Recent comments in /f/Clothing

ActuallyOpposesFascists wrote

Who cares? You already don't need to wear a bra, unless it's because either you want to, or because the physical design of your personal body requires it. What anybody else does or does not wear (within certian extremely minimal expectations, like "many people believe that complete nudity is illegal, and in some countries the cops falsely believe it too), or wearing something to the point that children "have never seen someone like you before". Something that a bra pr lack of bra does not qualify for - aside from the fact that in the vast majority of cases no one wpuld knpw whether or not you are wearing one anyway (if you are wearing a shirt). There is nothing special, signifcant, or helpful to you about what someone ELSE wears, when it's well within the normal scope of what millions or people do every single day in society (like both wearing and not wearing a bra is), or when it's something that is invisible to the view of other people (like wearing a bra usually is and like not wearing a bra almost always is).

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ActuallyOpposesFascists wrote (edited )

The word "sustainable", used by large industry/corporations, is ALWAYS greenwashing. For example, the word "sustainable" used on vegetables, usually means unhealthy practices like "hydroponics". Companies that destroy ecosystems/the planet by "planting one tree for every box sold" (in a random place where there are already too many trees killing all of the other plants, or in a residential layout where there is no real "complete ecosystem" at all, to make it difficult for people to walk across the street or escape from their violent husband, using non-native species which are also evergreens and therefore hurt and itch and also don't even much improve filtration of the air like actual trees do because they are also never actual trees but instead are shrubs), or using some kind of different-fabric material because it "isn't disposable" except it is "disposable" and causes more damage then the "disposable" did because the new material breaks within a few months/years anyway but also isn't easily recycable or takes more resources or pollution to make which outweighs the amount of pollution that was caused by the disposable ones, or the "paper straws" that are coated in worse chemicals that are more toxic then what's in the plastic straws and also leech into the body and into cold beverages which plastic does not fo and also, apparently, if you live in California and are unfortunately getting these from restaurants, they are even wrapped in plastic. Meanwhile there was a restaurant I saw using "plastic-like" straws that claimed to made from bamboo... and the word "sustainable" wasn't used.

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ActuallyOpposesFascists wrote (edited )

Most clothing is already genderless. Additionally, in technical terms, ALL clothing is genderless, since it's not "wrong" or "bad" for a man to wear a dress or a skirt, and, besides that, there is literally no other type of clothing that would be "unusual, uncommon, or strange to see a male or female wearing", other then a few very specific types of shirts. (Which also is not "wrong" or "bad", but will usually just look ugly and nothing more, if a man wears these few types of shirts.) Although it is not impossible to "dress like a girl", very few girls/women do so on a regular basis. And, it is definitely impossible to "dress like a man". As a result, there is nothing "special" or "different" about the above clothing brand on that basis. This is already true about literally every brand of clothing that exists, that doesnt sell clothes for babies/toddlers that specifically say "girl" or "boy" on some of the outfits or have "patterns of tiny trucks" or something, and that also doesnt sell those very few types of "short and have holes in them" shirts that most straight men wouldnt wear and that most gay men only wear in a certian "gay-looking" style of outfit if they have chosen to join the part of "boystown type culture" that includes men who enjoy saying that their "outfit is totally gat and so awesome". But again that is an extremely small propotion of shirts that exist.

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Quicksilver wrote

Yeah, I remember this whole drama happening when I was in school in Miami back in the late naughties/early teens. Weird fucking time, I remember chatting with my schoolmates about it, and how fucked up it was that they were putting in bans.

Definitely remember the mythos of it stemming from prison culture and the anti-Queer rhetoric that went with it.

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kano OP wrote

I listen to hiphop a lot so while I'm not surprised by the homophobia of certain rappers. and/or also rappers like Killer Mike comes to mind who promote a certain respectability politics, which I think ties in the homophobia/queerphobia thing. I posted this not that long ago, and I thought it was a good article though it mostly focuses on what I'm going to call the role of 'respected black/ethnic minority community leaders' in counterinsurgency. Which this article definitely also alludes to.

but yea I found this article really good

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asterism wrote (edited )

The weird homophobic reasons to avoid sagging are weird. (like I was suprised by the huge amounts of just generally queerphobic stuff coming out of the mouths of rappers)

Also shit's ridiculous

Some anti-sagging bans punished violators with jail time: for example, Abbeville, Louisiana's ordinance "[allowed] for up to six months' imprisonment." But most bans relied on deterring violators with municipal fines and other civil punishments." Under Shreveport, Louisiana's ban, which passed in 2007, violators received "a fine of up to $250 and up to 32 hours of community service." That same year, Alexandria passed a similar law which not only imposed fines up to $200, but added that violators could be "ordered to do community service and counseling." Even without the threat of jail time, these laws exposed the racial bias that's a foundational part of police departments across the country. Shreveport is a perfect example. Between 2007 and 2019, Shreveport police made 726 arrests under its anti-sagging law; some of these folks received a court summons while others were taken into custody, and 98 percent of those arrested were Black.

under that ordinance, people caught sagging within city limits would be fined $100, while parents who knowingly let their kids sag in public could receive up to a $500 fine or 90 days in jail.

