Where Are You Comin' From, Where Are You Goin' To:
Placing and Black Students' Discursive Construction of Community

CJM Writings > Thesis Home > Chapter 3: Out of Place (intro) > Placing & Shared Territory > Face > Dress

Dress

The importance of dress was emphasized by at least three informants. Olympia mentioned that she enjoyed attending dances and "places where you dress up." "Not dress up dress up," she stressed, "but make sure and wear your cutest outfit with your cutest shoes. That would be most of the dances, 'cause most of the Black parties or gatherings you try and look good--that's one thing that's a must." Dress, as she and others explained, is a particularly significant aspect of Face in the Black community.

Dress, for the purpose of this study, includes the combination of clothing, makeup, jewelry, hair styles, and so forth that a person wears. The dress used to place someone as a community member can change over time. For instance, if someone wears an outfit that is no longer in style, s/he may lose membership in the "popular" crowd. A person who fails to keep up with the dress styles of the community may be placed as an outcast and criticized, and made to feel that she or he is in the wrong territory. "If somethin's wrong with your hair they'll judge you--'She don't keep her hair up,'" complained Zowdi, "you wear the wrong outfit they'll say you don't dress good."

Zowdi offered an example that illustrates how people will sometimes change their dress (and their speech style) in order to contest being placed outside, rather than inside, a particular community.

. . . there's this guy, named Victor, he was raised somewhere out here in the Valley, and I know he dressed--he used to dress like real -- you know how your mother would dress you, in the slacks and nice shoes, I think his first year he used to dress like that, and then the second year he dressed like that. Now, he wears the basketball jerseys and the baggy pants and the tennis shoes, now, so I don't know.

I guess it was his first year so he got, he came from here, the Black people from L.A. came from here [from C.S.U.N.], they saw him lookin' the way he was lookin', knowin' that he was from the Valley, he talked very proper, eloquent, however you want to pronouce it, an uh, I think he changed. I mean he didn't say it verbally, but you can see how he changed, you know, he didn't feel that way, for him bein' Black, the way he was dressed was I guess acceptable to the kind of people that he wanted to be with.

I'm assuming, too. I don't think verbally, because I haven't dealt with many Black people who live in the Valley, most of us come from L.A.

Indeed, the "Valley" is racialized territory associated with Whites as much as South Central is associated with Blacks (despite the fact that there are large Latino and other ethnic populations in both areas). Dress can indicate community ideology, in that someone who "dresses White" could be placed as assimilationist.
Emerald also changed the way she dressed after her first year at C.S.U.N. She grew up in an upper-income area of Santa Monica where there were few Black residents. "I used to dress differently, too, and like Black people [at C.S.U.N.] kind of shined me off, like, calling me a sellout," she explained. She described the way she was treated in comparison with her best friend:

When I met [her friend], I was so like in overalls, and I had like a bun, and no makeup, nothing, and it's like no guys picked up on me, they would see me but they'd always talk to her, and she dressed differently than I did. She would wear short dresses and those high shoes, and I had no nails, nothing, you know?

She described how she transformed her appearance because "people come here and they automatically think, okay, Black is South Central, so I gotta be down and everything." She observed how the Black women who gathered at the Union dressed.

. . . and I'm like, well, I don't know how to dress, you know, so I figure, I'll get my hair done every two weeks, and I'll get it flat-ironed, and I'll change the makeup, and I went and bought all these clothes . . . All the Black guys started talking to me, and asking me out, and giving phone numbers . . . Before I changed the way I dressed, you know, they assumed I was a sellout, or they would say, "that explains it." But as soon as I changed, they accepted me. They were just like, "What's up?"

As her statements suggest, the dress aspect of Face can place one in spatial, racial, and ideological territories. Even though Emerald did not grow up in South Central or in a predominantly Black community, and even though she expressed assimilationist views, she could manipulate her dress, and therefore her Face, in order to be placed as a member of the Union community. The next section addresses another aspect of Face, namely, the recognition one may earn for her or his supply of information.

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CJM Writings > Thesis Home > Chapter 3: Out of Place (intro) > Placing & Shared Territory > Face > Dress

Placing and Black Students' Discursive Construction of Community

Copyright (c) 1996, Corinna J. Moebius