Changes In Chinese Women's Clothing Under The Influence Of The Body Liberation Movement

Clothing is a carrier of civilization,so it is more important to study the relationship between clothing and the body that wears it than to study clothing itself.Clothing is for the body that wears it,and the body must wear clothing.Without the body,clothing is empty and static,and only when it is worn by the body can its meaning and value be fully embodied.For a long time,however,few academic studies explore clothing from the perspective of the body or explore the social feature of the body from the angle of clothing.As more theories "stress the body",people start paying attention to the natural connection between clothing and the body,and reconstructing clothing culture by introducing the perspective of the body should be an important trend for clothing research.Particularly in the field of women's clothing,traditional women have long been "silenced" by rituals and disciplines.The study of traditional women's clothing from the perspective of the body can address the lack of literature,and explore the real life of women at that time from the relationship between clothing and body.Body problems remain serious despite significant rise in the social status of women nowadays.The mass media's dissemination of messages about women's body,such as weight loss,cosmetic surgery,and fashion consumption,continues to develop women's awareness and demands for their own bodies.Meanwhile,many irrational phenomena detrimental to health have emerged,and are reflected in women's clothing.Since the late Qing dynasty,the liberation of women's bodies has been the focus of attention from all sectors of society.In retrospect,the "issue of women's bodies" is essentially universal despite different historical backgrounds.Approaching from the movement of women's body liberation,this paper takes modern Chinese women's clothing as the subject and focuses on the building of a clothing change system and on a quantitative trend analysis.It will facilitate more in-depth study on the cultural connotations of changes in modern women's clothing from the body's perspective and promote the need of care for women in modern times.First,this paper clarifies that the body liberation movement comprises anti-footbinding movement,haircutting movement,and natural breast movement.It is an integral part of modern women's movements and is led by the women's liberation thoughts.Moreover,this paper summarizes extensive modern literature on the history of the women's liberation thoughts and the body liberation movement in varied stages like initiation,rise,and peak.Based on thoughts and practice,it summarizes the modern changes in viewpoints on women's bodies,and builds a complete theoretical framework for the changes in viewpoints on women's bodies amid the modern movement of women's body liberation.Second,based on large numbers of modern texts and images,this paper reconstructs the general picture of women's clothing in China amid the body liberation movement.As the first step in the clothing revolution,the anti-footbinding movement broke the stable system of traditional clothing,and meanwhile,women began to engage in social life with a new and innovative image.The haircutting movement shifted from a symbol of affirmation and revolution to a symbol of aesthetics,and the short haircut of the New Woman was in vogue.The natural breast movement criticized the flat-chest image of the New Women and reshaped the image of women's natural curves.As the body liberation movement continued to advance,the image of women's clothing visually displayed the effects and achievements of the movement.Third,based on analysis of objects and field study,this paper examines the changes in the styling of clothing under the influence of the body liberation movement from styling.The style of tops changed from loose and flat to tight and curvy,while that of bottoms became shorter and lighter.Furthermore,body liberation centered on abandoning the traditional decorative practices.Footwear developed from lotus shoes for footbinding,to shoes for unbound feet and shoes for natural feet,and the style changed from bowed to straight.Meanwhile,women's hairstyle changed from a bun to a perm,and their underwear shifted from hiding to showing their breast curves.This paper probes into the colors,materials and craftsmanship of real modern women's clothes from the perspective of the body liberation movement.The aesthetics of clothing color gradually gets rid of the system of "five elements and five colors",and clothes are matched based on personal aesthetic standards.In addition,the overall style for matching color of clothes changes from bright to simple but elegant.The color of hemline is mainly the same as or similar to the garment.The colors of tops and bottoms in the popular dresses(trousers)are the same,and mostly tertiary colors.These colors are elegant and harmonious without any implication of hierarchy.The trend in clothing materials is mainly sexy and revealing as well as functional and simple,but the functional cotton fabric is favored by consumers.In respect of clothing craftsmanship,the cutting and structure craftsmanship starts to shift from flat to three-dimensional,and to emphasize the features of female body in the structural design.Additionally,the decorative craftsmanship is becoming simpler instead of complex to underpin the three-dimensional structure of clothing.Finally,this paper summarizes the patterns for changes in women's clothing the influence of the body liberation movement.The women's clothing reflects the history of change from suppression to liberation,displayed the characteristics of transition from concealment to exposure,and showed a trend of shift from conservative to open.According to on the changing patterns,this paper defined the concept of openness in modern women's clothing.From empirical research and by taking Kansei engineering as a quantitative tool,this paper correlates through correlation analysis the four key elements in clothing openness,such as silhouette,color,decoration,and material.It arrives at the conclusion that silhouette fit and nudity have the highest correlation with clothing openness.On this basis,this paper,by regression analysis,establishes a model for silhouette fit and a model for nudity in modern women's clothing,where clothing size was the independent variable.Subsequently,this paper employes machine vision image processing technology to identify the silhouette of women's clothing between the late 19 th century and the 1940 s,and to obtain the data on size.The results suggest the trend of changes in the fit and nudity of modern women's clothing as follows.Under the influence of the body liberation movement,the fit and nudity of women's clothing show a significantly upward trend,indicating that women's clothing is shifting from conservative to open.Additionally,the acceptance of changes in the silhouette of women's clothing varies differently among different people,and generally most people are more receptive to the growing fit of clothing than the growing nudity.The results lend strong support to the change system of modern women's clothing under the influence of the body liberation movement,and specify the priorities of follow-up research.