beauty_standards

The ‘’our Kind of People’’ series made by artist Bayette Ross Smith examines how clothing, race/ethnicity, gender and skin tone affect our ideas about identity, value and character. The subjects in this work are dressed in clothing from their own wardrobes. The outfits are worn in a style similar to how that person would wear them in daily life. The only change from image to image is the clothing, gender and the race/ethnicity of the person in the photograph.
Devoid of any context for assessing the personality of the individual in the photograph, the viewer projects her or his own cultural biases onto each image. Our prejudices make us label people without knowing them. This makes acceptance very difficult, because we do not give each other the opportunity to share your story. In this work, Smith explores how our mindset is created by the stereotypes that exist around clothing, race, gender and skin tone.

Click picture to see campaign

Amsterdam based brand Bonne suits focuses on durability, everyday wear and unisex. The poor man suit is a suit that you can wear every day to any occasion, regardless of gender. The provocative slogan of the suits refers to the way poverty forces you to make the most of the bare minimum. “Our suits force the wearer to create an identity out of a suit that shows none by itself.”
Founder Bonne Reijn believes that eventually we will all wear uniforms, eliminating stereotypes around clothing linked to gender, race and sexuality. The suit is meant that anyone can purchase it and use it for work, weddings, parties, school and all kinds of locations. The suit ensures that stereotypes disappear and makes places in society more inclusive.

Click picture to browse website

“Walks in to the room Feels like a big balloon I said, "Hey girls, you are beautiful”

This song dates back to 2007. Nowadays the stereotypes surrounding bodytypes are still present but are getting more and more broken through. Nevertheless, the presence and substantiality of these stereotypes were and still are relatively dominant in the collective perception of society. People, and in this partcicular song women, who deviate from these stereotypes are often perceived as abnormalities causing them to be and feel excluded in society. Mika attempts to include but also give the feeling of being included to women with a larger size than the norm in society. As the song states “Big girl, you are beautiful.”.

Rihanna is an artist well-known for her performances and achievements in the music industry. But her artistry and creativity reach beyond the music industry. Among other things she set up a brand called Fenty (named after her surname). Since 2019 she’s been launching annual clothing collections under the name Savage X Fenty which she introduces with a fashion show filled with performances. Rihanna diversifies with the performers and models at every fashion show in order to reach, represent and include a wide range of audience. The diversity among the performers includes among other things plus size perfromers, black queer performers, performers with physical disabilities, non-binary perfromers and transgender performers.
In an interview before the Savage X Fenty fashion show of 2020 premiered on Amazon Prime Rihanna made some statements about inclusivity and including others.
“I want to make stuff that I can see on the people that I know and they come in all different shapes, sizes, races, religions.”
“inclusivity for me has always been something second nature. It’s not anything I really think about.”

Click picture to watch preview

In the current society we have a very clear idea of clothing that is for men or women, however, multiple brands (and more brands everyday) are fighting the stereotype of ‘men wear trousers and women wear skirts’.
Based on geography and history, these ideas are pretty weird to be the norm. If we look at the normal dress sense in the old Near East and Egypt, skirts were very normally worn by men and even were the standard. Same goes for Scotland, we all know what a ‘kilt’ is.
In recent times, these clear ideas of what is clothing for men and women start to blur. For women, it is accepted to wear ‘masculine looking hoodies’ and there are a lot of male celebrities promoting men wearing dresses or even men wearing skirts again.
Popular brands start to see the gap in the market. While some skate brands (like Stussy or Carhartt) have been producing unisex clothing for a while, a lot of other brands start picking up what needs to be picked up.
A brand I would like to stand still by in particular is ‘Zeeman’. According to Zeeman, it seems to be a trend to mix and match gender specific clothing so they made a whole clothing line based on that trend. The reason why I think it’s good a brand like Zeeman does this, because there is no Dutchie that doesn’t know Zeeman. Recognition!
Brands like ‘Zeeman’ are breaking the stereotype of what men and women should wear.

Click picture to read article

Queer gym Rotterdam listens to the needs of people who often feel unheard. They start a conversation with them and give people the space to tell their story. The world of sports and mental health is often quite binary and normative. For example, women must be slim and men must be muscular. Beauty ideals are generally based on white cisgender people with no limitations.
Breaking the standard beauty ideals that often prevail in a gym. “That's the most important thing: that when people go to a gym, they don't have to leave a part of themselves at home. That they are allowed to take all parts of themselves with them, in order to extract strength from them. Literally and figuratively"
Queer gym breaks through stereotypes because they give people the space to discover themselves. As mentioned, in the current sports landscape there is mainly room for people who meet the standard. As mentioned, gyms are often experienced as unsafe if you do not meet the beauty ideals.