<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><p><font size="4">On a recent Thursday night, I opened my closet for the first time in
almost a year. I had to push my partner’s sit-up bench, where we’d
heaped towels too dirty for the clean-towel place but not dirty enough
for the hamper, away from the door. Inside hung “outfits,” garments I
used to wear to work or to an evening out with friends: sweaters in dark
colors, the slump of a dress, a pair of tops with their long, pale
sleeves twined together. My nice shoes lay under a silky, tunic-like
number I’d forgotten I owned, which had slipped to the ground, like the
heroine of an opera. The air bore traces of something floral, rich, and
oddly threatening. I could not shake the feeling that I’d disturbed a
tomb.</font></p><font size="4">
</font><p><font size="4">There’s a difference between getting dressed and <i>getting dressed</i>.
The first act, at least during my past year in quarantine, has connoted
comfort: my partner’s T-shirts and boxers, a gray rotation of
pullovers, socks, and sweatpants. The priority is softness, give,
practicality—everything as indeterminate and yielding as our shut-in
lives. In May of 2020, I put on a bra and found the experience so
distressing that I <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/xwaldie/status/1262780579478671360?ref_src=twsrc*5Etfw__;JQ!!KGKeukY!hEqGG3K8wCrcgeKgwV9EojUe8LWBuq-IhUy2ceUDdO1QxAX5nB6BXsKlxSMesXhV1Be4w8qWUdTz$">tweeted</a> about it. Later, I saw the tweet included in an <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.elle.com/fashion/personal-style/a32437485/end-of-shapewear-trend/__;!!KGKeukY!hEqGG3K8wCrcgeKgwV9EojUe8LWBuq-IhUy2ceUDdO1QxAX5nB6BXsKlxSMesXhV1Be4w6W6s6Ee$"><i>Elle</i> article</a> about how women were giving up on “shapewear”—a term whose meaning I had to guess from context—possibly forever.</font></p><font size="4">
</font><p><font size="4"><i>Getting dressed</i>, meanwhile, bears a sense of address: of
speaking to an audience and, because you double as the message, being
spoken. With the great unpause upon us, it is this idea that makes me
feel, like our sit-up bench, swamped by anxieties that have piled up for
months. My apprehension has to do, in part, with again needing to
wonder whether the material on my body is too tight or loose or busy, or
whether it’s the wrong cut for my build or a bad color for my
complexion. (In truth, I’m not sure that I ever devoted enough energy to
these questions—ask my co-workers—but I used to cultivate vague guilt
around them, at least.) A bigger part, though, may relate to “frock
consciousness,” a phrase that <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-lifetime-of-lessons-in-mrs-dalloway__;!!KGKeukY!hEqGG3K8wCrcgeKgwV9EojUe8LWBuq-IhUy2ceUDdO1QxAX5nB6BXsKlxSMesXhV1Be4w7YEKYp9$">Virginia Woolf</a>
coined to hint at how clothing might reveal character in fiction. “My
love of clothes interests me profoundly,” Woolf wrote in her diary,
“only it is not love; and what it is I must discover.” Outfits, Woolf
knew, could serve as markers of identity, attesting not just to social
class or occupation but to the nuances of personality. This
expressivity—a rich parallel language of hues and accents—prompted
something in Woolf, a feeling intense enough to be mistaken for love.</font></p><font size="4">
</font><p><font size="4">To some extent, every language is a love language, an offering of
oneself. Having a style is a way of being generous with your public: <i>you may not know me, but now you know I like a thin plaid.</i>
Speaking this language also means getting swept into the river of other
people’s interpretation—_ah, so you’re Scottish?_ Perhaps it’s this
loss of agency that I resist: the expectations projected onto a pair of
pants, which I imagine to be fascistically intolerant of a big lunch—the
patriarchal spectre <i>in</i> the clothes. And yet my dread doesn’t
quite slot into a feminist critique of fashion. Instead, sartorial
symbols strike me as mystifying, hard to maneuver. My inability to
communicate through them bothers me. I don’t want strangers to look at
me and believe they’re divining a message that’s not there.</font></p><font size="4">
</font><p><font size="4">In the past, I never harbored especially strong feelings about
getting dressed. It was, if you squinted, prosocial, part of the
everyday enterprise of existing in public. One learns to conceive of
oneself as, among other things, a set of pleasing or displeasing
