Becoming-Woman as a Strategy for Subverting the Great Male Renunciation from the Global South

Abstract

In this article, which is part of an ethnographic research carried out digitally in 2020, some fashion/apparel design resources were mapped as a strategy to resist certain gender limits that, in this case, fall on men’s fashion through the great male renunciation. The study is focused on South America, with the intention that the limits related to the great male renunciation would be considered as part of a historical process which Aníbal Quijano [14] named coloniality of power. To this end, images of creations by the brands Alfinvaron [1] from Buenos Aires, who was also interviewed, and João Pimenta [9], from São Paulo, were analyzed. Both cases do not correspond to the patterns of Heteronormativity, rejecting the hegemonic masculinity by adopting the artifices of fashion that since the nineteenth century were considered mostly feminine. For this reason, these design resources are being taken as components of a becoming-woman [4] in men’s fashion. However, this does not allow us to think of the analyzed cases as decoloniality yet, but it helps us to propose alternatives to the gender binary in contemporary fashion.