Susan B. Kaiser

Betwixt and be Tween Age Ambiguity and the Sexualization of the Female Consuming Subject

In this article, we argue that what is now known as the ‘tween’ cannot be understood apart from its inception in, and articulation with, the market exigencies of childhood - specifically girlhood - as they have emerged since the Second World War. Drawing upon trade discourses from the children’s clothing industry since the 1940s, interviews with children and views expressed by children’s market observers, we demonstrate how ‘the tween’ (or subteen/preteen) has been constructed and maintained as an ambiguous, age-delineated marketing and merchandising category. This category tends to produce and reproduce a ‘female consuming subject’ who has generally been presumed to be white, middle or upper middle class and heterosexual. Building upon historical materials, we focus much of our efforts on analyzing contemporary cultural commercial iterations of the tween as they have arisen since the early 1990s, a time when clothing makers and entrepreneurs of childhood redoubled their efforts to define a market semantic space for the Tween on the continuum of age-based goods and meanings.

Construction of An SI Theory of Fashion: Part 1. Ambivalence and Change

In this first part of a three-part series explaining fashion as a social process, a symbolic interactionist (SI) theory is presented to explain why appearance styles continue to emerge, be adopted and change. Unlike existing theories that tend to explain how a particular style diffuses through a social system, this theory draws on SI and extracts underlying concepts that, we propose, instigate and perpetuate changes in appearance styles: ambivalence, symbolic ambiguity, and negotiation. Five principles and associated theoretical statements are developed to explain fashion in general, followed by a more specific look at transitional cultural contexts, using the contemporary, U.S. context for the purpose of illustration.

Stigmata and negotiated outcomes: Management of appearance by persons with physical disabilities

This paper explores the role of clothing in the management of appearances by persons with disabilities. A negotiated outcomes perspective is used to study the clothing choices of disabled persons, rather than viewing them as passive recipients of the labels supplied by perceivers. A two‐part study of college students with physical disabilities, including comments from a series of focused group interviews and open‐ended responses to a questionnaire with national distribution, resulted in the data presented. The data indicated that most of the students strived to appear as normative as possible through their clothing choices and accordingly used a variety of techniques: “making do” with ingeniously adapted ready‐to‐wear apparel; using clothes to conceal a disability; deflecting attention from a disability toward more normative but slightly discrediting attributes; compensation through fashionable dress or by emphasizing other social roles and abilities; and social inclusion, i.e., the assertion that all per...

Perceptions of Functional Clothing By Persons with Physical Disabilities: A Social-Cognitive Framework:

A social-cognitive framework for the study of special clothing features is presented in this paper, along with supporting data derived from a series of focused group interviews with 36 physically disabled students. The context of clothing styles was explored in terms of the consequences of potential stigmatization as compared to personal evaluations of the styles per se, without accompanying social cues. The students tended to express ambivalence about specific clothing styles and about the general concept of functional clothing, particularly in relation to functionality versus perceived image and stigmatization. Suggestions to ameliorate the negative social consequences of functional apparel included: (a) personal adaptations to normative attire, (b) networking to facilitate dissemination of the ingenious strategies developed by disabled persons themselves, and (c) increased attention to the incorporation of functional features into all clothing.

Theoretical Development in Clothing and Textiles: Are We Stuck in the Concrete?:

This paper addresses the need for more abstract theoretical development in clothing and textiles. Presented is a model of scientific inquiry to use as a guide to assess current research and to provide suggestions for future development and ordering of knowledge. It is argued that current practices restrain development of the discipline at a concrete, observable level. Questions are raised and recommendations are offered to aid in development of knowledge in the field.

SENSORY INTERACTION AND DESCRIPTIONS OF FABRIC HAND

82 subjects who viewed and felt fabrics (sensory interaction group) used different categories of terms to describe fabric hand than did 38 subjects who only felt the fabrics. Therefore, the methods used to measure fabric hand that isolate the senses may not accurately assess the way in which subjects describe fabric hand in nonlaboratory settings.

A Paradigm for the Study of the Social Meaning of Clothes: Complementarity of Social-Psychological Theories:

This paper offers a paradigm for the study of the social meaning of clothes. The paradigm orders four basic models in social psychology: cognitive, behavioral, bio-volitional, and symbolic. Each model differs in its assumptions on the nature of human behavior. The paper also sketches the metatheory (or model) underlying each of the four theoretical perspectives in social psychology. It is argued that theories in social psychology differ only in the sense that the models on which they are based focus on different combinations of the paradigm elements: stimulus (S), organism or person (0), andresponse (R). Methods and strategies of inquiry related to individual models are also identified and subsumed under the paradigm. Finally, the metatheories of the four perspectives are outlined as they relate to the study of clothing. Metatheories sketched in this paper may be used to examine similarities and differences among theoretical perspectives adopted by clothing scholars and to pinpoint what is missing in our understanding of the social meaning of clothes.

Older consumers' use of media for fashion information

This study explored the perceptions of older mass media consumers with respect to portrayals of older adults in the media and to the processing of appearance symbols and fashion information. The data suggest that the use of television for information processing of this sort is likely to be implicit. Females and males with higher clothing expenditures were most likely to report such usage.

Youth Style: Articulating cultural anxiety

In their everyday efforts to put together how they “look,” adolescents visually capture and articulate complex issues that society finds difficult to express verbally. In this paper we explore these “looks” as one example of youth appearance style and as a reflection of, and an impetus for, cultural anxieties. In doing so we draw on a series of multi‐method field studies conducted over the last ten years. A key feature of these studies has been the involvement of young people themselves as key informants and co‐investigators. Data from these studies can help clarify relationships between youth appearance style and cultural themes of sexuality and violence.

Mastectomy and Related Treatments: Impact of Appearance Satisfaction on Self‐Esteem

According to the symbolic-interactionist perspective, how the self is presented to others in social interaction provides critical cues that affect how others perceive an individual. Thus evaluations of ones own appearance, including body image, influence feelings about the self as presented to others. In addition, the integra tion of societal values, cultural imagery, and life experiences influence womens perceptions of their bodies. A model of appearance satisfaction and self-esteem was developed and tested through path analysis using quantitative data reported by 933 post-mastectomy women in a statewide survey. Qualitative data from follow-up interviews with 27 of the patients were used to supplement the quan titative analyses. Clothing importance was perceived as less critical than medically related issues, but more critical than social issues. Findings indicate that age and whether or not one had undergone reconstructive surgery significantly contrib uted to satisfaction with appearance. In turn, appearance satisfaction had a sig nificant effect (p < .001) on self-esteem and accounted for 12 percent of the variance in self-esteem. Compared to the attitudes of older, non-employed women, the appearance satisfaction of young women who were employed tended to be influenced more by medical treatments than by reconstructive sur gery.