University of Tampere, Department of Russian Studies
Seminar: „Gender, Body and Politics in 20th century Russia“
Spring Term 2006

Fashion and Femininity in Soviet Russia

by: Sarah Stolle

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Theory  1

2.1 Kathy Davis: Embody-ing Theory  1

2.1.1 Body as a message of Individuality  1
2.1.2 Feminism and the Body 2

2.2 Sandra Lee Bartky: Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power 3

2.2.1 What makes a body feminine?  3
2.2.2 Disciplinary Institutions  4

3 Fashion and Femininity in Soviet Russia  5

3.1 The Soviet Look 5

3.1.1 Symbolic clothes 6
3.1.2 Disciplinary Institutions  7

3.2 The 1980s and 1990s  8

4 Summary 9

5 Bibliography  10

1 Introduction

“Clothing as one of the most visible forms of consumption, performs a major role in the social construction of identity.”¹ The First and Second Five Year Plan of Stalin, to create out of Russia as soon as possible a fully industrialized economy, brought drastic changes in social life. Women were especially affected by these plans. They could find themselves in a dilemma between how to balance the fact to be a worker and keep in the same way their femininity.² These plans offered women rights they never had before, as entering in the workforce. But in the same way it was difficult to keep femininity, especially regarded to fashion. In Soviet Russia Western luxus was seen as the “evil” – women would rather dress as men than wear the latest fashions and risk being considered traitors.³ In the first line a Soviet woman was an industrial worker and a housewife. Her clothes had to comply with this function – fashion had to be practicable neither than feminine.

An important issue about clothes in Soviet times was the fact that they were used by authorities and society to produce and strengthen the collective ideology. One result was social repression of people who did not fit into the collective scheme. The following essay gives an overview of the women fashion in Soviet Russia; how Soviet fashion looked like and what symbols are behind these clothes. But at first I will point out two analysis about body theories; Kathy Davis’ “Embody-ing Theory” and Sandra Lee Bartky: “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power”. These theoretical aspects are important to understand the impact of clothing on the society, in our case the impact on women and their femininity in Soviet Russia.

2 Theory

2.1 Kathy Davis: Embody-ing Theory

2.1.1 Body as a message of Individuality

For Davis the ideology that personal consumption presents the individual as free, to be able to construct the own small world, dominates our contemporary society. For her the body is the ideal vehicle to achieve a glamorous life-style. The body is used as an identity-project. With it people can show who they are. The majority wants to have a young, thin, sporty, sexual and successful looking body. Therefore humans exercise the body, undergo plastic surgeries and so on.⁴

2.1.2 Feminism and the Body

Feminists used the body as a political issue to gain control over women fertility and the right of abortion. The body was their measure to make analyses of power relations and patriarchy. The woman’s body showed everything weak as emotionality, irrationality and sensuality which had to be brought under control by the (dis)embodied objective, the man who is masterful with a masculine will, the locus of social power, rationality and selfcontrol. ⁵ A very interesting issue of Davis’ analysis is the impact of the beginning and development of the sexual education, especially of the woman’s body. The science of women’s health focused her weakness as menstruation, menopause, and pregnancy. This supported the view of the weak feminine body. It showed that a woman is by her nature unstable, deficient, diseased, compared to a man’s body. For a lot of people this was an argument to bare women from high education, typical men professions, top management positions or the service in the army. The female body was used to show domination and control.⁶ For Davis sexual difference plays an important role for the explanation of embodiment. One reason is that individuals interact with their body, through their body. If somebody talks to a person they sea each others bodies, the movements, the reactions caused by the conversation. The body is one reason of social repression. Dominant cultures estimate groups according to their bodies. And subordinate groups are almost every time defined by their bodies: female, skin colour, fat, elderly. The dominant, disembodied groups as men or white coloured humans set the standards of what is aesthetic or merit less.⁷ In our case the dominant, disembodied group consists of men. For centuries they dominated women. The female body justified social inequality and power hierarchies based on gender and body differences. These differences caused male domination and female subordination.⁸ According to Susan Bordo some women try to escape out of this cycle of “never being good enough” with disciplining their bodies more and more through sports or exercises. Others women as Madonna upset their own normative concept of male or female. They create symbolic space and use the body as a statement.⁹ And at least many become sick; they suffer anorexia and other psychological and physical diseases.

2.2 Sandra Lee Bartky: Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power

2.2.1 What makes a body feminine?

[...]

1 Craine (2000),p.1.

2 Needham, [WWW document].

3 Needham, [WWW document].

4 Davis (1997), p.2.

5 Davis (1997), p.5.

6 Davis (1997), pp.6-7.

7 Davis (1997), pp.9-10.

8 Davis (1997), p.10.

9 Davis (1997), p.12-13.