I dislike the terms gay and lesbian. As a costume designer to portrait
a character defined this way, would make me feel slight discomfort. The terms gay and lesbian are problematic because the person is being defined through a sexual desire - as if persons expression of gender and sexuality was expected to be certain way. Yes, sometimes we need to work with stereotypes (or do we?), but one hast to be extremely sensible and definitely up to date with them.
Instead I prefer the term
queer. To me, the term queer is more about person’s social (and political) position and not so much about certain manner of self expression.
Subcultures are related to certain
times and places. They change. People of different generations and cultures grow up influenced by different images, and so construct their ideas of the culture and their personal identities different ways. Towards the end of 2000’s the queer appears to have developed into an umbrella
term for any kind of otherness related to sexual orientation or gender expression. The people who willingly or
unconsciously step out of the norm may or may not have something in common in terms
of behavior or fashion. In other words the “queer style” is challenging to define since it’s not a
homogenic subculture with standard codes and norms. It’s generally just being somewhere outside. How contemporary!
Still, there is definitely a tradition of queerness in culture and fashion.
Sometimes I wonder if subcultures exist at all. Perhaps its only a discourse, a way to structure certain phenomenons. Perhaps the sociologic theory is accurate, that the mainstream culture and subculture are not opposites, but the mainstream is constructed of endless subcultures. So, everyone has their own subcultural box and yet, is it something that actually exist or is it only in your head? Talk about subcultures feels nostalgic, as if you're longing for someplace that's lost forever.
So, the fashion. High fashion has always been
dominated by homosexual designers. The performative nature of it has traditionally been appealing environment for outsiders of social norms, as well as show business has been, but it does not necessarily make fashion queer. In converse, fashion is commercial and often particularly gender conscious. Especially high fashion has tendency to empathize the female beauty and normative sexuality and fade out presence of alternative gender experiences and
sexualities. The female body seems to be a type of fetish (perhaps the male body too), and this, in my
opinion, is in contradiction with the ideas of gender and sexuality we have today, as well as diversity of the people in
the street, and most importantly the complexity of the experience of the
individual.
Film and theatre show representations
of human sexuality. People interact with other people; most times they love
someone. In the story there's usually a beautiful woman and a handsome man. Their
sexual behaviour has been written to their appearances; the beautiful woman and
the handsome man are expected attract each other, the man is expected
to be active in relation to the woman, who is innocent (if her hair is blonde),
or passionate (if her hair is dark).
The story of beautiful people’s sexuality
has been repeated countless numbers of times. Policies that are repeated time
after time become a norm, and what is left outside becomes and
exception. But in the end, real people are complex and complexity is
human. In my opinion there are no exceptions, there's just diversity. Just because most people do something, it does not make it normal. Beauty
and normality are conceptual, and need constant updating.
