DYBW: Hair It Is! (+a little Rancière)

Draft:

Draft:

hair (I got it from my mama)

purple turtleneck (H&M)

micro plaid trousers (Express)

black wedges (Lauren Ralph Lauren via Amazon)

Composition:

I'm wrapping up Academichic's Dress Your Best Week with this outfit that draws attention to my hair.  Normally, I'd put a jacket over the turtleneck or wear a statement necklace, but I find that I get the most compliments on my hair when I'm wearing a turtleneck, so I kept this outfit fairly simple.  I think there is something about the way the turtleneck and hair frame my face that draw extra attention to my hair.  For most of my life, I've been a short hair person, so getting used to long hair is taking some time.  My hair is thick, it's course, and if I don't tame it, it borders on out of control.  I love my hair, though, so I'm continuing the long hair experiment.  Do any of you other long haired ladies feel like your hair sometimes covers up the details of your favorite tops?

Anne-Marie's post yesterday got me thinking about how DYBWeek relates to my academic interests, as well.  I'm currently working with Jacques Rancière's theorization of aesthetics, and I think DYBWeek has demonstrated a lot of the things I find empowering about his theorization.  According to Rancière (as I understand him), aesthetics is an egalitarian system of determining what gets to be seen or heard in a community.  Aesthetics is egalitarian because any object can be aestheticized.  Once something is aestheticized, it reconstitutes the community that recognizes its aestheticization.  What I see us doing through this project is aestheticizing looks that may or may not have been recognized as "beautiful" by the mainstream fashion/style/beauty critics, and by doing that, we're working toward reconfiguring our communities so that they will incorporate an understanding of these looks as "beautiful."  And I think that's fantastic!  I'm happy to be a part of a community, even an electronic one, that celebrates so many different features as aesthetically beautiful.

At the same time, I think we've been deconstructing the stereotype that women are "catty" or "competitive" by nature.  I think I qualified my five favorite features in my original comment on academichic because I was afraid I'd look bratty to the other readers if I just stated them definitively.  Thanks to all of you for helping me realize I shouldn't have been so worried about that.

Thanks again to the ladies over at academichic for putting this theme week together!  Like Katie, I'm still trying to finish up my final papers, and I'm looking forward to spending some more time with your blog posts once I'm officially on break for the summer.  Thanks, also, to those of you who found our blog through this activity and have kept commenting and coming back!  We hope you'll stick around and keep the conversation going!

Happy weekend, everybody!

Prompts:

• Are you a long, medium, or short hair person?  What makes you prefer one length over the others?
• What have been your favorite things about DYBWeek?
• Am I misrepresenting Rancière?  Or if you want to indulge me by talking more Rancière, please do!!