Not Just Any Dress: Narratives of Memory, Body, and IdentitySandra Weber, Claudia Mitchell If dresses could talk, what stories might they tell? This compelling collection of short stories, essays, and poems features dress as the structural grounding for autobiographical accounts from women's lives in Western society. Often personal in nature, these «dress stories» point unfailingly to matters of social and cultural import. Some of the dresses described inhabit the popular imagination: the little girl dress, the communion dress, the school uniform, the prom dress, the wedding dress, the little black dress, and the burial dress. Beyond the semiotic, tactile, and visual aspects of the dresses themselves, the narratives delve into what dresses reveal about fundamental aspects of human experience: identity, embodiment, relationship, and mortality. Bought or made, then worn, forgotten, remembered, re-constructed, and re-interpreted, each dress offers a new glimpse into how we construct meaning in our daily lives, and how dresses serve to reinforce or resist social structures and cultural expectations. |
Contents
Boxedin by My School Uniform | 61 |
Tunique Desires | 67 |
Addressing the Academic | 73 |
Was It Something I Wore? | 83 |
Scholae Personae | 89 |
Curse You Descartes My Academic Gown | 99 |
A Wardrobe Primer for Seasoned Academic Women | 105 |
A Credit to Her Mother III | 111 |
Corsetry Control and Comfort | 145 |
Woman Time and Mother Sins | 157 |
Thick Description | 163 |
Made in China | 183 |
Scarf Signatures | 207 |
At the Ugly Ducklings Anonymous Meeting | 223 |
Elsie Never Wore a Prom Dress | 239 |
273 | |
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album appearance asked baby Barthes beautiful become blue body called CHAPTER child childhood close clothes collection color course cultural daughter death dress dress stories Duke University edited Education embodied example experience eyes fashion father feel felt Figure front garment gender girl green hair hand identity important keep kind lives London look maternity McGill University meanings memory Mitchell mother narratives never Notes objects once Oxford particular performance perhaps Photo photographs play political popular practice pregnant prom remember Research robe seemed shoes skirt social stories Studies style suit talk teachers teaching tell things thought traditional trying turn Uniforms University Press veil wanted wardrobe wear Weber wedding woman women wore writing York young