The Art of the Ordinary? Exploring How Girls Mediate Class Privilege Through Fashion
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21394493 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gaby Harris (0009-0002-1827-8767, Manchester Metropolitan University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-07-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Sociological Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00380261261462670 |
| OpenAlex | W7167280102 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
The concept of ordinary to think through how individuals understand themselves and fit into their social environments is used in both material and class analysis, yet rarely together. This article concentrates on middle-class teenage girls’ uses of joggers to reconcile these debates and critically interrogate what it means to be ordinary. The article draws on qualitative research with 24 girls aged between 15 and 17 which explored their uses of fashion. The article recognises the ambivalence and defensiveness that accompany class categorisations, which creates new challenges for understanding young people’s relationships to class and our understanding of class (re)productions. I evidence how individual material practices are effected by the imagined gaze of others in which ordinariness acts as a response to a self-consciousness of positionality. The article interrogates how class privilege can also be mediated in this space. I argue that middle-class girls are exquisitely attuned to their relationship to privilege and thus work to mediate against negative affects associated with privilege and wealth through ordinary dress. Yet subtle hierarchies remain in how they position their ‘successful’ negotiation of style and spaces. The art of the ordinary is in its fluidity
Ambivalence · Class (philosophy) · Negotiation · Privilege (computing) · Qualitative research · Social class · Style (visual arts) · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Social and Cultural Dynamics
Why Women Wear What They Wear
Fashion and Its Social Agendas
Fashion and Age
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Productive Spaces
Narratives of ‘getting it right’
Like mother, like daughter
One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis
Frappés, friends, and fun”
What does that shirt mean to you? Thrift-store consumption as cultural capital
Wearing class
Postfeminism, consumption and activewear
Style Failure
Snowball sampling
Fashion and Anxiety
Performing a Vanilla Self
Being seen in your pyjamas
II. Girls on Girls
The Best of Friends
Notes on the Perfect
Post‐feminism and popular culture
Distinctions in the making
White like them
Chav Mum Chav Scum
The coloniality of distinction
Cultural sociology and new forms of distinction
The Geometry of Culture
Classificatory Struggles
The material politics of stereotyping white trash
Disgusted Subjects
Do I Look Like My Selfie
Understanding Cultural Omnivorousness
Feeling Time, Fashioning Age
Young Girls' Embodied Experiences of Femininity and Social Class
Beyond Consciousness
Social Class and Cultural Mobility
No More Need for Snobbism
"We make the shoes, you make the story" Teenage girls' experiences of fashion
Nepo Babies and the Myth of Meritocracy
Ordinary, Ambivalent and Defensive
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |