Freud (Rose, 1988) stated this:
“All women…are costume fetishes…it’s again a matter of the same drive repression, but this time in a passive form that allows oneself to be seen, repressed by the costume, and thus the costume Raised to the heights of fetishism. Only then can we understand why even the smartest women have no resistance to the demands of fashion. For them, clothing replaces a part of the body, and wearing the same clothing means only Being able to show what others can show means that only that person can find in her everything one can expect from a woman.”
Dressing and presenting is not a passive act for women. They are actions with many steps and many joys. The female body is displayed as part of courtship, can be displayed aggressively to scare and humiliate males, or can be the center of a woman’s sense of solid self. In this regard, Freud remarks that even the most intelligent women cannot escape the domination of fashion, suggesting that the motivation for this interest is not meaningless, but has its psychological importance.
Fruger points out that clothing emphasizes the body by amplifying its features. He noticed that a skirt made a woman’s body appear wider and therefore more powerful, especially when it was held up by a kilt, hoop or pannier. Fluger also pointed out that the enlargement of a part of the body can only be to a certain extent, and it should not be too exaggerated in order to achieve the maximum improvement effect.
Hollander (1994) builds on Flueger’s view. She argues that women’s trousers, worn by Western men in the 18th century, contrasted sharply with skirts, which symbolized reproduction, by emphasizing the possibility of movement. It seems to me that this line of reasoning leads to the conclusion that by wearing pants, women are signaling a willingness to actively participate in social work. Thus, they rejected the role of specialized reproduction symbolized by the wide skirt. Clothing presents not only the outline of the body, but also the function of how the wearer wants the body to be used.
Clothing is not only clothing for women, but also very important as a shopping pursuit. Winestine (1985) describes the shopping addiction of a woman who traces the temptation from childhood. For Westin’s patient, this temptation led to a sense of helplessness, so she shopped in expensive stores to overcome this feeling of power by imagining herself as the wife of a powerful and wealthy man. sense of help. Because the patient couldn’t actually afford the clothes, she used her credit card as much as she could without paying it back, and then she cheated the bankers while blaming them for always raising her credit limit.
This article considers some psychoanalytic evidence on the role that interest in fashion plays in the female psyche, briefly summarizing fashion as a way of envisioning the eroticized female body, as a veil of bodily privacy and internalization of the female genitalia Part of the metaphor. The article also describes clothing shopping as an activity that is particularly relevant to women’s interest in clothing.
A woman who does psychoanalysis describes the joy of exchanging clothes with her friends. She is happy that her old clothes are new to her friends, and their old clothes are new to her. All of them piled together things they no longer wanted, and then each tried on what they liked. Admiring each other in a new outfit they matched was her favorite part of the experience. Other women also described shopping with a friend or group of friends as they most enjoyed being told what was right for them. Giving such a rating is seen as sometimes distasteful and sometimes positive, but it’s always pleasant to get it. The difference between sharing clothes and buying them at the store is important.
Sharing avoids the display of aggressive power, and deciding whether to use one’s economic resources to buy clothes includes the display of part of aggressive power.
Shoplifting can be a source of power when economic resources are not available, insufficient, or in conflict. As in the case Westin cites, a customer may feel empowered when she deceives a store owner, just as she feels belittled when she cannot buy unlimited quality merchandise. A colleague pointed out to me (Mandlin, 1995) that women who shoplift may feel entitled to do so in exchange for emotional material compensation because they believe they have been unfairly deprived. These women may feel they deserve protection, attention, and affection because they never got it, and by stealing they can get back some sense of fairness. Westin cites women, such as shoplifters, who try to force authorities to set limits in the hope of securing protection from impulses they haven’t experienced enough of.