GEN DER FASHION

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Judith Butler ‘74” - words printed in small lettering in the back pages of last year’s Shaker Schools Alumni Hall of Fame induction ceremony program. Here is a philosopher and writer, pillar of postmodern feminism, and pioneer of queer theory, situated meekly between the names of an architect and former mayor.

Judith Butler’s work forged my analytical understanding of gender and just so happened to graduate from the same high school as me.

It’s difficult to see the setting of your life as not entirely your own, let alone being shared with such a maverick. To think that the same plots of land, same hills and depressions, and same dams and reservoirs incubated both our minds almost 50 years apart was overwhelming. This parallel lowered Butler from a pedestal. I became so close to my mental image of their sculptured face that I saw cracks in the marble.

Before this realization, I operated with an understanding that the few have an inborn access to truth and the masses are left to follow their words and behaviors intently. I had an obsession with the greats, those able to hear and write through the static, and Judith Butler was one of those names underlined in red. Maybe that is why it was so hard seeing their name written unremarkably in nine-point Times New Roman.

I was first introduced to Butler’s ideas in the throes of the pandemic while nervously going through the dresses in the back of my friend’s closet. I hadn’t heard of Judith Butler or “Gender Trouble”, their transcendent 1990 work, but I saw myself differently. I felt the illusion of gender as dress and dress as gender. I felt negotiations within and the tension between expectation, action, and reception.

For all that gender is, Butler is clear on what it’s not. It is not inherent, but illusory; not peaceful, but a struggle between the individual and norm; not objective, but a collection of behaviors, relations, and choices that take on meaning in particular social worlds—a most controversial claim.

Using Erving Goffman’s famous allegory for the self, gender is a stage play with a knowing performer and knowing audience, encouraging each other with grander acts and greater applause. Butler believes the lead’s solo is not a perfect expression of inward creativity, but a compromise between the performer and onlookers.

The pitches, runs, and time signatures familiar to the lead are learned from a lineage of performers before them. Still, the soloist takes action, adding an extra refrain or going down an octave, but the final product is never really their own. The performance doesn’t belong to the audience either—it is shared.

In the stage play of gender, our dress is the most visual and considered factor. It is not as simple as a matching suit and dress at a school dance; gender distinctions in clothing are found in the details. A seam and a dart, the length of a sleeve, a nipped waist, and the angles of a collar all give gender to the layers of fabric we select each day. Even the shape of a neckline raises eyebrows when it’s perceived to violate our learned gendered expectations. If this is true, how do we begin to approach gender neutrality in fashion?

An easy answer is unisex, which is often pretty shapeless and verges on utilitarian. These oversized and neutral-toned pieces lack the details that would otherwise inform a customer whether they’re in the “right” section of the store. With all variations in color and cut drawn out of fashion, the simplicity of unisex leaves me with questions: What’s left when we remove all gendered social meaning from our clothing? Is fashion and the daily bargaining with the contents of our closets nothing more than a communication of gender identity?

Gender neutrality is not the absence of gender as unisex suggests, but rather, in Butler’s words, a foundational understanding of gender as performance.

Gender neutrality is engaging in the daily struggle of gender knowing it is simultaneously meaningful and constructed—a cognizance of others’ performances and your place in their audience. Maybe it is even empathy, recognizing others experience similar challenges of individuality and presentation as you do.

If gender is expressly visual in dress, gender neutrality is not. If gender is reproduced by the unexamined inheritance of norms and values, gender neutrality is subversive. If gender is the process of becoming by being, gender neutrality is awareness of the constant dialogue between choice and influence, as well as the power that follows this awareness.

For me, it means exploring extremes of gendered dress and understanding the compromise each performance represents. Through this, my world takes on new meaning—his tan Carhartt jacket, their cut-off jean shorts, and her homemade ceramic earrings—and when I see the world differently, my view of myself changes. I see my plaid skirts, my business casual, my cowboy boots, and the duffle bag of jeans and sweatshirts I pack for winter break at my parents’ house in a new light.

My shared origins with Judith Butler remain hard to digest, but I’m now less quick to idolize and that’s a good thing. For all the reverence the greats deserve, their insight is only as relevant as it is applicable.

The importance of this writing starts and ends with the reader and their decision to turn the ideas in print into tools for navigating the world. Between my time in my friend’s closet and the pictures of me at five years old trying on my mother’s necklaces, Butler gives me words for my strife, but also, my experience lends meaning to Butler’s words. In the dialogue of lived and written knowledge, we build towards our collective flourishing.