Disclaimer: This argument paper was written for my English class in May, and I've been arguing with myself over whether or not to put this out in public since then. I did my best to educate myself in these topics within a short time span. All content is truthful as best as I could research. If any of the information in this series is wrong, please respectfully inform me specifically what is wrong so that I may look into it and correct it.
Lolita fashion’s dramatic contrast to common western wear has a powerful effect that can be used to affect social awareness in much the same way that Slut Walk makes people curious enough to ask “what’s that?” Dozens of modern subcultures and styles are represented in the Slut Walk, from lolitas to goths to punks, who have all grown to learn of rape culture through the excuse that something as “simple” as what they wear is an invitation for rape, harassment, and discrimination.
Besides movements like the Slut Walk, punks have also been a part of affecting social change since its conception in the mid 1970s. While punk does place an emphasis on non-conformity, educated punks are not against uniting for common causes, and in fact have made huge progress when gathered, Dawson Barret wrote in his article, DIY Democracy: The Direct Action Politics Of U.S. Punk Collectives: “The politics of punk institutions effectively place the movement into a broad narrative of participatory democracy in America activism that spans from early 1960s groups like Women Strike for Peace, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Students for a Democratic Society; to Women’s Liberation organizations in the late 1960s and 1970s, to the global justice movement of the 1990s and 2000s. In addition to sharing a common tendency toward direct action politics, punk rock, is also, by definition, a participatory movement” (Barrett). Gregory Graffin, Ph.D, lead singer and songwriter of the American punk band Bad Religion, said in Flavorwire’s article “What is Punk”:
Punk is: the personal expression of uniqueness that comes from the experiences of growing up in touch with our human ability to reason and ask questions; a movement that serves to refute social attitudes that have been perpetuated through willful ignorance of human nature; a process of questioning and commitment to understanding that results in self-progress, and through repetition, flowers into social evolution; a belief that this world is what we make of it, truth comes from our understanding of the way things are, not from the blind adherence to prescriptions about the way things should be; the constant struggle against fear of social repercussions (qtd. by Hiebert).
As you can see, this movement eloquently stands for the individual’s journey to accomplish precisely what, in the grander scheme of things, every progressive equality movement is trying to accomplish. It is more recent, and therefore more evolved, than the flapper movement, which required women to stand together as a group against sexism in order to achieve social privileges. Whether you like the music or the now associated substyle is irrelevant. Punk brings the battle for social justice down to the individual in order to break apart blind (not educated or circumstantial, let that be clear) social conformity.
Billy Joe Armstrong, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist of Green Day said “A guy walks up to me and asks ‘What’s punk?’ So I kick over a garbage can and say ‘That’s punk!’ So he kicks over a garbage can and says ‘That’s punk?’ and I say ‘No, that’s trendy!’” Increasing diversity and inserting our own educated ideas into the world is almost as important as educating ourselves and working with society in order to better it. This effect, rather than being lost in translation through the ambiguous nature of fashion, is instead intensified by its open interpretation.
Perry R. Hinton, an independent academic researcher, made a great connection in our perceptions of the same observed object changing based upon our cultural lense:
Social representations can change due to the processes of social conventionalization, which can involve assimilation to existing cultural forms, simplification, elaboration, and social construction. Thus, representations change within a culture in accordance with the changing characteristics of that culture. It has been shown that British views of Zen Buddhism and Japanese schoolgirls as represented in British popular culture differ from their Japanese representations in accordance with these processes.
Kiisel put it succinctly: “As uncomfortable as it may be, we are under the microscope every day. Our employees, our colleagues, and our customers judge us by how we look, how we dress, our table manners, our grooming, and sometimes even how we do our job.” Clothing is the most ambiguous and receptively ambivalent representation of ourselves we can make. In the United States today, a short skirt may be cute to one person and a signal of sexual promiscuity to another. The biggest statement we can make with fashion—within limits legal and practical considering our bodily protection—is to dress for ourselves with abandon and make the unusual usual, breaking stereotypes and educating others in the process. In this way, we will slowly mould perceptions into something less shocking and more usual. It is not only our privilege to express ourselves both artistically and with awareness of the strength of our influences, but our duty as human beings to act in a way which will spread acceptance of diversity… Even if it begins as “just clothes.”
Sources can be found here.
Sources can be found here.
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