Last month, I attended a Fashion Show for my very first time in my life. In a nutshell, the experience was interesting and I would say,  a little bit shocking. I did not have any expectations prior to the show and was extremely excited to be able to attend such a glamorous event.

Let’s start from the beginning.

I entered the venue just in time for the first show to begin. I walked towards the standing crowd which  hovered around the photographers and the VIP seats in the front row beside the bright runway. I instantly eyed an open space at the benches for me and my friend. We quickly squeezed between the sea of people , trying to get to our spots before anyone tried to take it. Just as we sat down, the lights dimmed and music started to boom the entire room. The first model appeared wearing a shiny silver suit. She strutted until the end the of runway, posed for the photographers, turned around, and walked back towards the screen. Sitting in the second row, I could see her face perfectly clear. Every model’s face I witnessed were interestingly all very similar. Caked on layers upon layers of foundation, mascara, eyeliner, eyeshadow and lipstick, it seemed to me that every model portrayed a homogenized, mainstream look. Her face was emotionless, blank, a Blasé attitude was depicted through her facial expression.

In relation to identity, the self and society, it became extremely clear to me that the true model’s identities  on the runway were veiled from the layers of makeup and the sparkling suits. The moment each person stepped onto the runway, a certain kind of portrayal was evident to the audience (that an individual who was chosen to model a particular designer’s novel collection of clothing, was solely determined based on the model’s “look”). Throughout the 20 seconds in which each model was able to struct and show the entirety of an enlightened outfit, I could feel that the individual was constantly bombarded with judgments drafted  by every attendee, however, not only commenting on the clothing design, but critiquing the model as an individual.

As the model flowed down the runway  with their signature walk, I watched the audience’s heads turn as the model passed them. People were constantly scanning the model from head to toe,  assessing their walk, their posture, their physique, their potential of showing off the pompous outfit in a right matter.

After watching a couple of models walk up the down the platform and also observing the front row fashion designers with cat eye glasses, fire red lipstick sitting upright in their seats with their lips pouting, scanning the model’s bodies, it suddenly struck me that the models were completely divorced from their true, in-born identities. Throughout the two hour event, I came to the realization that these model’s identities, or “the self” was heavily composed and produced of the exaggerated makeup, the volumous hairdo, and their extravagent outfit of today’s modernized high fashion (though some of which is debatable in aesthetic appeal, I would argue). It is through the confined space of the runway, the bold lighting on their faces, and the hundreds of people observing, that each model’s self/identity was not only controlled, but restricted within the tangible and intangible spacial dynamics. It is through the makeup, the hairdo, and the clothing that DEFINED who the model was on stage as an individual.

In retrospect, not only does it mean that your identity is shaped by the materials the model is wearing, but it is also shaped by the institutional organizations of the Fashion Show, as well as the people who were watching, observing their every move.

This inescapable concept of the “self” as the core production of others around you, is thus suggested in Smith’s 1987 The Everyday as Problematic. Smith raises the notion of “norm” in certain settings, as “teachers learn a vocabulary and analytic procedures that accomplish the classroom in the institutional mode… analyze and name the behavior of students as “appropriate” or “inappropriate”(573). What she is noting is that these ideologies provide procedures for what goes on, and as a result, provides the notion of observable -reportable within such settings (573). Therefore in relation to the fashion show, Smith’s ‘observable-reportable’ idea of the teachers relates to this type of procedure controlled by the fashion designers sitting in the front row seats. It is through the internalized process of labelling “pass” or “fail” towards the models that form the identities of these faces.

Everyone’s identities are sociall constructed by others around us. The creation of a false facade is unavoidable and real. As a UBC student, your sex, your faculty,  your major, the clubs you partake in, all define your identity. And within each aspects listed, there are social relations that develop. Professors, peers, friends and family all determine your identity as a whole. In some aspects, it controls you and takes over your identity without your consciousness.

I constantly question:  How does one enable him/herself to meander through society without feeling watched or judged? How can somone comply to a “self” when the “self” is controlled by external dynamics?

References:

Smith, Dorothy. (1987). The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Lebanon, N.H: University Press of New England.