a shift in their needs, preferences, and attitudes towards various product s in their day-to-day life. The urban working women’s entering the corporate workforce in India is increasing day by day. The increasing number of urban working women has led to demand of clothing appropriate for the workplace. Indian Urban women working in Corporates are opting right business attire as it gives them a serious image at their workplace with respect to their male counterparts. Also, in recent time there has been a surge in demand for sustainable products due to growing awareness of sustainable practices amongst Indian consumers. The purpose of this study is to understand the workplace clothing need and preference of urban women working in corporates. The research also tries to understand the attitude of such women towards sustainable fashion. A clear understanding of consumer behavior of urban Indian working women will help sustainable fashion marketers to attract and maintain their target consumer segment. The study is based on notable past research and two set of questionnaire surveys followed by subsequent data analysis. The findings suggest a scope for sustainable western business casual wear as a preferred choice of clothing in work environments among a new emerging class of women in urban India.

Modeling acute and cumulative erythemal sun exposure on vulnerable body sites during beach vacations utilizing behavior-encoded 3D body models

Vacationers in a high-solar-intensity beach setting put themselves at risk of ultraviolet radiation (UV) over-exposure that can lead to acute and chronic health consequences including erythema, photoaging, and skin cancer. There is a current gap in existing dosimetry work on capturing detailed time-resolved anatomical distributions of UV exposure in the beach vacation setting. In this study, a radiative transfer model of the solar conditions of Tampa Bay, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA (27.8°N, 82.8°W) is combined with an in silico three-dimensional body model and data on typical beach vacation behaviors to calculate acute and cumulative body-site-specific UV exposure risk during a beach vacation. The resulting cumulative UV exposure calculated for a typical mix of clothing choices, settings, and activities during a week-long (7-day) beach vacation is 172.2 standard erythemal doses (SED) at the forearm, which is comparable with the average total annual UV exposure of European and North American residents and consistent with existing dosimetry studies. This model further estimates that vacationers choosing to spend a full day exclusively in the beach or pool setting can experience UV exposure in excess of 50 SED a day at multiple body sites. Such exposure indicates that significant sun protective measures would be required to prevent sunburn across all skin types in this setting. This work clarifies the significant role that beach vacations play in UV exposure and corresponding acute and cumulative health risks and highlights the importance of behavioral choices (including clothing, activity and photoprotection) as crucial factors in differentiating personal solar exposure risks.Graphical abstract

Wearing Your Worth at Work: The Consequences of Employees’ Daily Clothing Choices

Do the clothes worn to work impact employees’ thoughts and behaviors? Despite the universal necessity of wearing clothes and the fact that employees make decisions about this daily, organizational scholars have not yet addressed this question. We integrated sociometer and enclothed cognition theories to propose that aspects of clothing—their aesthetics, normality, and uniqueness—hold abstract meanings that have implications for employees’ self-esteem and subsequent task and relational behaviors (i.e., goal progress, social avoidance). We further probed this effect by suggesting it would be strengthened on days when employees had more frequent interactions with others in the workplace. Results of a 10-day study of 85 employees from four organizations generally supported our predictions, showing that daily clothing aesthetics and uniqueness had effects on state self-esteem and downstream behavioral consequences. The effects of daily clothing normality emerged under the condition of greater interactions with others (interaction frequency also strengthened the effects of clothing aesthetics). Our manuscript contributes to both major theories from which we draw and further offers theoretical and practical contributions to the literature on organizational clothing.

Development of a Novel Thermal Mannequin System for Thermal Comfort Measurements

Giving comfort to the wearer without feeling physiologically and psychologically by the wearer, assuming the role of thermoregulation system against environmental temperature changes, and making them psychologically happy with their appearance and attitude characteristics makes it easier to adapt to the environment in which they live. Since all these functions of garments are generally defined as ‘clothing comfort' and aim to increase the living standards of people, the studies carried out to measure clothing comfort in the most realistic way are of great importance both academically and sectorial. In this study, it is planned to carry out the thermal mannequin system that can act to objectively evaluate together with the important parameters of thermal, humidity and pressure comfort, which are the most important criteria in determining the clothing choice of consumers, that can provide measurement in different ambient conditions, and that allows instantaneous measurements of temperature, humidity and pressure. Within this plan, a practical mannequin system has been designed for thermal, humidity and pressure comfort measurements and will allow measuring and evaluating many features at the same time. The thermal mannequin system will be produced with practical and reconfigurable 3D printing technology, which allows re-production, unlike the thermal mannequin mechanisms in the literature.

