Progressive in the West, backward in the East: Shalwar’s trials with modernity

Yasemin Y. Celikkol*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

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 languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)518-535
Number of pages18
JournalInternational Journal of Cultural Studies
Volume25
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - 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

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