Mexican American Women, Dress and Gender

Pachucas, Chicanas, Cholas

Amaia Ibarraran-Bigalondo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367671563
• eBook ISBN: 9780429656910
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Mexican American women have endured several layers of discrimination deriving from a strong patriarchal tradition and a difficult socioeconomic and cultural situation within the US ethnic and class organization. However, there have been groups of women who have defied their fates at different times and in diverse forms.

Mexican American Women, Dress, and Gender observes how Pachucas, Chicanas, and Cholas have used their body image (dress, hairstyle, and body language) as a political tool of deviation and attempts to measure the degree of intentionality in said oppositional stance. For this purpose and, claiming the sociological power of photographs as a representation of precise sociohistorical moments, this work analyzes several photographs of women of said groups; with the aim of proving the relevance of "other" body images in expressing gender and ethnic identification, or disidentification from the mainstream norm.

Proposing a diachronic, comparative approach to young Mexican American women, this monograph will appeal to students and researchers interested in Chicano History, Race and Ethnic Studies, American History, Feminism, and Gender Studies.

Chapter 1

Dress, clothing, fashion, and style

Nudity as a natural, inherent human practice was prevalent from prehistoric times until the beginnings of ‘modern civilization’ in the Western world. Thus, Greek and Roman art and sculpture endeavored to portray and depict mostly male nudes in their most physical, athletic, perfectionist ways. Hair, muscles, hands, feet and genitals were elaborately depicted in the superb representations of the almost-always masculine anatomy that these sculptures presented. These were “youths standing alone, proud and naked. (…) The harmonious proportions of the nudes emphasized a balanced whole and communicated grace, strength, and gentleness” (Rubinstein 215). The Bible itself, in Genesis 2:25, observes that “(And) the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” However, there are accounts from anthropological studies of the fact that from the times of the Neanderthal people, they used animal furs to survive and protect their bodies from extreme cold. Clothing was born, and its sole function was that of protecting the human body from the natural elements. The Cro-Magnons continued covering their bodies with furs, and developed more sophisticated garments such as the tunic, as archeological evidence of the fact that they invented the needle to join pieces of fur together suggests (“Prehistoric Clothing”).

The progressive civilization of the Western world and subsequent development of norms of conduct and propriety (together with other more physical needs, such as that of protection from cold temperatures) led to the gradual conception of the nude body as shameful, and something that had to be relegated to more intimate spheres and private spaces. The naked body could not be shown in public and its exposure was understood to be disrespectful and obscene. In this sense, getting dressed has become one of the most basic norms of acceptance of social decorum (as well as of a loss of naivety, physicality and, in sum, ‘animality.’) The Bible, as one of the foundational texts of Western thought and society, clearly established the moral/immoral boundary that provided clothing with a function other than mere physical protection. It says:

And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

(Genesis 3:10–11)

According to the text, an act of disobedience brought physicality and prudishness to human beings and, ever since, the need to cover the body has been regarded as a basic condition of the social interaction of humans. Clothes became necessary first for diverse moral and physical reasons, and with the passing of time, they have become markers of social status and/or social adaptation and adaptability. In sociologist Joanne Entwistle’s words, “nakedness is wholly inappropriate in almost all social situations” (Fashioned 6), and therefore,

the individual and very personal act of getting dressed is an act of preparing the body for the social world, making it appropriate, acceptable, indeed respectable and possibly even desirable also. (…) Dress is the way in which individuals learn to live in their bodies and feel at home in them. (…) In this respect, dress is both an intimate experience of the body and a public presentation of it.

(Fashioned 7)

Dress historian François Boucher, in fact, highlights some of the functions of clothing, such as inspiring fear and authority, power, rank and/or religious significance. In sum, clothing denotes individual identity within a collective (9–10). Furthermore, he adds that each sociohistorical and political period has seen clothing and costume being adapted and their function changed. It was not until the 14th century that clothing for men and women became different, and it is in this period that we can talk about the birth of fashion and of the “appearance in costume of new elements that owe less to function than to caprice” (Boucher 192). The 16th century Renaissance and the obsession to find beauty were exacerbated by the use of fine materials and luxurious ornaments. The next century, therefore, was characterized by a clear influence of art in costume and clothing, and the influence of French and Dutch fashions was dominant in Europe, mostly among the upper classes and the aristocracy. The development of mechanical production after the Industrial Revolution made clothing change drastically in the 17th century, with the rise of the cotton production, dyes and other materials. But it was after the 19th century, with the emergence of new international trades and the disappearance of the monarchy in France, that styles and modes changed. The middle of the century brought the concept of mass production, and a notable democratization of clothing occurred. World War I, finally, became the turning point, especially in women’s costume, for a drastic change in the manners and functions of clothing. Women were ‘freer’ and more active, and this was, of course, reflected in the way they dressed.

