Thoughts on Sexuality, Sex and Fashion

Richard Oduor
Expert Research Solutions, Kenya

Sexuality, Sex and Fashion
Identity is intrinsic and personal, but it cannot exist out of the social and public domain.
Identity, to me, is therefore a performance an act of presentation and involves fashioning
oneself in a way that means, or will mean, something to others. In this sense, identity is a
construction of a social subject that is grounded in self awareness and may manifest as
rejection, defiance, or conformity with social norms.
One way in which identity is constructed is through aesthetics, adornment through fashion.
Roach and Eicher reminds us that fashion is a language imbued with codes and meanings that
help to communicate certain things to others. Thus, dressing is an aesthetic act, and all
aesthetic acts are acts of speaking, through which an individual speaks to another individual.
However, aesthetic acts are not performed in a vacuum because it is learned behaviour. Since
it is a language, fashion also seeks to be understood and in most cases fashion literacy comes
from social, political, economic and cultural systems that shape, or have, shaped certain
norms. In essence, how women dress is an important social and cultural mirror.
This means that when a woman makes a fashion choice, it is not simply a choice of specific
articles of clothing, but also a choice that represents her identity which may be gender
identity or sexual identity. These fashion choices can make one feel good or feel bad
depending on social situations. They can also make one feel sexy, confident, and attractive or
frumpy, uncomfortable or unattractive depending on social situations. Constructs of
acceptable fashion in a society gives an idea of whether women are, or feel oppressed or
empowered.
What do I feel like wearing today?
This question and the choices that accompany it when a woman walks into the closet is a real
time evidence of identity creation.
Thus, an important nuance that I feel is always left out of the equation, in discussions of
sexual objectification, is the difference between wanting to look and feel sexy and wanting to
be viewed as a sex object. Im interested in the word wanting in this case because choice is
the basis of aesthetic acts.
I know we live in a culture of slut-shaming, where women are made to feel inferior for
engaging in sexual behaviour that violates the norm or dressing in a way that is deemed
overly seductive. But to me, a womans dressing is an aesthetic act and a language that
radiates specific meanings. A simple example of this is how different fashion acts (for both
men and women) apply to different social situations. Im tempted to say that it is the social
situation that defines fashion/dressing choice is most cases.
To extend this argument with Byrnes analysis, sexual practice and pleasure are also
constructed as having aesthetic value, a quality that marks these experiences as forms of art.
In aesthetic sexuality, value and meaning are located within sexual practice and pleasure
rather than in their underlying cause; sexuality's raison d'tre is tied to its aesthetic value, at
surface level rather than beneath it. Aesthetic sexuality, therefore, is a product of choice, a
deliberate strategy of self-creation as well as a mode of social communication.
But feminists have always fought for, and I support, the womans right to have sexual agency
and to deliberately explore her sexual impulses without shame. In essence, Im saying that
And I believe that it is possible to have a woman who is not objectified, or judged objectified
as a males plaything, but rather empowered by her sexual agency and dominance. Women
have a portent sexual power that they should always embrace to their own advantage.
Knowing that power means knowing that women have no obligation to have sex with anyone
and that men take a no for a no. Knowing that power also destroys the fallacy that it is
men who want sex more than women (women want sex as well and they should pursue it if
they want to), or the fallacy that women do not or cannot use fashion/dressing to
communicate meanings (even if those meanings are of sex appeal), or the fallacy that being
sexually appealing automatically translates to objectification. Sex appeal is natural, and like
everything else in the lives of humans, can be enhanced.