surfaces, because one is usually the scenery, not the protagonist. And
there’s a freedom, even an art, to presentation. My mother loves
dressing up, loves knowing, at a glance, the right spot for a hem to
hit, or how to choreograph lines and angles into a silhouette. She
treats her body like a canvas. (She’s also a painter.) I’ve lived at
various times in service to and in revolt against this idea. When I
troubled the ghosts in my closet, I also roused an old argument, one
described by the linguist Deborah Tannen in “<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Wearing-That-Understanding-Conversation/dp/081297266X__;!!KGKeukY!hEqGG3K8wCrcgeKgwV9EojUe8LWBuq-IhUy2ceUDdO1QxAX5nB6BXsKlxSMesXhV1Be4w8v87XGD$">You’re Wearing That?</a>,”
her landmark work on conversations between mothers and daughters. From
the mother’s perspective, Tannen writes, “your job has always been to
help and protect your daughter, give her guidance based on your greater
experience, and ensure that all goes as well as it can for her.” But,
Tannen continues, advice also implies criticism; for a daughter, a
kindly comment about attire can evoke not connection but control.</font></p><font size="4">
</font><p><font size="4">People have long used clothing for self-expression, but doing so got
easier after the Industrial Revolution made cheap, mass-produced
garments widely available. “The fashion impulse is universally present,”
Justine De Young, an art historian at the Fashion Institute of
Technology, told me. “It’s a question of attainability.” Today, the
expressive urge is even stronger—not because textiles are serving as
texts, which they often have, but because cultural and economic forces
encourage us to broadcast our identity at all times. Supplemental
“texts,” in other words, are everywhere: favorite television shows,
preferred fonts, the neighborhood bar you suggest when a new friend
wants to meet up. At times, it can feel as though anything you do will
be turned into data—essentialized, fastened to your “brand,” and,
probably, sold.</font></p><font size="4">
</font><p><font size="4">For femme people, especially, there’s a pressure to pour ourselves
into our appearances, because here, at least, we’ve enjoyed some
latitude. And, having been inside for so long, it makes sense that
people might find their creative energies spilling outward, in fluttery
silks and dark denims, combat boots and unusual coats. After calamities,
De Young told me, fashion often tends toward exuberance—the glitz of
the Roaring Twenties, ruffles in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War.
But disasters can also usher in a renewal of conservative gender roles.
Flapper garb was sultry but unmistakably feminine; after the Second
World War, lavish skirts and narrow waistlines visually forced American
women back into the home. I bring this up not really (or only) to make a
point about sexism but to observe the layers of coercion hidden in the
invitation to appear. Millions of people, as they get ready to reënter
public life, are surveying their pre-<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.newyorker.com/tag/coronavirus__;!!KGKeukY!hEqGG3K8wCrcgeKgwV9EojUe8LWBuq-IhUy2ceUDdO1QxAX5nB6BXsKlxSMesXhV1Be4wz_dHhvx$"><i>COVID</i></a> identities with post-<i>COVID</i> eyes. When we finally take ourselves back out into the world, who will the world want us to be?</font></p><font size="4">
</font><p><font size="4">For Woolf, the tension between self-preservation and self-expression
lay at the center of “frock consciousness.” A piece of fabric could
signify the self, mediate between public and private—but it could also
substitute for it, relegating the wearer to a mute oblivion. (“There is
much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we
them,” she wrote.) I think of my maternal grandmother, who struggled
with the role of homemaker; she would have chosen, instead, to be a
painter. In her frustration, she focussed on “looking the part” of the
female artist: incandescently beautiful, effortlessly stylish. It’s
clear to me now that she used clothing to assert her character, to
exercise a form of control. But clothes also, in a way, controlled her,
and she pressed their language, often cruelly, onto her daughters, by
harping relentlessly on their appearance. My mom—who absorbed her
mother’s anger, but managed to tame it such that our own squabbles fall
squarely into Tannen territory—dresses carefully because she likes to.