Today, clothes in the Western world have become an extraordinarily popular product of consumption, and the clothing and fashion industries are keystones of the capitalist infrastructure. Not only that, the globalization of the markets has allowed clothes for the First World to be produced in the Third World for Third-World money, thereby widening the gap between the rich and poor countries, the consumer countries and the producers. In sum, the equality expressed in the first human appearance of such a foundational text as the Bible (where the first man and woman were naked and shameless) has turned into the present situation, where clothes are not only regarded as a commodity, but also as a definitory mark of identity.

1.1. The function of dress

Many scholars have led their work towards the definition of the role of clothes and fashion throughout time. Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle thought, as early as 1833–34, that the function of clothing was threefold: warmth, decency but mainly, ornamental (1987). No hint yet of the communicative function of clothes. The protective function, obvious to explain the origin of the need to cover oneself, as highlighted by almost all scholars, however, has always been described as complementary to other functions. US scholar and writer Alison Lurie (1992), for instance, underlines the idea of the utility of clothes for protection, just as British psychologist John Carl Flügel had done in 1930. Scholar Elizabeth Rouse (1989) expands the function of the protection of the body, modesty and attraction into a notion essential to our work, which is that of communication. Clothes and personal style communicate. The scholar explains that, however obvious the use of clothing is for protection from nature, for instance, different cultures respond to the same situations in different ways. The cultural side of clothing is thus related to its protective function, just like its second material role: modesty and concealment (Barnard, Fashion 53). Rouse and Flügel (1930) continue describing, in their own works, the need for clothing for reasons of decency and morality, concepts based on the heritage of a strong Judeo-Christian tradition. Covering the body, therefore, saves human beings from the same sin that provoked the need for clothing, in Flügel’s words. The original sin provided the naked body with a cultural and physical significance that it lacked before the sin, as told in the Genesis. In this regard, the cultural element of clothing is proved to be relevant. For Rouse, moreover, clothing not only serves to avoid shame, but also to distinguish masculine from feminine. Thus, clothing also becomes a marker of gender identity and identification. Following this line, authors such as Roach and Eicher (1979) have debated the connection between clothing and modesty, as to them, modesty is an obvious cultural element. They argue that modesty is not innate to human beings, but that the constant use of clothing has created a particular sense of modesty, and not the other way round. This idea aligns with the notion that “clothing is not the result of modesty, but the cause of modesty; that is, a child is not embarrassed by a lack of clothes until he becomes accustomed to the wearing of clothes” (Horn 4). Finally, clothing may serve the opposite purpose, that is, to attract and exhibit oneself, as pointed out by intellectuals such as Bernard Rudofsky (1947).

Thus, dress was mostly studied in the context of anthropology, until the appearance of cultural studies in the 1960s, without paying any attention to what dressing one way or another implied culturally. Today, contemporary theorists approach dress as a language system, whose main aim is to communicate, and scholars such as Barnard (2002, 2006, 2014), Barthes (1983 (1967)), Eco (1972) and Lurie (1992) have attempted to define dress and the act of dressing from this viewpoint. However, and according to Entwistle and Wilson, their aims failed to expose the complexities and diversity of the everyday practice of dressing. In contrast to a fixed grammatical language system, as Fred Davis tried to explain in 1992, dress “is more like music than speech, suggestive and ambiguous rather than bound by the precise grammatical rules” (qtd. in Entwistle and Wilson, Body 3). In the same vein, Barthes’s interesting effort to apply a rhetoric of semiotics with a view to understanding the fashion system failed to address the “many complex social dimensions of fashion as it is practiced in everyday life” (Body, 3).

