The Bodies In The City And Ethnic Costumes-Research Of Dressing Experience On Young Yi Women Living In City X

As a necessity in everyone’s daily life, clothing plays an important role in connecting individuals and the society. People socialize their bodies and endow their physical bodies with social meaning by choosing different clothing to dress themselves. Since the concept of body was brought to sociology research field, the attempt of establishing of the Dressing/Clothing Sociology and other related research are drawing researchers’attention. We will get better understanding of the social order which people are in, their social action, social relationship etc, by discussing the relationship between the people and the environment, which has two dimension-time and space, from the perspective of their motivation of choosing their clothing and meaning they have given to their clothing.Chinese ethnic costumes has been regarded as ’"peoples’ history dressed on the bodies". The costumes culture of China enjoys a long history, with their broad and profound meaning in many subjects, such as archaeology, history, religion studies, sociology, ecology. Most of the previous research on the ethnic costumes was from the perspectives of aesthetic, semiology, history etc, and research on the ethnic minority’s life style was confined to their primitive living environment. With the accelerated urbanization and modernization of China, more and more ethic minority are moving to cities from their homeland. However, there is few research on the ethnic minority’s life and how thev use their ethnic costumes in the urban cities.This paper takes city X in Liangshan autonomous prefecture Sichuan province as an example, surveying how the young Yi women who born after 1980 and have lived in this city for more than five years use their ethnic costumes. And then, it focuses on the relationship between their bodies living in this city and their ethnic costumes. After the interviews with sixteen young Yi women who live in city X, the author found that most of the respondents own their ethnic costumes, and basically they get them by the following 3 ways:arranging and giving by their mothers, giving by relatives as gifts, and the respondents buying them themselves. The young Yi women no longer wear their ethnic costumes in their daily usual life and working in city X While on the important ceremonies of life such as their adult ceremonies and weddings, important tribal group activities such as someone’s wedding or funeral, and when the Torch Festival is coming or they take some special photos, the young Yi women would dress up their ethnic costumes ceremoniously. Meanwhile, the young Yi men who live in the same place have lesser ethnic costumes and wearing experience than the women.In the author’s opinion, the bodies of young Yi women who live in city X is where the gender culture of Yi society exercises its power, when the young Yi women dress up their ethnic costumes ceremoniously on the important ceremonies of life and tribal group activities. By observing the dressing standard, the young Yi women comply with the gender norm of Yi society, and their ethnic costumes transfer to be the indications of some important occasion in their life-course. On the other hand, in the city where there is few people wearing ethnic costumes, Yi young women’s pursuit of the beauty of ethnic costumes and self-consciousness of ethnic identity urge them to wear their own costumes, making them the dynamic subjects for inheriting their own ethnic culture.