Ann Shen - Nevertheless, She Wore It

For everyone who finds power through fashion; my dad, Tien; and my Aunt Pao, who always let me permanently borrow whatever I liked from her closet.

Text and illustrations copyright 2020 by Ann Shen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 9781452184012 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shen, Ann, author, illustrator.
Title: Nevertheless, she wore it : 50 feminist fashion moments / [text and illustrations by] Ann Shen.
Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019046853 | ISBN 9781452183282 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: FashionHistoryJuvenile literature. | Womens clothingHistoryJuvenile literature.
Classification: LCC TT515 .S5375 2020 | DDC 746.9/209dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046853

Design by AJ Hansen.

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Clothes can speak louder than words. This book details many fashion moments that became feminist statements. Since the Industrial Revolution and the democratization of fashion, people have been using personal style to express themselvestheir identities, gender, and politics.

The clothes we wear are a glamour we cast into the world, showing how we want to present ourselves and be seen. Its the magic of creating our own image and communicating who we are at a glance. Dismissing fashion as feminine vanity or narcissism is inherently sexist. Women have historically co-opted personal style as a means of dissent and power. Each move has meant a new freedom. Bras meant no more disfiguring corsets, miniskirts liberated knees everywhere, and bikinis are for every body. The more women wear what they want to wear instead of what theyre expected to wear, the more freedom and independence they gaineven if its controversial at first. Often it takes rebels to change the status quo.

Whether we choose to stand out or stand together, caring about fashion is a way of reclaiming our power. Sometimes its a movement, like the Suffragette tricolor stripe that supporters wore, and sometimes its an individual style, like Ruth Bader Ginsburgs dissent collars. We have the choice of how we want to dress, and that allows us to reclaim our personal freedoms. Fashion helps us push the envelope and reframe what it means to be a woman. Even as styles change through the decades, these changes are led by especially bold and revolutionary fashion statements that may seem wildly avant-garde at first but then become downright iconic instead of shamed. When Marlene Dietrich slipped on a mans tuxedo, she showed the world that the masculine and feminine are in every person, that one doesnt have to be binary. These are some of the stories fashion can tell for us.

Expressing yourself as a woman is a political act. Our clothing and bodies have too often been subject to scrutiny by a patriarchal structure that works to hold us down. As long as womens bodies are governed by others, the personal will always be political. This book is an homage to those who claimed their own power through personal expression, a tool thats available to all of us as we get dressed every day. Through the stories that follow, I share the history of pants, the power of a lipstick, and the beauty of all the natural hair that has gotten us so far today. The genealogy of a style can help embolden you with a message and maybe, just maybe, help you find the courage and visual language to show up as the person you want to be. Fashion is freedom; personal style is currency. And you have an endless supply of it, baby.

Wear your heart on your sleeve,

In the 1960s, the Black Power movement was underway in the United States, and at the heart of it was a hairstyle that would come to epitomize the political and personal power struggles at play. The Afro hairstyle is worn by people with kinky, curly hair texture (also called natural hair in African-American communities). It features natural hair structure and volume, extending outward as it grows. The rise in popularity of the Afro was a form of reclaiming Blackness by the Black Western community, where white Eurocentric views of beauty dominated. Black men and women had been spending endless dollars and hours using creams, gels, and hot combs to straighten their hairand gaining scorched scalps and burned ears in the process. It went beyond pursuing beauty standards; men and women werent hired for jobs if they wore their hair natural because it was seen as unprofessional. Focusing on the appearance of hair served as a shackle, holding down people deemed other by a white-centered idea of normal.

With the Black is beautiful movement that embraced Black beauty and norms, the community returned to their roots. Political activists like Angela Davis (professor and author) and Arnette Hubbard (the first female president of the National Bar Association) wore their Afros proudly in their work. Davis eventually came to resent being known for her famous Afro because she thought it overshadowed her political messageyet its iconic appearance remained linked to her political message. Glamorous stars like Diana Ross and Pam Grier rocked Afros. By the mid-60s, college students followed suit, growing out Afros, much to the horror of their families, who feared for their safety and future careers. It wasnt just a generational thing, though: The Afro was for everyone looking to join the revolution. There were older men and women with natural hair, and there were college students who continued to straighten their hair to fit into the social structure they had worked so hard to rise within. Fashion can still be a radical symbol as it becomes mainstream: Hairstyles have social, cultural, economic, and political impact.

The Afro raised a sense of pride in ones cultural identity as it came into fashion in the 70s and led to the natural hair movement of the late 1990s and on. Black hair care products became mainstream, and natural hair started appearing on screens and runways everywhere. Even so, theres still a long way to go. As recently as 2019 in New Jersey, a referee forced a Black high school wrestler to either cut off his dreadlocks or forfeit the match, claiming the hairstyle was unprofessional. The humiliating public event made national headlines and prompted California to become the first state to legally ban discrimination against natural hair. It also shows that standards for professionalism are still antiquated and deeply racist. Normalization of Black hair is importantas writer Bebe Moore Campbell noted in an article on Afros in the 1980s, All hair looks better when heads are held high.