Ode to Mary Quant

 Recently my mom has suffered a bit of an inconvenience. Her sixty-year-old friend wore a super short mini skirt for a meeting. 'It didn't suit her and it was not very aesthetic, to be frank'- sighed my mother, as she sadly admitted she gets more and more similar to her grandmother in many views. 

 Back at my university time I had a friend who was a great fashionista. Not only by passion, but also by her excellent sense of style. No matter what time of the day it was, she always looked like a million dollar. Once, as part of her assignment, she was supposed to write an essay about the most influential person in the world, in her opinion of course. She didn't have any second thoughts after choosing Mary Quant. Now I have a confession to make: I didn't know who that was. 

 But my friend quickly enlightened me: thanks to Mary Quant, women in the world can now comfortably wear mini skirts. I prefer a saying: women in the world can wear whatever they want. But I guess mini skirts wasn't too bad of a start.

 The concept of mini skirt has been through a lot: from a symbol of women's emancipation through a symbol of slut-shaming and sexism, to the debate between modern feminists whether 'liberation' means revealing or rather covering up. Fetishizing women's closets isnt't anything new: it seems like whatever we wear is always perceived through the context of male gaze, just like women's physique seems not to exist unless it's closely related to female sexuality. 

 In the age of fashion blogs and body positivism activists, the subject of female attire in many countries is still a legal issue. Dresscodes, social rules, etiquettes, are all substantially use to control and 'tame' women's conduct. The medieval conviction that a woman is a 'temptress' in control of insticts of a noble, male creature still prevails in views of lawmakers and politicians, whether they wants us to dress down or to cover up. The perception of what woman wears is still closely related to what women 'can' or 'cannot', sometimes what they 'should' and what they 'should't'. The sexist apporach to female fashion can be seen in many descriptions, dubbing women as 'cute' or 'sexy', not even mentioning if it is actually all right for men to openly comment on women's clothes. Therefore, in 2018 I constantly have a feeling that whatever I wear is somehow a political statement. And this photo I am sharing above will probably be read like this too.