What is obvious for any attempt to study the meaning of dress, or the implications of fashion as a system, is that, for human beings, and for diverse social and physical reasons, getting dressed, and in particular getting dressed in a specific way, is, on the one hand, a need, and on the other, a choice. Kate Soper provides a thorough and interesting review on the way the need for dress has been portrayed in the arts and philosophy in the Western world. The scholar states, first, that according to Virginia Woolf, the need for, and function of dressing was different and meant something different to women and men. For the former, dressing provided a means of creating beauty and attracting men. For men, on the contrary, the way a man dressed implied and demonstrated his social status and relevance (Woolf 176–80, qtd. in Soper 16). The scholar goes on to explain that there are functions of clothing that are not exclusive of human beings, such as covering the body for protection and adornment (just as feathers and fur are), and others that have an aesthetic and semiotic meaning, and are thus exclusive to human beings. In this sense, she explains, “clothes have been very extensively used to assert the cultural status of human beings, to police the border between humans and animals, to deny or cover over our animality and thereby preserve a seemly distance from the beast” (Soper 17). In fact, according to Soper, clothing does not make humans more human, but, as Descartes pointed out, being clothed “is a mark of a distinctively human form of consciousness, of being a ‘person’” (92–3, qtd. in Soper 18) and it has an “advertisement function” (Woolf 176, qtd. in Soper 19), which “adheres to the ramifying and complex dress codes which obtain in one’s culture” (Soper 19). Or according to Umberto Eco, one speaks through one’s clothes (59). Clothing in a certain way, therefore, may imply a sense of human acknowledgment, of a deployment of human dignity and of the acceptance, or otherwise rejection, of a certain social code and system. In fact, and according to Joanne Entwistle, the bond between the body and dress is inextricable, and

[i]f nakedness is unruly and disruptive, this would seem to indicate that dress is a fundamental aspect of microsocial order. When we dress we do so to make our bodies acceptable to a social situation. (…) The body and dress operate dialectically: dress works on the body, imbuing it with social meaning while the body is a dynamic field which gives life and fullness to dress.

(Entwistle and Wilson, Body 35–6)

For the purpose of this work, I would like to pay special attention to what Malcolm Barnard describes as the cultural functions of clothing. First and foremost, one needs to start from the premise that clothing, dressing and fashion are practices of signification, which convey meaning. Clothing creates links among individuals, developing, therefore, a feeling of community (Roach and Eicher 1979; Barnard 2002). Similarly, and interestingly, clothing and the specific individual use of dress serve as a means of individualistic expression (Barnard 2002), which provides each individual with a particular position and space within the previously mentioned community. This community is generally organized in several social layers, and dress and clothing also serve to indicate one’s social and even economic status, and therefore one’s social role (Barnard 2002). Clothing functions as a marker of political power, of affiliation to a certain religious belief, of participation in social rituals, such as weddings, funerals, etc. or for recreational purposes, such as specific games, etc. In sum, the clothes one chooses are directly related to the external natural forces one lives in, but most of all, clothing implies the position in the group one inhabits and the social norms one would like to respect/subvert. Bearing in mind that clothing and style, as explained by Fred Davis, “do not mean the same things to all members of a society at the same time and that, because of this, what is worn lends itself easily to a symbolic upholding of class and status boundaries in society” (9), it is the aim of this work to dwell upon the boundaries that Pachucas, Chicanas and Cholas aimed to cross and the way the three groups have (or have not) used their clothing choices for this purpose during their specific sociohistorical times. Or, as Diana Crane affirms, to observe the way these women used clothing to “‘create(s)’ behavior through its capacity to impose social identities and empower people to assert latent social identities” (2).

1.2. Clothing, fashion, and style

Before delving into the matter, a brief pause to explain the meaning and implications of the terms ‘fashion’ and ‘style’ would be interesting for my purposes. Fashion, as a category, according to Georg Simmel, is a phenomenon that exists in complex societies, driven by both a “differentiating impulse” and a “socializing one” (546). This definition clearly marks the group, communal essence of fashion, where the different members of different groups ally themselves with a certain group and similarly dissociate themselves from others. Today, and taking into account the growth and relevance of the fashion industry, the term has mainly been reduced to the naming of this industry, which marks the tendencies of a particular time, and is performed and introduced into society by various means, creating what we today call trends.

The term ‘fashion,’ as objectively defined by the dictionary, implies “a popular way of dressing during a particular time or among a particular group of people” (Merriam-Webster) and indicates a collective choice, which is performed consciously or unconsciously, according to the influence of the mandates of the fashion industry. In other words, “a fashion is any style that has gained widespread acceptance in a given period” (Horn 13). In this sense, clothing acts as a cultural agent, as a status marker. Following fashion, the trends of the time, is a means of identification and/or disidentification (Muñoz, J.E.) for people, because “fashion is dependent upon the willingness of the majority to conform to it. A number of groups or subcultures refrain from or disdain the current mode in dress. (…) Unless one is willing to conform to such standards of simplicity, identification with the group is impossible” (Horn 14). Fashion tendencies have always been present in people’s ‘choices’ regarding clothing (we should bear in mind that the real democratization of fashion and clothing trends did not occur until the late 20th century), and complying with said choices has been interpreted as a symbol of social and cultural position.