Research on Clothing Preference and Consumption Satisfaction of Female Consumers Aged 30-40

In modern society, fashion is becoming more highly valued in people choice of clothes. It seems that more and more people, especially the women who live in urban cities, are dressing more stylishly. Clothes represent the personality of individual and beautiful clothes are helpful for women to improve self-esteem and confidence. Through literature research, text analysis and descriptive statistical research, this paper analyzed the influence of four factors, which included materials, colors, designs and sizes. This research found that the women aged 30 to 40 had a tendency to buy dresses rather than jeans or other kinds of clothing and give high rating of these dresses, who paid much attention on the designs and sizes of dresses which was the most important thing. To be detailed, the design for neckline, waist, zipper, sleeves and fitting their bra were the parts that most women cared about. This paper can help some apparel companies understand the preference and consumer behaviors of women to some extends.

Main humorous features of axiological conceptual framework in "Roast of Justin Bieber"

This article analyses main features of humorous aspect represented in anti-values framework of social group “celebrity” in a comedy show «Roast of Justin Bieber». The author identifies and analyses the main characteristics of the following anti-values: lack of talent, stupidity, unattractiveness and lust and also identifies their main features. Lack of talent is actualized by criticizing the singer’s work, stupidity is ridiculed through hairstyle and clothing choice, lust is ridiculed through illegal behavior.

The Daily Lifestyles Choices Lead to the Increase in Infertility Rate in Couples

INTRODUCTION: -The lifestyle plays an important role in every person’s life. In an industrial nation or a developing country people usually prefers to modifiable lifestyles according to their surroundings, background and environmental conditions. Lifestyle factors could affect the general health and the wellness of an individual including the fertility. The changes in couple’s lifestyle are directly proportional to the fertility rate. This review highlights both male and female infertility due to their lifestyle choices, which includes the age of starting of a family, obesity, excessive alcohol intake, smoking addiction, drug addiction, stress, clothing choices, lubricants, these lifestyle factors are associated with the infertility rate. There are other environmental factors which are responsible for the damage the fertility and other body organs, which results the decrease in chances of various fertility treatments. CONCLUSION: -This article concludes that lifestyles choice can have a major impact on individual’s fertility and reduced the chances having healthy sexual intercourses which also affects the infertility among them. The goal is to help people understand the impact of their lifestyle choices on daily basis.

The race-gendered clothing choices of the ‘professional and respectable’ Black man in the workplace

The objective of this qualitative study is to investigate the clothing choices of ‘professional and respectable’ Black men in the workplace. More precisely, this study will shed light on why Black men decide to wear particular clothing fashions and how they view themselves versus how they perceive themselves to be viewed by the wider society. I utilize respectability politics and W. E. B. DuBois’s condition of double consciousness to guide this qualitative study with N=4 Black male professionals. Findings show that Black men are psychologically bounded by having to uphold respectability politics and must alter the way they dress to be more respected by their non-Black colleagues. Additionally, some of the Black men were also financially burdened by needing to dress in particular fashions (e.g., suits and ties) that are relatively expensive, while their non-Black colleagues would typically wear more casual clothing within the workplace. Despite the fact that the Black men within this study uphold respectability politics at their places of employment, they are still harshly stereotyped by their non-Black colleagues. Thus, Black men are left questioning why they continue to engage in respectability politics as it pertains to the distinct ways in which they dress in order to maintain a professional and respectable appearance and demeanor.

