“Misfit Masculinities: Self-Fashioning in a Sanist and Ableist World” with Ben Barry

Fashion Talks at AUP 2021/22: Between Consumption, Criticism and Activism.

Ben Barry “Misfit Masculinities: Self-Fashioning in a Sanist and Ableist World”

Wednesday, 27 April 2022 at 6.30pm (CEST) online.

About the talk:

This talk explores how Disabled, Deaf and Mad men and masculine non-binary people engage with clothing to navigate the social world and make their own worlds. I draw on sartorial biographies and fashion hacking workshops from the research project—Cripping Masculinity—to share how disabled masculine experiences of consuming and constructing clothing stretch dominant understandings of body-minds, gender and fashion. By introducing the concept of “misfit masculinities,” I demonstrate how disabled masculine people’s encounters with clothing provide layered and liberatory understandings of fashioning masculinity that are an antidote to hegemonic masculinity, white supremacy and compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness. This talk provides a shift away from the dominant framework in fashion studies in which marginalized bodies are primarily storied as damaged and oppressed. It centers the wisdom, creativity and joy that comes from Disabled, Deaf and Mad people’s relationships and experiences with clothing because of, and without denying, systemic oppressions.

Ben Barry’s talk is part of this year's Fashion Talks at AUP entitled: Between Consumption, Criticism and Activism – organized by Professor Renate Stauss and Professor Sophie Kurkdjian (Fashion Studies, Department of Communication, Media and Culture).