Abstract
About a century ago, women in the US and western Europe looked to ‘Turkish pantaloons’ (shalwar) for freedom and were shamed, harassed, and even arrested for wearing them. Meanwhile, people of all genders in Turkey and Bulgaria moved freely in shalwar until modern nation-building projects imposed Western restrictive dress that rigidly delineated the boundaries of masculinity and femininity. Considering shalwar's recent elevated status as trendy global fashion attire, what is the public discourse of shalwar in Bulgaria and Turkey? Can clothing shunned as backward be recontextualized as modern? What can clothing illuminate about gender, modernity, and geopolitics? To answer these questions, I analyse over two hundred Turkish and Bulgarian primary sources through critical transculturalism and critical race theory.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 518-535 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | International Journal of Cultural Studies |
Volume | 25 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 2022 |
Funding
The author wishes to thank Dean John L. Jackson Jr. (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania) for his valuable comments on an early draft of this manuscript. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Keywords
- Bulgaria
- Poiret
- Turkey
- bloomer
- fashion
- feminism
- gender
- global communication
- modernity
- shalwar
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Cultural Studies