We use cookies on this website, you can read about them here. To use the website as intended please... ACCEPT COOKIES
UAL Research Online

Modest Body Politics: The Commercial and Ideological Intersect of Fat, Black, and Muslim in the Modest Fashion Market and Media’

Lewis, Reina (2019) Modest Body Politics: The Commercial and Ideological Intersect of Fat, Black, and Muslim in the Modest Fashion Market and Media’. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, 23 (2). pp. 243-273. ISSN 1362-704X

Type of Research: Article
Creators: Lewis, Reina
Description:

Discrimination and exclusion because of body size and race is endemic in the globalized fashion industry and its media, despite that consumer activism on both fronts has led to some progress in market offer, industry practice, and regimes of representation. That both size and race inequities are present in the Muslim modest fashion industry and media is not surprising; the niche modest fashion industry cross-faith will inevitably reproduce some components of wider societal division and tension. Distinctive is how these often intersecting forms of discrimination are experienced and judged in a fashion industry and media focused on serving—and creating—a multi-ethnic and supra-national consumer demographic defined by Muslim religious identity and cultures. The challenges of fostering size and racial inclusivity demonstrate the extent to which normative modesty ideals are predicated on bodies that are non-“fat” and often non-black. The ways in which large and/or racialized bodies are judged to have failed in achieving preferred versions of modest embodiment reveal wider fault-lines in the affective affiliation to the umma, the imagined global community of Muslim believers.

Keywords/subjects not otherwise listed: modest fashion, size, body size, race and ethnicity, cultural politics
Publisher/Broadcaster/Company: Berg Publishers
Your affiliations with UAL: Colleges > London College of Fashion
Date: February 2019
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1080/1362704X.2019.1567063
Date Deposited: 16 Sep 2020 11:26
Last Modified: 16 Sep 2020 11:26
Item ID: 15932
URI: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/15932

Repository Staff Only: item control page | University Staff: Request a correction