No, a Dress Isn't a Right Wing Statement

The right wing will not get bows, dresses and florals in the national divorce, mark my words.

Photo by Farrinni on Unsplash

A couple weeks ago, an article on The Washington Post asked us to grapple with the question, “Is a floral dress a political statement?" (The political statement in question being: I love mass deportations.) A New York Times article asks Is Pilates Political? (Not my dumb ass thinking Pilates was multiple—I mean, literally it’s more than one Pilate.) But anyway, I’m sure you can figure out what political statement multiple Pilates or a singular Pilate was supposed to be: fascist.

Some liberals have pointed toward the right-wing Turning Point USA’s women’s conference fashion inspiration lookbook (which seems to exist primarily on Pinterest) as an example of women’s clothing that is now Republican-coded. And unfortunately, a lot of it is (at least in my opinion) pretty cute. Guess we’re giving this up now. I’m especially upset about the deeply CHH-coded yellow dress:

The Right has their own version of this, except they just worry that things are woke. M&Ms went woke when they turned the sexy green one into a sneaker-wearing lesbian. Disney is woke now too. Briefly, the Right turned on football because a football player is dating Taylor Swift.

Perhaps I’m biased, but I feel like the Left is ceding far too many things I enjoy (especially fashion things) to the Right, when nobody asked them to. Perhaps it’s just because we’re starved for content, and asking everyone if a floral dress is a fascist dogwhistle is simply clickworthy (I’m linking to it, aren’t I?) But after having read these articles, I can’t help but feel that, at least when it comes to fashion, women of the Left are being put in a position I dislike: everything must be ironic, and nothing can be beautiful for the sake of being beautiful. For something to simply be aesthetically pleasing is right-wing now. Our in other words: we were only wearing a pretty hairbow as an edgy political statement about the patriarchy, and if you didn’t see that, then that’s on you! Taken a step further: wearing the same hairbow without making an edgy left-wing statement is now an edgy right-wing statement.

What are we doing here?