FEATURED VOICES:
Queer Feature: Theodore Kerr
In Collaboration with Manhattan University Pride Center
I GIVE YOU FASHION
Theodore (Ted) Kerr, Visiting Professor
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Earlier this year I was invited to write about Me and My Gall, a publication featuring participants from the California organization, NIAD, (Nurturing Independence through Artistic Development), who worked with artist Nan Collymore and photographer Andria Lo to create what I would call a lookbook, a collection of pictures that highlight clothing, accessories, or other products that put forth an idea of style and identity. The invitation was an opportunity for me to consider what fashion means to me. Here is an excerpt. Below is a link to read the full piece.
Many of us, including people with disabilities, people over the age of 30, queer people, and people who are larger
than a size 6, are taught to reject fashion. We are told it’s elitist. It's wasteful. It’s not for us.
In her 1985 essay, Poetry Is Not a Luxury, public intellectual Audre Lorde makes the case that in the face of structural oppression, poetry - as a way of knowing one’s self, the world, and sharing that knowledge - is a means to survive and thrive. It is not a luxury, because it is needed. Of poetry, she wrote:
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It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.
In her essay, Lourde goes on to make the case that, “Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.” Similarly, I think fashion is a way we can participate in the visual field of society, asserting our agency in how we are seen and thought of.
I am not saying that poetry and fashion are the same, but what happens when we consider both of them as valid means of expression? What happens when we don’t reject fashion?
How we present ourselves is one of the things we ought to have power over, and fashion is one tool of many that helps us negotiate what it means to be in the world. Fashion can help us project our soul, and protect our body. Fashion can be silly, fun, and make us feel good. In fashion we can make mistakes, try new things, and find a vision of ourselves we are willing and able to be in the world.
I think some of the messages we get to reject come from fashion gatekeepers themselves, who don't want everyone to feel welcome. They are scared of an expansive and inclusive vision of beauty.
I also think many of us teach ourselves to reject fashion, as a form of self protection, a way to assert disinterest before the sting of possible denial. This is a shame. So much is taken from so many people already, why should we give up fashion?
I agree with Lorde when she says that poetry is not a luxury, and I know in my heart, fashion is a luxury and we all should be welcomed to indulge.
Excerpt from I GIVE YOUR FASHION published in the ee! : number six