The affective economy and fast fashion: Materiality, embodied learning and developing a sensibility for sustainable clothing

Many commentators recognise the need to make clothing more sustainable due to its deleterious environmental and social ramifications. However, it is challenging to change the consumer behaviour that drives fast fashion markets because people have complex relationships with clothing. In this study, we illustrate how the relationships that people have with clothing can be shaped by workshops that immerse them in making, mending, and modifying garments. Such experiential learning can encourage adoption of more sustainable clothing choices, such as reducing consumption of new garments and prolonging the life of already owned items of clothing. We present findings on a strand of work from the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded S4S: Designing a Sensibility for Sustainable Clothing project, which explored the affective economy around clothing, and considered how emotive affects around garments operate as a conduit to self-sustain particular practices. Our significant contribution brings political analysis firmly into the debate about sustainable clothing by merging literatures on behaviour change and affect, through exploration of a novel longitudinal (9-months) qualitative data set. At the start of the project, participants generally thought of clothes as being low-cost (and therefore disposable) items. The workshops, in contrast, presented garments and the materials from which they are made as precious, complex and fluid – in a process of continual possibility. For pro-environmental behavioural change, we find that immersion in the materiality of clothing mobilised affective processes, enabling potentially transformative affective encounters. Further, we found that group learning environments need to do more than simply teach approved normative values and behaviours. Pro-environmental behaviour change initiatives need to provide people with the space to create and situate their own knowledges, enabling affect to be mobilised, activated and supported by appropriate cultural milieu.

Cather Among the Moderns by Janis P. Stout, and: Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and the Place of Culture by Julie Olin-Ammentorp

Reviewed by: Cather Among the Moderns by Janis P. Stout, and: Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and the Place of Culture by Julie Olin-Ammentorp Catherine Morley CATHER AMONG THE MODERNS, by Janis P. Stout. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019. 280 pp. $44.95 hardback; $44.95 ebook. EDITH WHARTON, WILLA CATHER, AND THE PLACE OF CULTURE, by Julie Olin-Ammentorp. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019. 396 pp. $60.00 hardback; $60.00 ebook. Janis Stout’s Cather Among the Moderns and Julie Olin-Ammentorp’s Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and the Place of Culture each offers a considerable contribution to Willa Cather studies and indeed to Edith Wharton studies in the case of the latter. Both books demonstrate exemplary scholarship in their blending of close literary analysis with historical and biographical insights. Stout and Olin-Ammentorp break new ground in the critical conceptualization of Cather in particular. Interestingly, both books approach their subjects as being deeply attuned to the cultures they occupied and deeply cognizant of the sociopolitical debates that they are often perceived as overlooking in favor of narratives of either ordinary midwesterners or New York upper-class elites. As well as this sense of the writers as culturally and politically engaged, both Stout and Olin-Ammentorp offer portraits of the writers as carefully attentive to the craft and form of writing itself. Cather, in particular, is presented by Stout as a modernist in a similar vein to Virginia Woolf in terms of her attention to formal gaps and elisions (rather wonderfully described by Stout as “vacuoles”), the shape of her texts, and her compulsive revision of them, as well as her deviation from standard generic expectations and parameters as closely aligned to the modernist project of “making it new” (p. 197). [End Page 171] Stout’s study looks to position Cather amongst her contemporaries, contemplating that which makes Cather modern and ultimately that which makes her a modernist writer. Beginning with her early life, Stout looks at the writer’s geographical mobility, which propelled her from Virginia to Nebraska as a child, through to her later journey to Pittsburgh where she embarked upon making a thoroughly modern life, and through the development of her career as a journalist, her immersion in the artistic and cultural life the city afforded, her trips to the Carnegie Institute Art Galleries and Chicago’s Art Institute, and her journeys to England and Europe. Stout astutely links Cather’s mobility to two of the most important aspects of American modernity—migration and immigration—noting that Cather’s travels, while driven by individual choice, set her within a wider sociocultural phenomenon that engendered many of the features that critics and writers now consider to be modern and indeed modernist. Such features include the alienation, dislocation, nervousness, and fragmentation associated with urbanization, with the urban environment most typical of modern and modernist writing. Stout makes the case that these facts of Cather’s early life, as well as the family’s rather disharmonious political leanings, made for a writer who had already begun the process of becoming modern before she had even left Red Cloud, Nebraska for Pittsburgh. Indeed, the key word for Stout in terms of approaching the questions of Cather’s modernity is “transitional,” a writer in motion between states, between worlds, and between identities. Stout makes a compelling case for viewing Cather as transitional in her gender experimentalism and her performance of gendered identities as observed especially during her time at the University of Lincoln, Nebraska, a thread that is picked up in the book’s third chapter, “Among Women.” Rather than viewing Cather’s hairstyle and her choice of clothing as an attempt to masquerade as a man, Stout invites the reader to consider Cather as playing with different versions of femininity. Certainly, Cather is interested in a femininity without the fashionable frills and fuss of her contemporaries but, as Stout observes through careful examination of archival photographs, her dress choices were sophisticated and often observable in the more urbane New Woman styles that she would go on to adopt upon her relocation to the bigger city. This biographical observation of Cather’s transitional femininity—her rejection of categorical...