Fashion, for her, is a playground, not a battlefield, and its ceremonies
channel the self without surrendering it.</font></p><font size="4">
</font><p><font size="4">My own preferred mode of expression is language. I use words to care
for others and to reconstruct reality on terms I can live with. You’ve
probably surmised that my grandmother and I had a cold relationship, and
I remember one childhood visit during which I refused to talk in her
presence. I think my intention was to protect the inner terrain that she
couldn’t see, but it was also to withhold love, to keep my language
severed from her own. This memory surged back when I faced my closet
anew. The pieces on their hangers were not hand-me-downs, and yet to put
them on, I felt, was to tangle with my grandmother. I thought I could
sense the depth of her desire, which would grab on to whatever was at
hand, to speak, to be the meaning expressed. I was gripped by a petulant
determination that I would not facilitate this. My anger rose and rose
and finally burned itself out, like a fever.</font></p><font size="4">
</font><p><font size="4">Seventeen months ago, an invisible killer began to circulate through
people’s bodies, causing a shutdown that left us lonely and depleted.
Now, after a season like a prolonged funeral, we are finally peeling
ourselves out of our <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2020-in-review/a-year-without-clothes__;!!KGKeukY!hEqGG3K8wCrcgeKgwV9EojUe8LWBuq-IhUy2ceUDdO1QxAX5nB6BXsKlxSMesXhV1Be4w8tK89QD$">mourning costumes</a>. (“<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.thecut.com/2021/05/tie-me-up-in-a-dion-lee-corset-this-summer.html__;!!KGKeukY!hEqGG3K8wCrcgeKgwV9EojUe8LWBuq-IhUy2ceUDdO1QxAX5nB6BXsKlxSMesXhV1Be4wz5Kzbjy$">I’m Ready to Dress Uncomfortably Again</a>,”
a representative headline in “The Cut” proclaimed.) There are hopeful
visions of layers flying off, flesh and fluids tumbling together. I
can’t wait to hug my friends and jump around in big crowds of strangers.
But something about the intentionality of pandemic socializing—the care
with which we decided when and how to be present for one
another—transformed each relationship into a flame to be tended. I want
to hold on to the power of deciding when to disclose, and how much, so
that the act of connection carries the meaning it deserves. This is
different from hiding forever. Recently, I’ve been trying to imagine
what the first day “back” will be like. I visualize leaving my apartment
and heading down the block to the subway, which will take me into
Manhattan, to the office. I imagine that short, sunny walk to my stop,
and thronging with my neighbors at the top of the stairs. And I imagine
the joy—although it feels impossible to conjure, at the moment, how
exactly I’ll feel—of making my way underground.</font></p><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large"><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Jul 3, 2021 at 11:24 AM Jane Marie Garrity via Vwoolf <<a href="mailto:vwoolf@lists.osu.edu">vwoolf@lists.osu.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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<div>Good morning all,</div>
<div>This New Yorker article on clothing refers to Woolf’s “frock consciousness”: <font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT"><a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.newyorker.com/culture/dept-of-returns/the-dread-of-getting-dressed?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker__;!!KGKeukY!glTN3M2P19zthpJy1LYq-4NwF3KS2u8xk1PU96ZB-v-WOCuIVh_7JFqcASA-V7_dTx32eppSFhLK$" target="_blank">https://www.newyorker.com/culture/dept-of-returns/the-dread-of-getting-dressed?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker</a></font>. </div>
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<div>I tried to include a PDF, but the system rejected it because of size. </div>
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<div>Happy 4th of July weekend everyone!</div>
<div>Jane</div>
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Jane Garrity<br>
Associate Professor of English<br>
University of Colorado at Boulder<br>
226 UCB<br>
Boulder, CO 80309-0226<br>
<a href="mailto:Jane.Garrity@Colorado.Edu" target="_blank">Jane.Garrity@Colorado.Edu</a></div>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">George Entenman <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://entenman.net__;!!KGKeukY!hEqGG3K8wCrcgeKgwV9EojUe8LWBuq-IhUy2ceUDdO1QxAX5nB6BXsKlxSMesXhV1Be4w3khXA-P$" target="_blank">https://entenman.net</a> +1-919-636-5496<br><div><a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://os-novos-baianos.musicas.mus.br/letras/122204/__;!!KGKeukY!hEqGG3K8wCrcgeKgwV9EojUe8LWBuq-IhUy2ceUDdO1QxAX5nB6BXsKlxSMesXhV1Be4w3jzcYo5$" target="_blank">« Besta é tu se você não viver nesse mundo »</a><br>جورج من قفصة<br></div></div></div></div>