Below quote is some good stuff

Within Black communities, sagging bans became a way of using state power to defend traditional Black masculinity—and aspire to the power and privilege of white American men. But there's a basic tactical problem with this idea. Police power doesn't just protect the cultural values of white supremacist patriarchy: policing makes race and gender what they are.

Another good quote

Regardless of this radical potential, the relationship between Black music, fashion, and gender has been much more complex. In recent years, Black hip-hop artists have frequently used fashion to stretch the acceptable imagery of gender expression to its limits. Atlanta rapper Young Thug, who's famously flitted between sagging streetwear, luxury chic, and traditionally-feminine clothing, waxed in a 2016 Calvin Klein ad that "you could be a gangsta with a dress, or you could be a gangsta with baggy pants. I feel like it's no such thing as gender."

But the social conservatism of certain Black traditions—religion, respectability, and "pro-Black" homophobia and transphobia—still holds a significant sway. Fashion experimentalists like Thug, Playboi Carti, Kid Cudi, Lil Uzi Vert, and A$AP Rocky have frequently pushed through homophobic backlash over their personal style. At the same time, openly queer artists with Southern ties, like ILoveMakonnen and Saucy Santana, have fought against critics inside and outside of the industry who see their success and influence as a fluke.

As Shanté Paradigm Smalls argues in their 2022 book Hip-Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City, "Black, queer, and hip-hop… still sit or play or stand in discomfort together." Although fashion is an important terrain of struggle, we have to temper our expectations of what fashion can do for the radical imagination by itself. Now that pop, hip-hop, and the fashion industry are more intertwined than ever, hip-hop aesthetics have only become more vulnerable to corporate capitalism and state capture. Just look at the fashion house Balenciaga—one of the most-referenced luxury brands in the genre—which has previously dropped a line of $1100 sweatpants with built-in boxer material to look like they sag.

The cultural and legal battles over sagging and drag suggest that abolitionists should turn our attention more closely to the process of fashion policing: that we should answer these moral panics with a commitment to queerness as a politic, not just an identity. Effectively challenging police power means broadening our view of what that power looks like. Northwestern University professor Marquis Bey argues that "the State is, too, a relation, a way of dictating how people are to be interacted with. We encounter one another on the logics of intelligibility that the State demands, and that structures how one can appear to others, circumscribing subjective parts and desires that fall outside of this framework. And this is a violence."

When I think of a radical queerness, I think of orienting ourselves against those people and institutions that seek to violently regulate our relationships to our bodies. So when we talk about the demands of abolition, perhaps we should include the fashion police, too.

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pris OP wrote

Reply to comment by Cranko in lack of fashion specific forums by pris

lolita fashion (and kawaii fashion in general) was created by feminists n punks to rebel against the status quo in japan. it was designed to be anti-sexual, to be actively undesirable. its hyperfeminine as a commentary on the patriarchal obsession with youth, it deliberately takes up space to reject the idea women have to be small. its been a safe space for queer people since its inception.

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pris OP wrote (edited )

Reply to comment by Fool in lack of fashion specific forums by pris

i'd certainly agree with the majority of mainstream fashion, especially in regards to fast fashion and luxury brands. theyre exploitative n pollutive by nature.

the fashion industry is capitalistic, but fashion predates and will outlast it. creativity and self-expression are just human nature. alt fashion, more so as you get further into niche territories, is dominated by independent designers and diyers, sustainable and recycled materials, and often has roots in feminism and disability.

the word fashion might be tainted at this point, but i think its possible to reclaim it, with the right work.

(thank you for the suggestion btw, f/ashion is a good idea)

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Cranko wrote

I'm not sure lolita fashion has a place on this site, my sense is that it's an aggressively depoliticised participant in a broader pedophilic milieu.

Not familiar with the other kinds of fashion you have listed.

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ziq wrote

natural environment: they planted invasive thirsty plants to drain all the wetlands, cut down all the forests to export the lumber (but much later replanted some of the forests), banned nomadic shepherds to allow the replanted forests to grow, then burned them down to kill guerillas and bandits that took to hiding in them, banned growing certain traditional crops and made everyone grow crops that were valuable to the british, then seized all the crops as taxes at harvest

society: made new laws and taxes (even higher than the debilitating taxes imposed by the previous colonial government), started courts to try people who broke those laws or didn't pay those taxes, built prisons, started a newspaper to normalize british propaganda, undertook widespread archeological looting but destroyed any archeological finds that they found undesirable, started a police force and only let one of the (minority) ethnic groups be part of it (a divide and conquer tactic), which turned all the other ethnic groups against them because they were constantly being arrested, fined and beat up by them (which caused decades of war and division that continues today), forced everyone to fight and die in their foreign wars, built huge military bases (that are still in operation) to attack other countries in the region from

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ziq wrote

When the British were in charge here, my grandparents had to work in the fields all day and everything they produced was taken and shipped to Britain. Literally all they got from the British to live on was some hard bread and 2 olives for each family member, once a day. They had to forage for weeds at night or "steal" (from their own land) to stay alive.

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ziq wrote

people from that region say the british empire cut off the weavers thumbs so they could no longer make the fabric when the uk decided to build factories in europe and didn't want the competition to impede their peddling of their own mass-produced cheap low thread count fabric

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