“Next time someone tells Bronx girls to take off their hoops, they can just say they’re dressing like a Congresswoman.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
Every year, I make a feminist New Year’s resolution: apologize less; shut down more mansplaining; take up more space. Sometimes I mean this last one literally: I’ve learned to square my shoulders and stake my place in crowded subways, and to combat manspreading on airplanes by enbyspreading right back at them. But I also mean it figuratively: I wear blue lipstick to meetings, speak forcefully in focus groups, and take up many pages on this site talking about asexuality.
I identify as nonbinary, but I still have to navigate a society that sees me as a woman, and treats me like one. My resolution to take up more space was inspired by Roxane Gay, who describes in her memoir Hunger the expectations that American society still maintains for women:
“that we should be slender and small. We should not take up space. We should be seen and not heard, and if we are seen, we should be pleasing to men, acceptable to society” (13).
Fat-shaming is just one of many ways that women’s bodies and how women use them are relentlessly policed. Women are instructed to “fit in,” fitting into narrower and narrower categories and spaces until they virtually disappear.
Fiercely loving one’s body and leaning into its unruliness (as Melissa’s post discussed last week) is the antidote that some women have taken to combat the toxicity of the white male gaze. When I teach the concept of unruly women to my gender and literature students, we talk about the ways that such women don’t fit in: they’re fat, they have curly hair, they’re loud and laughing, they take delight in food and/or sexual pleasure — in general they take up space.
Conscious unruliness was on spectacular display during the swearing-in of the 2019 cohort of the US Congress. While none of the new members elected in 2018 were fat — evidence of the continuing marginalization and devaluation of fat bodies in America — the women taking their oaths of office were unruly in other ways, especially in their dress.
After her swearing-in, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted in detail about her inspiration for her suit and accessories on the Congressional floor that day:
In two ways, Ocasio-Cortez changed the narrative by being unruly for her oath of office. The first is in how she deliberately crafted her appearance to not conform to expectations for a Congresswoman. She did not don stud earrings and a “neutral” lip color, aesthetic choices that would have suggested femininity, yet restrained femininity — the kind of femininity that doesn’t threaten feminine gender norms and also doesn’t threaten the predominantly white masculine space of the US Congress. Instead, she accessorized how she always has, as a woman of color from the Bronx, for the express purpose of visibly bringing her identity onto the Congress floor rather than disappearing.
The second is how Ocasio-Cortez leans into the stereotype that women put a great deal of thought into how they dress by tweeting about her decisions, rewriting the stereotype by demonstrating that those decisions aren’t vapid or shallow. Her choice to wear white to her swearing-in, she explains, is historically and politically informed, designed to “honor” women and the socialist and matriarchal values of community and connection.
Speaking of community, Ocasio-Cortez was not the only woman inducted into Congress this month who refused to disappear. Of the many women recently elected to Congress, one of the two Native American women, Deb Haaland (D, N.M.); and two of the three Arab-American women, Ilhan Omar (D-Min.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), wore the traditional dress of their respective heritages to their swearing-in ceremonies. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), the first bi member of Congress, took her oath of office in a boldly patterned floral skirt. In community with Ocasio-Cortez and her gold hoops, these women disrupt the norms of “professional” Congressional attire by visibly signaling their unruly femininity together. By taking up space, they make space for nonwhite and non-male bodies in the US Congress.
Clothing isn’t the only way these women signal their unruliness. Congresswoman Tlaib swears, and refuses to apologize for it. Congresswomen Sharice Davids (D-Wis.) and Haaland were photographed in a forceful, emotional hug on the Congress floor. When right-wing commentators criticized Ocasio-Cortez for her college dance video, she responded by recording herself dancing at her Congressional office, using her body in ways that bring joy to herself and her followers and vexing those who want her body, and her politics, contained.
One Twitter user made the connection between how Ocasio-Cortez is photographed with her mouth open — laughing, speaking, shouting, her voice unruly and unrestrained — and how that pose captures for conservative media the threat of a powerful woman. She cites a lecture by author and journalist Rebecca Traister:
“This is the image of the woman who we’re told scares us the most: the one who has her mouth open in loud and assured complaint. It is the angry woman who is the big threat.”
Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Tlaib, Sinema, Davids, Haaland, and all the other unruly women of the 116th Congress demonstrate new meaning to the feminist maxim “the personal is political.” By unfurling their unruly bodies and taking up space in the US Congress, they signal that they are a threat to white patriarchy — and they intend to make good on that threat.
Ashley O’Mara is a PhD student in the Syracuse University English program, studying celibacy and asexuality in literature after the English Reformation. O’Mara also writes creative nonfiction and listens to Mashrou’ Leila, and has very strong opinions about hummus. Read more at ashleyomara.com.