The South Asian Queer woman turns her back on the diasporic expectations and traditions her body is supposed to signify. Her sexual morality is turned upside down; her LBTQ identity is a rejection of the projection of “Nation” being a space on her body. Which leaves her occupying a limbo space, one that is hung between the South Asian diasporic communities at one end, and being termed too “Westernised” at the other far end of the spectrum. When you become part of the LGBTQ community, you’ve gone “too far” into Western culture. This binary between the South Asian identity and a Queer identity, completely ignores intersectionality, and therefore discourse in intersectional dressing. Is there such a thing as Queer South Asian dress, and how is it formed and identified? What are the conscious or sub conscious factors of dress when examining the dress identities of the South Asian Queer woman?
Dress is an important aspect of maintaining a link to shared culture, or the past histories of your diasporic heritage. But dress can be equally important in forming LBTQ (Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans and Queer) identities, as a huge aspect of being seen as involved in queer culture, could be in being identified as LBTQ itself.
Yet dress trends come from sub culture, pop culture, representations and stereotypes in the media, of what having a LBTQ identity looks like. And often there is only a Eurocentric view of how a LBTQ person will typically look like, thus omitting Black (in the political sense) LBTQ identities in the process and rendering the South Asian Queer woman invisible.
Added to that, South Asian dress stereotypes exist as well. The elusive creature of South Asian LBTQ identities is still something that is unequivocally hidden from mainstream view. Confined to “safe spaces” and rarely “out” in the sense of being identified by Western codes of queer dress and style.
There are factors of no representation of Queer South Asian women, and simultaneously occupying an invisible identity. Films such as Nina’s heavenly delights (2006) and Fire (1996) seek to correct the misconception that Asian women can’t be gay. The films still show women who fit into stereotypes of South Asian women, and the ethnic dress and ethnic markers that go hand in hand with that identity. Though interestingly, there are scenes in both films where the use of dress, and the subverting of the expected codes of dress that are held on to brown women’s bodies, are employed to suggest queerness. Which makes a link to dress being a powerful visual tool to indicate queer markers in cinema. It is when we try to examine the cross sectional area of being both a South Asian woman and LBTQ, that we can find out how women navigate these plural identities with dress. Are there conflicts that arise, when managing this dual/plural landscape, between sense of belonging and un belonging?
Extract from my dissertation introduction. Raisa Kabir 2012
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