According to Simmel (1957 (1904)), at first, fashion was marked by the social elites, and was then imitated by the lower classes, in a hollow attempt to resemble those in socially and culturally superior positions. Clothing became, therefore, following the previous centuries, a clear marker of social class and status and has remained so ever since the 19th century. It became one of the most obvious and apparent markers of social boundaries and class hierarchies. However, things ostensibly changed in the 20th and 21st centuries, and regardless of the fact that there is still a clear-cut division between high-class fashion and clothing (in the form of haute couture and luxurious brands) and the most popular forms of fashion and clothing, the democratization of clothing is here with us. Clothing as a consumer good is in the hands of both the elites and the lower classes, and in this sense, the direct identification of clothes and class has been partly erased although there are still a large number of trends and marks that are only eligible for a very specific elite. This, however, does not imply that dress code and clothing tendencies have lost their symbolic meaning. They have, on the contrary, adopted other meanings, in what I will call from now on ‘style,’ understood as “a particular way in which something is done, created, or performed,” “a way of behaving or of doing things” (Merriam-Webster) or “a socially or culturally approved way of doing something” (Barnard, Fashion Theory 17).

Fashion as a system has been studied by different scholars, but almost- always from a top-down perspective. Thus, Veblen, Simmel and Bourdieu interpret fashion as an indicator of class. This certainly applies to the times when haute couture was the axis of the fashion industry. Other theorists such as Blumer, on the other hand, regardless of the fact that they still understand fashion as stemming from the elites, treat it as something that portrays and points towards other emergent trends (Sweetman 62). However, after the several human, social and even economic changes that occurred after the Sixties, fashion as a unitary industry or ideological trend is no longer existent, but is a fragmented ethos, which allows for personal performance and choice. In fact, “clothing or dress no longer indexes an external social reality, and particular items, whether fashionable or otherwise, can no longer be said to signify either class, status, or other conventional attributes” (Sweetman 63). It is from this self-driven choice and individuality and from the personal performance of the self within a particular social system and situation that this study departs. However, in many instances, including with the study groups of this work, I align with Paul Sweetman’s reading of Maffesoli’s notion of an “empathetic form of sociality” (68), whereby individuals “lose themselves into a collective subject” (Maffesoli, qtd. in Sweetman, 69), as in the case of the female communities focus of this study. Despite the individual choice regarding the performativity of the body and its communicative capacities, most of the female groups that I will observe, Pachucas, Chicanas, and Cholas, make this individual choice to disindividuate (Maffesoli) themselves and become part of a collective subject that itself performs a particular social position at a particular social time and in a particular social space. Dressing oneself, once again, is an individual act that becomes a collective one in the particular case of homogeneous social groups, subcultures or ‘tribes.’ Just as, according to Annette Lynch, “normative appearances are most often expressed as individuals strive to fit into their social and cultural context and thus dress to receive positive reviews of their dress from others” (4), and, I would add, to adapt to the norm. Those who deviate, on the other hand, seek to break that same norm and thus express their nonconformity to said norm, and a full alliance with a subcultural one. In this sense, and coming back to the idea of adopting an individual yet collective identity and style through the personal act of dressing, one of the main goals of this book is to understand the way in which the body and dress, together with a particular bodily attitude, become meaningful. Women (and men) of different social status and political awareness have used their bodies and dress attitude/behavior as a means of expressing a particular ideological position. In this sense, the questions posed by Susan Kaiser when she analyzes the relationship between style, truth and subjectivity are valid for this study: “How can I know when I am focused on how I look? To what extent does my appearance create truth(s) about who I am? How do my ways of being, becoming, and appearing interface with those of others?” (79). Or in other words, how does style “as a process o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• A note to the reader
• Introduction
• 1 Dress, clothing, fashion, and style
• 2 The 20th century and fashion
• 3 Style, subcultures, and Mexican American women
• 4 Pachucas: breaking the norm in the Forties
• 5 Chicanas: fighting the norm in the Seventies
• 6 Cholas: adapting to other norms in the Nineties
• 7 Concluding remarks
• Bibliography
• Index