مطالعه موردی مُدگرایی و نزاع بر سر بدنِ عمومی نسل جوان شهر سنندج

The aim of this article is to study new fashionable clothing styles as a main field of struggle among the public body in public spaces. The theoretical constructs include concepts taken from the theoretical tradition of hegemony-resistance which analyses activities like body-building, body-representation, women’s defiance of dominant clothing rules and their tendency toward alternative fashions in the context of popular culture and as examples of struggles over the public body. The sample, young girls of Sanandaj, recruited through a snowball-sampling strategy, reported their lived experiences of wearing fashionable clothing styles in urban public spaces via in-depth interviews. Data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis and six key themes were found: the dual role of fashion in exposing/ concealing identity, choosing alternative fashion as a way to reject traditional dress codes, the role of fashion in reproducing the duality of distinction/ assimilation, using fashionable styles for representing personal prestige and openness, putting on fashion to seizing spaces, and the central role of fashion in the struggle over public/ private body. It was concluded that consuming fashionable clothing styles by young women creates the possibility for developing multiple feminine agencies. Unlike the prevalent tendency to think about Islamic women’s embodied subjectivity as homogeneous, we found a kind of heterogeneity in appearance and bodily practices. This heterogeneity is what challenges and resists the intended homogeneity of the dominant culture. In this sense, fashionable clothing styles are tools of resistance.
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Style of Clothing, Public Body, Alternative Fashion, Space, Representation, Distinction.
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‌Introduction
The aim of this article is to study new fashionable clothing styles as a main field of struggle among the public body in public spaces. The theoretical constructs include concepts taken from the theoretical tradition of hegemony-resistance which analyses activities like body-building, body-representation, women’s defiance of dominant clothing rules and their tendency toward alternative fashions in the context of popular culture and as examples of struggles over the public body. In this theoretical tradition, fashion is regarded as a means by which social agents form their embodied social being and individuality, and reject any body form and identity pattern that is imposed on them by hegemonic culture. In the field of fashion, the exchange of cultural codes is inevitably done through the body, because choosing s fashion is actually choosing clothing models, jewellery, makeup and appearance. Fashion and clothing are a field related to power and resistance relations, and all the images, goods and signs of this field should be read as text and in a deconstructive way. In other words, here the cultural objects are nothing but signifying systems, and this signifying system of clothing is inseparable from the history of women, the history that is full of all kinds of signs of resistance against patriarchy and it should be read as a text by using disciplines such as art history, design history and cultural studies.
 
Methodology
The sample, young girls of Sanandaj, recruited through a snowball-sampling strategy, reported their lived experiences of wearing fashionable clothing styles in urban public spaces via in-depth interviews. Data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis and six key themes were found: the dual role of fashion in exposing/ concealing identity, choosing alternative fashion as a way to reject traditional dress codes, the role of fashion in reproducing the duality of distinction/ assimilation, using fashionable styles for representing personal prestige and openness, putting on fashion to seizing spaces, and the central role of fashion in the struggle over public/ private body.
 
Findings
It was concluded that, from the viewpoint of young women, wandering in public spaces, following new styles of clothing, seizing spaces, differentiating themselves from the old generation, and trying to manage their own bodies in public spaces are all components of a life form which can be named under the title of “public representation of a desirable aspect of being”. Thus, the use of new styles of clothing by young women at the moment when it is done with the intention of showing a new identity is actually a kind of choosing an alternative fashion to reject the old rule of clothing. Thus, young women attribute much value to clothing and body images in public spaces. For this new generation, body maintenance, healthy diets, use of cosmetics, grooming and beauty aids are significant. They wear fashionable clothing styles to redefine their boundaries to the formal hegemonic culture. This new generation symbolizes flexibility as opposed to the infertility of formal public institutions. This means that they don new dressing styles not only for bodily self-expression but also for mocking the dominant culture, expressing resistance to it and producing fantasies of freedom. Here, cultural resistance finds expression in bodily representation and asserting one’s own femininity. This is a kind of opposition to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant discourse, a resistance which finds its language in bodily practices. Thus, the main argument of this paper is that the current consumption of fashionable clothing styles by Iranian young women is a form of cultural resistance to a formal hegemonic culture which imposes a kind of institutional discrimination on them. Moreover, the article’s significance lies not only in its topicality but also in focusing on an under-researched group.
 
Result
Iranian young women, lacking any other form of power, use non-verbal symbols (clothing styles and ways of dressing) to express themselves publicly. Denied anything but very limited opportunities to roam in urban public spaces, they mainly represent themselves through clothing practices. These clothing practices, in a society where dialogue is deteriorating, serve the function of identifying the wearer’s social attitudes and behaviours. In other words, urban public spaces provide favourable environments for the development of alternative clothing styles and alternative images of women. For this reason, these spaces are at the same time the domains of the struggle between marginal and hegemonic discourses. Young women’s ways of dressing (marginal discourse) are considered deviant and vulgar by the dominant culture (hegemonic discourse). Changes in clothing styles, body modification and developing an alternative dress, adopted usually by upper- and middle-class young women, are all great challenges to dominant dress rules and clothing regulations. Therefore, the focal theme that runs through this article is that personal bodily projects are mobilized by young women to seek self-representation and to resist subjugating to normative bodily disciplines. They defy formal dress codes in subtle ways such as folding up the legs of their jeans, wearing ripped jeans, leaving their hair out of their scarf from the front and the back, etc. Consuming fashionable clothing styles by young women creates the possibility for developing multiple feminine agencies. Unlike the prevalent tendency to think about Islamic women’s embodied subjectivity as homogeneous, we found a kind of heterogeneity in appearance and bodily practices. This heterogeneity is what challenges and resists the intended homogeneity of the dominant culture. In this sense, fashionable clothing styles are tools of resistance. In a social environment where the conversation is waning, young women use dressing ways to send signs and messages to others. They try to find subtle and delicate ways to show their desire for openness, vitality and sociability. They are constantly looking for ways, through everyday public interactions, to empower their feminine individuality. That is why they resist the hegemonic body shape and traditional dress codes. Instead, they attempt to represent their bodies publicly in alternative dress styles and create alternative spaces for themselves. In short, they try to resist the unbearable heaviness of being the same.