Juventude "transada": moda como tecnologia de gênero na revista Pop (anos 1970)

Abstract

Fashion is not a neutral practice, but crossed by worldviews, interests and power relations that often go unnoticed. The body does not have fixed and immutable boundaries, being socially built in interaction with the world, therefore, there is no body that does not appeal to technologies, including fashion. Based on these assumptions, I aim to investigate how fashion as a gender prosthesis - and in intersection with other social markers such as age/generation, social class, race/ethnicity and sexuality – reinforced and/or expanded the limits for the construction of bodies across representations of “cool” young people published in Pop – the first youth magazine in Brazil, having circulated between 1972 and 1979 during the Military Dictatorship by the Abril publishing house. Aimed at boys and girls, above all, from the white middle classes, the magazine adopted the pop language in an attempt to shape a new market niche, dialoguing, in a certain way and to a certain extent, with the counterculture and its connections with the black, gay and feminist movements. At this juncture, “cool” kids, whose images circulated in Pop magazine, were molded as young people supposedly irreverent, free, authentic, nonconformist, modern and “without prejudice” in opposition to conformist, conservative and outdated models of masculinities and femininities, culturally associated with the “adult world”. This research brings contributions regarding the explanation of the transformations that occurred in the youth fashion of the 1970s, considering for that its intertwining with the socio-cultural dynamics; the political character of design; and the deconstruction of evolutionary, essentialist and dichotomous views (which tend to naturalize social inequalities) in order to stimulate changes in perspectives, which in daily practices, could will converge to the construction of a more conscious and solidary society. The analyzes indicate that the fashion conveyed by Pop has expanded the limits for the construction of bodies, although it has systematically triggered references associated with traditional models of femininities and masculinities. In other words, the fashion analyzed has shaped “cool” youth models, in a certain extent, being traversed by contradictions, questioning, but not quite breaking with gender norms.