Accessorizers Anonymous?

Megarita’s thought-provoking post, “On the Perils of Fashion,” and an earlier exchange that I had with this wise and well-dressed woman about the issue of anonymity have prompted me to write this post about the perils of blogging about fashion.  While I certainly want this blog to have a readership and I don’t mind sending out a link to it to those that I think will be interested in the issues that this blog seeks to address, I admit that I’m a little bit apprehensive about having my real name connected to the blog.  This is especially true as I face the job market this year.   I realize that the way I dress already sends a message about the kind of person that I am.  Even so, I’m just not sure that I want Professor John Doe, the head of a search committee at Klaxon University, to know that I care about fashion enough to blog about it. The pessimist in me is fearful of disadvantaging myself in an already dismal job market. 


Another part of me (that bold confrontational part of La Historiadora de Moda that makes her so hard to deal with sometimes) wants to just put it out there.  After all, what’s so embarrassing about caring about clothes?  Pretty much everyone wears them, right?  Plus, I teach history, and I tend to focus on social and cultural topics, so, for example, I talk about material culture a lot.  I also study performance and, in essence, clothing is a costume for performing a role.  It can make for a great conversation starter, as both Megarita and one of our readers observed, and it can also make for a fantastic topic of classroom discussion.  One term, I put up this bad boy and used it as a springboard for talking about fashion in Spain and its colonies during the seventeenth century.  

 

(Archangel Gabriel with a Matchlock Gun by Salamiel Paxdei, Late seventeenth century, Bolivia)

After all, the Spanish and creoles in the Americas spent significant amounts of their income on displaying that income through clothing.  Fashion mattered to my historical subjects -- both male and female -- so why should I be ashamed that it matters to me?

Yet that niggling fear remains.  I have already accepted the perils of fashion, so I should at least be aware of the perils of blogging about it.  There is always the chance that other academics will take me less seriously for caring about clothes and jewelry and shoes.  There is always the chance that this blog will keep me from getting that job at Klaxon U.  It probably isn't any more dangerous than having a facebook page or too many hot peppers on ratemyprofessors.  But....  In the end, my compromise is to blog as La Historiadora de Moda, to be prepared for the hopefully remote possibility that someone might ask me about it at a job interview, and to be dressed in a way that makes me feel like a confident and fashionable academic if that possibility becomes a reality so that I can argue my position.