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Sartorial Fandom: Fashion, Beauty Culture, and Identity
In recent years, geeks have become chic, and the fashion and beauty industries have responded to this trend with a plethora of fashion-forward merchandise aimed at the increasingly lucrative fan demographic. This mainstreaming of fan identity is reflected in the glut of pop culture T-shirts lining the aisles of big box retailers as well as the proliferation of fan-focused lifestyle brands and digital retailers over the past decade. While fashion and beauty have long been integrated into the media industry with tie-in lines, franchise products, and other forms of merchandise, there has been limited study of fans' relationship to these items and industries.
Sartorial Fandom shines a spotlight on the fashion and beauty cultures that undergird fandoms, considering the retailers, branded products, and fan-made objects that serve as forms of identity expression. This collection is invested in the subcultural and mainstream expression of style and in the spaces where the two intersect. Fan culture is, in many respects, an optimal space to situate a study of style because fandom itself is often situated between the subcultural and the mainstream. Collectively, the chapters in this anthology explore how various axes of lived identity interact with a growing movement to consider fandom as a lifestyle category, ultimately contending that sartorial practices are central to fan expression but also indicative of the primacy of fandom in contemporary taste cultures.
Figure 7.1. The sartorial absurdity of Poppy’s “Bleach Blonde Baby” is established within the first seconds of the music video (0:12). Still from music video, uploaded to YouTube.
Figure 7.2. Intense contrast lighting within this establishing shot of Poppy’s “Bleach Blonde Baby” music video draws the viewer’s attention to the juxtaposition of the bare white church setting and Poppy’s ornate stylings (3:26). Still from music video, uploaded to YouTube.
Figure 7.3. The deep focus on Poppy’s direct stare into the camera turns the infantilized gaze back onto the viewer to further interrogate how youth sexualization functions in dominant sartorial scripts of pop star femininity (1:42). Still from “Bleach Blonde Baby” music video, uploaded to YouTube.
Figure 7.4. Poppy’s cutely cult style is on full display as elements from each outfit in the “Bleach Blonde Baby” music video converge to resignify markers of trivial femininity within the context of praise, adoration, and worship (2:04). Still from “Bleach Blonde Baby” music video, uploaded to YouTube.
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