Rethinking Fashion｜When Feminism is Only Skin-deep: T-shirt Slogans? Is this what we really want fro

When Feminism Becomes a Trend When Maria Grazia Chuiri joined Dior as its first female artistic director just over a year ago, she picked up the banner of feminism and has been waving it enthusiastically ever since: delving into its literature, discovering its heroines and using them as muses in her shows, from Niki de Saint Phalle to Georgia O’Keeffe. Her unending dedication to feminism via wildly expensive slogan tee, which states, “ we should all be feminists” and “why have there been no great women artists?”, should’ve made her a perfect designer, an active modern-day pioneer for woke women. Before long, the wave of wearing feminism slogan on T-shirts have been heating up. No matter it’s a fast fashion retailer’s counterfeit or a extravaganza in high fashion houses, this feminism concept has undoubtedly become a trend. When feminism becomes a trend, does that also mean that whoever wears a tee with a feminism slogan on it is indeed a feminist?

Photo Credit Instagram @Dior

"I am a feminist, but not from wearing a T-shirt." It reminds me about Carla Bruni, France former First Lady, she told Vogue magazine in 2012 in an interview that she is not an active feminist — a comment that created a firestorm and later led to her apologizing. However recently she emphatically confirmed herself to be a feminist in wise words, she said, “Yeah, I am a feminist, but not from wearing a T-shirt,” she says. “I came from a time when women were fighting for their right to take birth control, women who gave us the right to own our bodies and not just have children whenever our husbands would like for us to. When I was growing up in ‘70s, there was a huge wave of radical feminists, so to me, calling yourself a feminist comes with great responsibility. But now we’ve almost gone backwards.”

Photo Credit theFashion Spot

It's not cool to object or support for the hell of it. Feminism is an ideology, which has a common tendency to change constantly, and it should’ve been expressed through just wearing a super expensive t-shirt. Before feminist art movement emerged in the late 1960s amidst the frevor of anti-war demonstrations and civil rights movements, the majority of women artists were invisible to the public eye. For example, some female artists such as Eva Hasse and Louise Bourgeois have been posthumously identified as proto-feminists. Although they created works that contained imagery dealing with the female body, personal experiences and sought to rewrite a falsely male-dominated art history, they had not been seen until the feminists artists in ‘70s expanded on themes and linked their work explicitly to the fight for gender equality. In 1970s, Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party offered unabashed femininity on the plate rather than a meal cooked by a woman for over hundreds and thousands of decades. The huge installation permanently housed at the Centre of Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum consists of a large banquet table with place settings for thirty-nine notable women from history and mythology. By doing this, Chicago rediscovered lost role models for women and found made voice for the passively cloaked identity behind her food offering.

Later, Cindy Sherman once said, “the work is what it is and hopefully it’s seen as feminist work, or feminist-advised work, but I’m not going to go around espousing theoretical bullshit about feminist stuff.” She had never considered herself as a feminist. She subtly endorsed some of her works with traces of feminism rather than shouted out irrationally and ended up losing oneself in the wave of advocating a certain scope with blindness. She refused to object or support the idea just for the hell of it. For me, this is what a feminist should be.

The Dinner Party(1974) by Judy Chicago

Photo Credit Brooklyn Museum

More Than Merely A Slogan Feminism is about pursuing a equality and about blending it into our day-to-day life. If being a feminist is just a trend to chase for, an essential element of fashion icon’s starter pack, I’d rather not to do so. In a world we are living in now, I am still doubting is it still so necessary to propagate oneself to be a feminist. The essence of feminism will be devastated when you try to put a name tag saying “FEMINIST” on yourself.

A Bit of Subtlety is Necessary Just as New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman took on Maria Grazia Chuiri’s slogan, writing, “Single-minded dedication to a cause can be admirable, but it can also be blinding an lack subtlety — in fashion, as in life.” For me, feminism should be not only original but shocking enough to navigate into a new period of time but also tender, flexible and holding a bit subtlety. The subtlety that provides us with a personal space in mind, allowing us to define what feminism, freedom and equality mean to us.

Feminism Should Be A Verb A slogan is never enough to sustain the weigh of feminism, so do not ever try to wear a t-shirt and be satisfied with it. Feminism should not be a noun awaited to be fulfilled, it should be a verb which always comes with practical resolutions and visible actions.

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