TY - JOUR
T1 - Dress like a Mum/Mom
T2 - Instagram Style Mums and the Fashionable Ideal
AU - Entwistle, Joanne
AU - Wissinger, Elizabeth
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/8/4
Y1 - 2021/8/4
N2 - This paper explores whether the dominant fashion aesthetic is challenged or destabilized through the case study of Instagram style mums/moms. It considers how social media, such as Instagram, opens up new spaces for bodies to perform fashionability without the mediation of the fashion system. This space is potentially more “democratic,” allowing those located outside the fashion system to exhibit fashionability through personal style, presenting alternatives to the normative fashionable body. However, conversely, Instagram is also a space that is increasingly colonized by big brands and celebrity “influencers” whose accounts display similar aesthetics to mainstream fashion. By examining a range of mums/moms, not just celebrity or “micro-celebrity” accounts, the paper explores the creative display of style and explorations of their maternal body—outside the dominant fashionable ideal—to discuss how these women implicitly, sometimes explicitly, challenge the aesthetics of fashion. In articulating a “technique of the self,” this “mum style” opens space to navigate motherhood and fashionability at the same time. The aesthetic tropes of “mum style” are explored to unpack the contradictions and possibilities of this space.
AB - This paper explores whether the dominant fashion aesthetic is challenged or destabilized through the case study of Instagram style mums/moms. It considers how social media, such as Instagram, opens up new spaces for bodies to perform fashionability without the mediation of the fashion system. This space is potentially more “democratic,” allowing those located outside the fashion system to exhibit fashionability through personal style, presenting alternatives to the normative fashionable body. However, conversely, Instagram is also a space that is increasingly colonized by big brands and celebrity “influencers” whose accounts display similar aesthetics to mainstream fashion. By examining a range of mums/moms, not just celebrity or “micro-celebrity” accounts, the paper explores the creative display of style and explorations of their maternal body—outside the dominant fashionable ideal—to discuss how these women implicitly, sometimes explicitly, challenge the aesthetics of fashion. In articulating a “technique of the self,” this “mum style” opens space to navigate motherhood and fashionability at the same time. The aesthetic tropes of “mum style” are explored to unpack the contradictions and possibilities of this space.
KW - fashion mediation
KW - Instagram
KW - Instagram fashion
KW - maternal fashion
KW - social media
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85112655574&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/1362704X.2021.1934326
DO - 10.1080/1362704X.2021.1934326
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85112655574
SN - 1362-704X
SP - 5
EP - 42
JO - Fashion Theory - Journal of Dress Body and Culture
JF - Fashion Theory - Journal of Dress Body and Culture
ER -