The first sentence of Steven Millhauser’s “A Change in Fashion” states, “After the Age of Revelation came the Age of Concealment.” This is said so matter-of-factly that I didn’t even question it. It almost sounds like the opening line to an analytical historical paper. The description of the fashion reminded me of The Handmaid’s Tale, in which the fashion is described as “The skirt is ankle-length
, full, gathered to a flat yoke that extends over the breasts, the sleeves are full. The white wings too are prescribed issue; they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen.” While at the beginning of Steven Millhauser’s story, the women crave the idea of being hidden from a male gaze, while the narrator in The Handmaid’s Tale presents the fashion. There are conflicting emotions with new styles of dresses — just like with any fashion trend — some find it ridiculous while others find it an “expression of liberation from the tyranny of the body.” The goal appears to be to completely hide a woman’s body from the gaze; the idea of sexy moves from revealing to not revealing. Sexiness is molded from being able to see a woman’s figure or chest to not being able to see it and the “vague suggestiveness” of the hidden. While the women in this story are fighting to be free from a man’s control and a man’s gaze, there is still the obvious control the men have. “A rival journalist, ignoring women and their desires, spoke only of the new aesthetic of costume, which at last was free to develop in the manner of landscape painting after it had become bold enough to exile the human figure.” The fantastic, however, is not expanded on in terms of men controlling women. It is the extremity of the dress designs that grow from Hyperion’s designs. “Restless and dissatisfied, they grew in every direction; in some instances, they exceeded the size of rooms and had to be worn in large outdoor spaces, like backyards or public parks.” Throughout history, large dresses are nothing new. Queens all over the world had large extravagant dresses — usually ones that hid the shape of her body.
The sudden detachment from the dresses is another element of the fantastic. One line even states, “Dresses, freed at last from bodies, became what they had always aspired to be: works of art, destined for museums and private collections.” This line almost personifies the dresses, which for the first time separate the women and the dresses from each other. The phase was huge, enough for the dresses to become part of architecture only for them to die out just as fast as they came. The whole thing became a distant memory that would be brought up at family gatherings.
I think this story takes a lot from modest fashion movements which have actually happened. I know you especially can appreciate this example: If we look at the history of the Lolita subculture— completely unrelated to the novel— we find a group of young women who took to over-the-top cuteness and modesty as a way of rejecting the male gaze. Though these women were often chastised by society for doing this, the movement also quickly backfired as men took it as something for their own consumption. Even now, you’ll see people drawing their “waifus” as sweet lolitas. I feel like no matter what a woman does to avoid being seen sexually, men find a way.
You bring up an interesting point in the last paragraph, with the dress being a work of art now that no one wanted to wear the piece of clothing. I never stopped to think that this could be an element of the fantastic, but I think you are right. While I do believe that there is a much deeper meaning with the dress, if we take it at face value, it was meant to be a masterpiece.
“Fashion is an expression of boredom, of restlessness.”
I agree with Kayley. It’s similar to how we museum old fashioned dresses for what they are rather than the deeper meaning/value. I’m sure at that point in time it was something much more to someone rather back then, in comparison to now, where it is on display for everyone to glance at.
I agree, I thought of museums and how they are standing for everyone to look at and enjoy the stories behind them. I feel like this was part of what happened after these dresses are created. We don’t get to see the “after” of the story, but I imagined it would be like how the Smithsonian Museums have whole sections dedicated to dresses of famous people — right now I believe it is dresses of the first ladies.
I agree with your point about the male gaze; women’s bodies are constantly sexualized no matter what they wear, and the different parts of the body that are sexualized change with time and fashion. (I’m thinking back to when it was scandalous for women to show their ankles.) One part in the story where this stood out to me was when the men finally lifted up the dresses only to find the women were gone and instead enjoying each other’s company while wearing bathrobes. The men were excited to see what was beneath the dress, but the women truly just wanted to be left alone.
I agree that the women wanted to be left alone while the men wanted to see underneath the dresses, I thought of how old movies portray an ankle or showing shoes. It was seen as so scandalous that we now mock. I feel like even now women want to be left alone for the most part instead of being scrutinized under the male gaze and judgement constantly.
It is interesting to note that on page 177 Millhauser writes that because of “the complete separation of clothing from women’s bodies…women no longer knew how to dress, what to wear.” Women’s bodies and fashion have always been intricately linked; fashion has always dictated how a woman should look. The story says that the trends in fashion were liberating for the women, but what freedom did they really have if they didn’t know how to look once they no longer had to rely on fashion? Along those lines, on page 174, Millhauser writes, “Stimulated by the unseen, lashed by the unknown, sexual fantasies became at once more violent and more devious. The new clothing was essentially paradoxical. Women, it was argued, were never more naked than when concealed from view.” Women are damned if they don’t cover up and damned if they do. I wonder how long the trend of “clothing is architecture” lasted before it once again became a part of a woman’s body. One sentence that really stood out to me was on page 177 when the men discover that the women were no longer in their dresses: “Later that day they were discovered in the kitchen of a neighbor’s house, dressed in old bathrobes and talking among themselves.” What does that tell you?
I was thinking for most of this story of the saying “dress like a lady” and “act like a lady” because it is such that everything a woman does is not good enough. Women who cover too much skin are prudes and women who wear clothes that expose what someone else deems as “too much skin” is called a “slut.” women can never do anything right in the eyes of society and I feel like this story is another extreme of that “act like a lady” phrase.
I had the same interpretation of the first sentence. I recently finished The Handmaid’s Tale and that is all I could think about while reading this story. I’m actually surprised that you caught onto the Male Gaze and you described it beautifully. I agree with you a lot and I hadn’t seen your post yet. That’s really cool.
I read “The Handmaid’s Tale” about two years ago and never got into it. However, it immediately popped into my head and I read it with the knowledge of that story constantly comparing the two. The element of fantastic in this story, however, was so absurd that I wanted to keep reading it to find out what happened next.