A Clinico-Epidemiological Study of Neurofibromatosis Type 1 and Its Relation to Quality of Life: A Cross-Sectional Study From India.

Introduction: Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is an inherited neuroectodermal abnormality with multisystem effects, which can have heavy psychological and physical burdens, especially in countries like India, wherein skin disease is significantly stigmatized. This study was performed to understand the clinical and epidemiological trends of NF1 at a tertiary care center in India and evaluate the association between clinical severity and quality of life in these patients.Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of 40 patients with NF1 over a period of two years at a tertiary hospital in western India. After obtaining consent, demographic and clinical information was collected from the patients and recorded in a pre-designed proforma. Quality of life was assessed by a validated Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) questionnaire in languages understood by the patients and subsequently analyzed.Results: This study included 40 patients at a mean age of 28.6 years, with a slight male predominance. The most frequently occurring lesions were café-au-lait macules, followed by neurofibromas and intertriginous freckling. The mean DLQI score was 12.35, implying a large effect on most patients' lives. Questions related to self-consciousness, embarrassment, and the influence of skin lesions on clothing choices had the highest scores, indicating a significant effect on social perception.Conclusion: NF1 has a profound impact on a patient’s quality of life, as evidenced by the high DLQI scores in our patient cohort. The early identification and management of such patients can help prevent further deterioration of their quality of life.

Presentation of self, impression management and the period: A qualitative investigation of physically active women’s experiences in sport and exercise

The menstrual cycle is an important biological process that can have implications for women’s participation in activities of daily life. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand women’s experiences, interactions, and perceptions of sport and exercise participation throughout the menstrual cycle. Five focus groups with 25 physically active women were conducted to investigate women’s perceptions of their menstrual cycle, their thoughts, feelings, and actions in sport and exercise environments throughout the menstrual cycle. The dramaturgical writings of Goffman were used to understand women’s self-presentation and experiences of interactional dynamics in sport and exercise environments. The findings highlight that the period was the most impactful aspect of the menstrual cycle on physically active women’s experiences of sport and exercise participation. The results explore strategies that the women adopted to manage their appearance, concerns that informed women’s decision-making processes, and the women’s purposeful impression management when undertaking sport and exercise during their period, particularly in interactions with male sport coaches. The findings emphasize the importance of unpacking the often-implicit norms and expectations associated with the period in order to normalize dialogues with practitioners (e.g., coaches) and support women’s continued participation in sport and exercise throughout the menstrual cycle. Lay summary: Following five focus groups with 25 physically active women, we found that concerns over what others might think if they found out that women were on their period led our participants to choose clothes selectively and suppress their discomfort in many interactions when participating in sport and exercise situations. Implications for practice Fear of leakage of menstrual blood and concerns over subsequent reactions of others (e.g., coaches, other gym members) makes the period particularly impactful on how women feel and act in sport and exercise situations. Knowledge of what it means to women to be on their period (e.g., selective choice of clothing, suppressing of any signs of discomfort) is important for practitioners in the field to create open and relaxed conversational atmospheres that allow opportunity for women to open up about their feelings and experiences if they choose to do so.