Celebrating who you are: how clothing shapes LGBTQ+ and feminist weddings
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Celebrating who you are: how clothing shapes LGBTQ+ and feminist weddings
How do your clothes make you feel? And why is this important? At the University of British Columbia in Canada, Dr Ilya Parkins is investigating the role that clothing plays in LGBTQ+ and feminist weddings. She is uncovering the challenges that some people face when choosing wedding clothes and exploring how individuals use their wedding clothes to showcase their identities and values.
Talk like a feminist scholar
Cisgender — a gender identity in which a person’s gender corresponds to the sex assigned to them at birth (e.g., a woman who was assigned female at birth)
Feminism — advocacy and belief based on the idea of equal treatment of women and men
Gender non-conforming — a person who expresses their gender in a way that does not conform to traditional societal expectations of that gender
Heterosexual — a sexual orientation in which a person is attracted to people of a different sex
LGBTQ+ — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other non-heterosexual and non-cisgender identities
Non-binary — a gender identity that does not fit within the man-woman binary categories
Queer — a general term to refer to a person who has a sexual orientation that is not heterosexual and/or a gender identity that is not cisgender
Transgender — a gender identity in which a person’s gender does not correspond to the sex assigned to them at birth (e.g., a woman who was assigned male at birth)
Picture a typical wedding. Who do you see getting married, and what are they wearing? In most Western cultures, a ‘typical’ wedding involves a woman in a white dress and a man in a suit; a heterosexual, cisgender wedding.
But what about the weddings of queer, gender non-conforming and transgender people, or those with feminist politics? What do they wear to their weddings? How do they use fashion to express their identities and values?
Dr Ilya Parkins, a feminist fashion scholar at the University of British Columbia, is investigating these questions. “As someone who has long been interested in how fashion is used to navigate gender and sexuality, I wondered what role it plays in weddings,” she says. Ilya is exploring how people who are LGBTQ+ and/or feminist engage with wedding clothing. “These groups have a complicated relationship with weddings and wedding culture,” she explains. “This is either because they have historically been excluded from it, or they are very critical of the gendered ways that weddings play out.”
To understand the roles that clothing and fashion play for people who are LGBTQ+ and feminist, Ilya has been interviewing individuals in Canada, the US and the UK about their wedding clothes. She has also been reading articles on ‘A Practical Wedding’, a feminist wedding blog that contains wedding advice for and stories from people of different genders, sexualities, races, body shapes and income brackets.
What challenges might people face when choosing wedding clothes?
Lots of the people Ilya interviewed had difficulty when choosing their wedding outfits and found the process alienating or overwhelming. For example, she spoke to women, non-binary and transgender people who struggled to find wedding suits that fit well, and many people worried about having to deal with homophobic or transphobic tailors and shop assistants. “When shopping for wedding clothes, many queer people faced assumptions that they are heterosexual, which really puts a damper on what is supposed to be a fun and exciting occasion,” says Ilya. Assumptions of sexual orientation or gender identity can be just as hurtful as open discrimination.
Some heterosexual, cisgender people also face dilemmas when selecting their wedding clothes. “People who do not live up to the picture of the ‘ideal’ bride or groom (for instance, because they’re plus-size or have a disability) often have a very difficult time finding wedding clothes,” explains Ilya. “Many plus-sized activists are reclaiming the term fat to talk positively about their bodies, rejecting the unfeminist idea that people should look a certain way.”
Ilya interviewed feminists who felt uncomfortable conforming to society’s expectation of them to wear a white gown. They did not want to wear white to their wedding because of its perceived associations with sexual purity and an unfeminist expectation of brides needing to be ‘sexually pure’. Some women questioned whether wearing white would be against their own feminist values and one worried what her sociology professor would think if she did wear a traditional white dress.
“Until very recently, weddings and feminism didn’t go well together,” says Ilya. “I wondered, as someone from a generation of feminists that was only critical of weddings, how people would be bringing together weddings and feminism in a way that was faithful to feminist politics.”
Preparing for a wedding should be a joyful time, but the challenges that many people face with regards to wedding fashion means that this is not always the case. Instead of being excited, many people are forced to put a lot of emotional work into balancing competing societal pressures on what to wear, as well as figuring out what clothing aligns with their own politics and identity.
The importance of dress
From her interviews and from reading ‘A Practical Wedding’, Ilya saw how people use wedding clothing strategically and intentionally. “For example, people think about how to ensure that their queer identity is made central to the visual presentation of the wedding,” she explains. “People also use clothing as a way to create the moods of joy, celebration, comfort and safety that they want at their weddings, especially when they are often facing homophobic, transphobic or sexist views in their day-to-day life.”
Weddings are an opportunity to celebrate love and to showcase the couple’s values and identities to family and friends. “Almost everyone I interviewed viewed dressing for the wedding as an opportunity,” says Ilya. “It might be an opportunity to make their feminist politics clear, to put forth a gender presentation that they felt great about, or to set up their future in a way that felt safe and comfortable for them.”
Reference
https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM557
Ilya is investigating the role that clothing plays in LGBTQ+ and feminist weddings © Suthatip Yenpiboon/Shutterstock.com
Many people use their wedding clothes to highlight their identity © yurakrasil/Shutterstock.com
There are many reasons why women might choose not to wear a traditional white dress to their wedding © Michele Thompson, CC BY 2.0
It is still unusual to find non-white dresses in wedding dress shops © NazarBazar/ Shutterstock.com
Ilya’s research shows the importance of fashion and how it has a massive impact on how people feel about themselves and within wider society. “In almost all cases, what I learnt was how much people want their wedding to make room for all of who they are, and they’re doing that using fashion,” says Ilya.
