The Politics of Style: Fashioning the Student Body

dc.contributor.advisorBest, Amy L.
dc.contributor.authorPendry, Caroline
dc.creatorPendry, Caroline
dc.date2012-05-03
dc.date.accessioned2012-10-08T14:19:59Z
dc.date.availableNO_RESTRICTION
dc.date.available2012-10-08T14:19:59Z
dc.date.issued2012-10-08
dc.description.abstractThis study investigates how students at George Mason University negotiate and construct their identities through dress, hairstyles, and other alterations to the body. Whether we see ourselves as an environmentalist or feminist, Muslim or Christian, female or male, black or white, we employ clothing and hair styles that both reflect and reify these affiliations. Style is also deeply imbedded within youth culture and shown to be a primary mode of distinction in which youth are involved in positioning themselves within the social, cultural, and political landscape. Through clothing and hairstyle, the students in this research consume cultural materials in an effort to express and represent individual identity claims that simultaneously locate them within social categories relating to race, class, gender, and sexuality. The politics of style emerge as students use marks of distinction to draw symbolic boundaries in which they align and distance themselves with moral and ideological belief systems.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1920/7962
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.subjectStyle
dc.subjectIdentity
dc.subjectThe body
dc.subjectConsumption
dc.subjectWomen and gender studies
dc.subjectYouth culture
dc.titleThe Politics of Style: Fashioning the Student Body
dc.typeThesis
thesis.degree.disciplineSociology
thesis.degree.grantorGeorge Mason University
thesis.degree.levelMaster's
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Arts in Sociology

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