Analysis 5: Discipline and Punishment

The video above illustrates the way that fashion works as a way for us to keep each other in line by monitoring each other and internalizing what is right and wrong. Fashion is something more than just what you're wearing depending on the temperature outside. Fit matters, color matters, trends matter, material matters, and so on. Clothes don't often exist for the mere practicality of keeping yourself from being nude, they exist to express personality but also to establish status and opinions. A guy choosing to wear loose fitting, cheap clothes is no more rebellious than the man wearing an expensive suit, because both styles are statements, both were chosen with something in mind, both send out a message that others will receive and decode.
We use fashion to judge each other all the time, and though many think they are rebelling, no one ever truly rebels unless they chose to go naked altogether, and even then I'm not sure. As I said, we all judge: the girl with the jeans and loose fitting shirt is too lazy to care about her appearance, the guy with the baggy jeans and oversized shirt thinks he's a baller or a player or something or another, the girl with the short skirt and the top that might as well be a bra has no self-esteem so she dresses in such a way for attention, the man who dresses in tailored pants and jacket is stuck up and privileged and therefore not likable. We do all these things, along with their positive flip sides to keep each other in line. We do it so much that it now appears in television all the time with titles such as "Fashion Do's and Dont's" to remind us of all the minor details of what's appropriate when and where. It is another way to easily check if anyone in society is stepping out of line, because all it requires is a quick glance in that person's direction.


Works Cited
"Fashion Dos & Don'ts" 22 August 2007. YouTube. 26 April 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV6xl5VHTHc