Dr Ilya Parkins
Department of Community, Culture and Global Studies, University of British Columbia, Canada
Field of research: Gender, women and sexuality studies
Research project: Investigating the role that clothing plays in LGBTQ+ and feminist weddings
Funder: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)
Website: www.redressingweddings.com
About gender, women and sexuality studies
Studying gender, women and sexuality studies will teach you to think critically about society, challenge stereotypes, and contribute to fighting for social justice. “In this field, we think about how social inequalities such as gender, sexuality, (dis)ability and race shape the everyday experiences of people, and we connect those personal experiences to much broader institutional structures such as the state, education and the media,” explains Ilya. “We use feminist theory (an array of explanatory frameworks for understanding the inequitable distribution of power) to diagnose the causes of inequities and to work towards transforming the world.”
Gender, women and sexuality studies is an interdisciplinary field, often drawing on perspectives from cultural studies, sociology and literary theory, among other disciplines. “I enjoy the expansive possibilities this gives me,” says Ilya. “There is no single correct method, which gives me a real sense of freedom. I also enjoy the fact that, no matter how theoretical my work might get, it is always connected in some way to a vision of a better world.”
As a feminist fashion scholar, Ilya also studies history and art history research. “This is one of the things that makes fashion studies so rewarding – the field draws from such a diverse and eclectic set of resources!” she says. “I do research that is primarily oriented to uncovering how ideas about gender and sexuality shape fashion, and vice versa. For instance, fashion is associated with the feminine, and so is considered trivial and superficial. My work has been invested in showing how significant fashion is, and I view this as a feminist perspective because it refuses those charges of superficiality and triviality.”
Pathway from school to gender, women and sexuality studies
At school and beyond, Ilya recommends pursuing history and social studies. “Having a strong foundation in the institutions that structure our social world is invaluable for beginning to interrogate how those institutions produce experiences of privilege and marginalisation,” she explains.
Many universities offer degrees in gender, women and sexuality studies (or variations of this, such as gender studies). Learn more about the gender, women and sexuality studies programme available at the University of British Columbia: www.you.ubc.ca/ubc_programs/gender-women-sexuality-studies
You can also learn about gender and sexuality in society by studying a degree in anthropology, cultural studies or sociology.
Regardless of your chosen degree programme, gender orientation or sexuality, Ilya recommends taking classes in gender, women and sexuality studies. “Everyone benefits from learning about the ways that gender and sexuality shape our world!” she says. “Students tend to come away from our classes having had their sense of their primary discipline challenged and stretched, and that makes them better thinkers – they have to really examine the underpinnings of what they’re learning.”
Ilya recommends joining equity-related clubs in your school or community. “There are so many possibilities for activism,” she says. “Get involved in social change work, even if it’s digitally. You’ll start to get a feel for the way we talk about issues and how analysis of social problems springs from being on the ground with these issues.”
Explore careers in gender, women and sexuality studies
There are many places that a degree in gender, women and sexuality studies can take you. Ilya’s students often go on to pursue careers in health, education, social services, law or public policy. “All of these career paths are exciting because they are about making the world a better place,” she says. “These careers will allow you to apply your learning in the service of social justice.”
Knowledge of gender, women and sexuality studies will give you the opportunity to follow whatever you are most interested in. “The field has something for everyone,” says Ilya. “If you’re interested in science, for example, you will be introduced to new perspectives on the scientific value of ‘objectivity’ and how that can conceal bias and inequality. If you’re interested in pursuing research in any area at all, training in feminist methodologies will introduce you to a broad array of creative approaches.”
Meet Ilya
As a teenager, I was very interested in feminism and social justice. I went to rallies and marches, and I participated in awareness-raising campaigns and other activist work. I was also a voracious reader. I read a lot of history to explore the ‘why’s of the inequities around me, and I enjoyed reading fiction as it provided glimpses of what we in gender and sexuality studies call ‘worldmaking’ – ways of making our society different, better, kinder and more equitable.
My teachers inspired me and shaped my career journey. I had some truly wonderful teachers in high school who encouraged me to explore my interests in ‘big ideas’. At university, I had influential professors who showed me what life could look like if you were deeply engaged in the world, as well as with books and ideas. They showed me that I could be both a scholar and an activist.
It was my own wedding that motivated me to start the wedding clothing project! I was a queer person and a feminist getting married in a world that doesn’t have a lot of role models for that. I wondered how people were reconciling their identities with the wedding industry. Gender, women and sexuality studies research often begins from what we experience in the world – thankfully, there’s room in this discipline for that personal connection.
As a lecturer, I incorporate yoga, meditation and self-defence in my classes. This began when I was teaching a course on cultural ideas about bodies. I realised that we were all sitting around, not really using our bodies, as we read all this wonderful work about how important the body is. The students loved this kind of experiential learning as it got them thinking differently about their bodies and their experiences of learning.
In my free time, I enjoy listening to podcasts about current events, cooking for family and friends, and exercising (strength training, swimming and cycling). I have recently learnt how to knit, and it is very rewarding to have a completely different kind of creative outlet.
Ilya’s top tip
Read and listen to the news by searching out reputable sources, including independent outlets and podcasts. This will help you to understand the scale of the problems we’re facing, and to decide where your interests lie as you take up a path in gender, women and sexuality studies.
Do you have a question for Ilya?
Write it in the comments box below and Ilya will get back to you. (Remember, researchers are very busy people, so you may have to wait a few days.)
Learn about the history of marriage equality and LGBTQ+ weddings:
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