I had learned a lesson about Western culture: Women who wanted to be taken seriously were supposed to substantiate their seriousness with a studied indifference to appearance. For serious women writers in particular, it was better not to dress well at all, and if you did, then it was best to pretend that you had not put much thought into it. If you spoke of fashion, it had to be either with apology or with the slightest of sneers. The further your choices were from the mainstream, the better. The only circumstance under which caring about clothes was acceptable was when making a statement, creating an image of some sort to be edgy, eclectic, counterculture. It could not merely be about taking pleasure in clothes.

... I dress now thinking of what I like, what I think fits and flatters, what puts me in a good mood. I feel again myself¡ªan idea that is no less true for being a bit hackneyed. I like to think of this, a little fancifully, as going back to my roots. I grew up, after all, in a world in which a woman¡¯s seriousness was not incompatible with an interest in appearance; if anything, an interest in appearance was expected of women who wanted to be taken seriously.

*Pacific Standard - What to Wear?
*Avidly/LA Review of Books - Lady Professor Conference Fashions
*Racialicious - Haute Couture In The ¡®Ivory Tower¡¯: "The spread presumes that when a professor walks into a classroom she is a blank slate, a model to be adorned in fine clothing and given an identity. The reality is that scholars of color, women, and other groups whose bodies are read as non-normative have never been able to check their race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation at the door. As soon as we walk onto campus, our bodies are read in a certain (often troubling) manner by our students, our colleagues, and school administrators. Our professionalism and our intellectual competence are largely judged by how we style ourselves. Therefore, we are highly aware of how we adorn our bodies. And, like our foremothers and forefathers who innovated with American ¡°street fashions,¡± we, too, use our fashion sense to define ourselves, our professionalism, and our research and teaching agendas on our own terms."

Tamara Shayne Kagel: The Feminist's Dilemma: Why We Can't Stop Caring About How We Look

I find myself constantly trapped in a world where I desperately want to be judged by my work but at the same time, I want other people to think I'm pretty. I'm permanently berating myself for caring about my appearance, because I am aware on a mental level that to care at all is to be superficial. But at the same time, I find myself squirming uncomfortably when I run into someone at the supermarket when I'm a sweaty, disheveled mess... This cognitive dissonance is a state that most modern women inhabit all the time, but refuse to acknowledge. Instead, we talk and write and judge like we live in a post-superficial world. [...] It's a rare breed of woman who truly doesn't care about her appearance, and there are some women who only care about their appearance. But most of us fall in the middle -- wanting to be appreciated and loved and valued for more than how we look, but unable to completely expunge all interest in our outward image. If this is where most of us live, shouldn't we be asking for acceptance to be in this middle space?... Isn't it normal to hope that the picture of you is not taken from a horrible angle the moment you wake up and at the same time be concerned with society's obsession about the ubiquitous worship of an unattainable ideal of the female form?

Sociological Images - The Balancing Act of Being Female; Or, Why We Have So Many Clothes (previously):
"And, of course, all women are going to get it wrong sometimes because the boundaries are moving targets and in the eye of the beholder. What¡¯s cheeky in one setting or to one person is flirty in or to another. So women constantly risk getting it wrong, or getting it wrong to someone. So the consequences are always floating out there, worrying us, and sending us to the mall."

*This Kind Choice - I Am Woman, Watch Me Shop? Part 1 ¨C The Ever Changing Clothes
*Part 2 ¨C Appearance as Identity, A Double-Edged Sword
*The Nation - For Women¡¯s Office Wear, Who¡¯s Making the Rules?
*The Atlantic - No, It's Not Sexist to Describe Women Politicians' Clothes
*Feministing - Learning to dress ¡°professionally¡± in a white man¡¯s world

Already Pretty: Why Caring About Your Appearance Is Valuable to Self-Care

In order to move through most peopled societies, we are required to wear clothing. Nudist colonies aside, we¡¯ve all got to get dressed every day if we want to leave our homes for any reason... And in my opinion, since we¡¯ve got to get dressed anyway, we might as well do it expressively and in ways that feel good. I¡¯ve said it before, I¡¯ll say it again: Dress, grooming, and overall appearance constitute the first levels of information about ourselves that we offer to the observing world. They may not be the most important, but they are the first, which makes them worthy of effort and attention.

...I¡¯ve already acknowledged that how you look isn¡¯t the most important thing about you... But thinking of your body as a brain-and-personality-holder strikes me as short-sighted. Consider this: Someone who focuses virtually all attention, care, and love on their body is generally considered to be vain. So why would focusing virtually all attention on your intellect, creativity, and personality be any less imbalanced? You¡¯re not a zombie ¨C a body that moves through life without a functioning brain. But you¡¯re also not a brain in a jar ¨C thinking and creating in the abstract alone. You have a body. As long as you are alive you will have a body. In fact, without your body, your intellect and creativity and personality wouldn¡¯t exist. Pitting your mind against your body is like cooking up a personal civil war.

