Clothing The Self: Dressing as Identity Work, Ritual, and Sartorial Labor

• In Event: Sociology of the Body and Embodiment Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

This paper examines the daily ritual of getting dressed as a primary site of embodied identity work: a sociological object prior scholarship has bypassed in favor of clothing's interpersonal functions. Drawing on in-depth interviews with eleven participants and survey data from thirty-seven respondents within a symbolic interactionist framework, we identify four themes. First, clothing functions as a stabilization practice through which the self is provisionally constituted each day. Second, the dressing ritual operates as an interaction ritual with the self as both performer and audience, generating emotional conditions for social participation. Third, identity work through dress is embedded in collective resonance and functions as a contribution to shared conditions of safety and recognition rather than strategic impression management. Fourth, clothing constitutes the primary material boundary between alienated institutional spaces and spaces of chosen self-expression. Across these findings, we introduce sartorial labor — the daily management of bodily presentation to fulfill institutional requirements — as an extension of Hochschild's emotional labor, with implications for workplace inequality and the unequal distribution of embodied institutional demand.

Author

• Alexandria Vasquez