BA2 THEORY CLASS - TEXTILES IN SOCIETY -  THE FEMALE TRADITION OF TEXTILES GROUP SEMINAR PRESENTATION

A TRADITION WITH A REASON. ELIZABETH WAYLAND BARBER. 1994.

1. THE FEMALE TRADITION

For millennia women have sat together spinning, weaving, and sewing. Why should textiles have become their craft par excellence, rather than the work of men? (Wayland Barber, 2012, p.321). 


We are looking forward into a new age, when women who so desire can rear their children quietly at home while they pursue a career on their child-safe, relatively interruptible-and-resumable home computers, linked to the world not by mule back or the steam locomotive, or even a car, but by telephone and the modem. For their part, the hand loom, the needle, and the other fiber crafts can still form satisfying hobbies, as they, too, remain compatible with child watching. (Wayland Barber, 2012, p.323).

2. CONTEMPORARY FASHION AND SEXISM

Few things have surprised me in my job as much as the surprise of some readers that fashion is covered. It's stupid, they cry! It's silly, they roar! Nobody cares, they wail! ...

Yes, there are lots of elements of the fashion industry that are disgusting and I have discussed plenty of them over the years: the racism, the ageism, the eating disorders, the elitism. But that does not mean that fashion itself should be scorned and the fact that some people feel so free to do so suggests, as I have said before, strong sexism at play here. Football (yes, I'm going here again) is hardly the most intellectual of pursuits and suffers from many of the same problems as fashion, with added homophobia, but because it is aimed primarily at men, it is seen as an essential pastime. Fashion is aimed primarily at women and therefore dismissed as frivolous. (Freeman, 2014).


http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2014/feb/24/fashion-expensive-football-prada-premier-league-season-ticket 

REFERENCES

Freeman, H. (2014) 'Fashion may be expensive - but so is football', Guardian 24 February [Online]. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2014/feb/24/fashion-expensive-football-prada-premier-league-season-ticket (Accessed 24 February 2014).


Wayland Barber, E. in Hemmings, J. (ed.) (2012) The textile reader. London: Berg.