Bridgette Raes - Are You a Devaluist and Don¡¯t Even Know It? (Guest Post):
"Clothing is often seen as a superficial shell, and fashion a frivolous, flighty thing that gets in the way of the serious stuff. The real stuff. But I don¡¯t believe that. I don¡¯t believe we can neatly divorce the way we look from the way we live. I believe the way we look is a reflection of the way we live."

Dress A Day - You Don¡¯t Have to Be Pretty:
"You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked "female". I'm not saying that you SHOULDN'T be pretty if you want to. (You don't owe UN-prettiness to feminism, in other words.)"

(responses to "The Princess Effect", previously on MeFi)
*Washington Post - Being informed and fashionable is natural for women
*Flavorwire - The Catch-22 of Women¡¯s Magazines
*Kat Stoeffel - Finally, ¡®Serious¡¯ Women Are Standing Up for Fashion Magazines:
"As long as we all need to get dressed each morning, clothing will be a communication tool... Men and women both choose how they deploy the language of fashion; but women, deprived of the suit-as-uniform, still face unique challenges in fashion fluency... Women¡¯s magazines ¡ª especially when they work with women like Clinton, Abramson, and Mastromonaco ¡ª offer other women a map for navigating style and other sexist minefields without compromising their intellectual integrity. For that, we should celebrate them. And if we want to level the playing field, we should start by posing the same ¡°frivolous¡± questions of men."

*Ms. Magazine - If the Clothes Fit: A Feminist Takes on Fashion: "If feminists ignore fashion, we are ceding our power to influence it. Fortunately, history has shown that feminists can, instead, harness fashion and use it for our own political purposes."
*GirltalkHQ - Fashion Vs Feminism: Can You Like Both? We Break It Down
*Greta Christina - Fashion is a Feminist Issue:
"In fact, fashion and style are so much like a language, I¡¯m always a bit baffled when people say things like, ¡°I want to be judged on who I am, not on the clothes I wear.¡± It¡¯s a bit like saying, ¡°I want to be judged on who I am, not on the words that come out of my mouth.¡± ...Fashion is a form of expression. A language of sorts. An art form, even. It¡¯s also one of the very few art forms/ languages/ forms of expression in which women have more freedom than men... And I don¡¯t think it¡¯s an accident that it¡¯s typically seen as shallow, trivial, and vain."

Medium (Backlash Book Club) - And Another Question: What Ever Happened to Pantsuits?:
"Faludi writes about fashion as if women were totally subservient to its dictates (and as if its dictates were unified), but, of course, most women¡ªprecisely because they are judged so much by their appearance¡ªknow how to manipulate, subvert, and use clothes. To some extent, they¡¯re tools, like hammers."

The New Inquiry, Vol. 20 - Sept. 2013, "Off Brand" issue (link opens PDF file)
"We are told we must be clothed, and then that our clothes are not good enough.That fashion is predicated on this cruelty¡ªmaking luxury of necessity, and necessity of a luxury¡ªmakes it as morally questionable as the behavior of foodies. Fine: We accept this. But we are also told that we must be bodies and that our bodies are not good enough, and fashion (at least for those who fit into it) can provide an escape from the disappointment of our flesh. Some of us feel we were born into the wrong body; for that, fashion is the first corrective. For others, fashion is the first rebellion... In selecting appearances, we want not only to be seen but sometimes to be heard before we speak. Fashion can be a weapon of the silenced, even when it is seized and wielded by those who have always talked loudest."

*Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa - Fashion for Feminists: How fashion and dress shape women¡¯s identities
*Migrant Woman Magazine - Asalet Tulaz: I like being the colour of feminism
*Buzzfeed - How Iran¡¯s Young Women Are Using Fashion To Influence Politics
*Minh-Ha T. Pham - Why Fashion Should Stop Trying to be Diverse
*À l'allure garçonnière - Fashion Blogging Culture: Demanding Substance Over Style
*Tanisha C. Ford - You Betta Werk!: Professors Talk Style Politics:
"Below are excerpts from some of the interviews I conducted with women professors of color. Together, these interviews illustrate that studies on fashion and adornment politics offer a powerful lens through which we can explore other important issues such as women¡¯s rights, motherhood and relationship status, pleasure and sexuality, and the politics of ¡°respectability.¡±"

Alison Bancroft - How Fashion is Queer:
"The feminine is as much of a minority interest in culture as it is anywhere else in life. The only exception to this is fashion. This is why fashion is a radical creative space where heterosexual gender binaries are irrelevant and queer is the default setting, and it is also why fashion is routinely denigrated and dismissed."

Final Fashion - so, is fashion feminist?:
"Why is the visual aspect of fashion so inextricably linked to feminism, and why is it worth considering how to dress like a feminist?"

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie previously on MeFi: the danger of a single story