University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Outfit: a queer fashion podcast that explores the relationship between the LGBTQ community and their clothing

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Outfit: a queer fashion podcast that explores the relationship between the LGBTQ community and their clothing

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Content 1

OUTFIT:
A QUEER FASHION PODCAST THAT EXPLORES
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY
AND THEIR CLOTHING

By
Ellen Ford

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM: THE ARTS)

May 2019

Copyright 2019 Ellen Ford

2
Acknowledgements

Thank you to every interviewee who generously agreed to answer questions, which were
often highly personal in nature, for this thesis endeavor. I am forever grateful for your stories,
enthusiasm, and sheer courage, both in the actions you’ve taken in your life, and to recount those
tales for the world to hear.

To Willa Seidenberg, Tina Haatainen-Jones, and Laura Castañeda, the biggest thank you
will never encompass my gratitude. You never flinched when I proposed this idea, and you have
been my greatest guidance in seeing this podcast through. The richness added from your support
is the magic dust which makes this audio package captivating. It is remarkable to have people
who feel passionate about spotlighting this niche that has meant so much to my own journey.

To each person in a marginalized community who has stood up for themselves, their
rights, their happiness, and their truth: you are the reason that I felt compelled to document the
way you speak truth to power using clothes. For the folks who listen to this podcast, who are of
all gender identities, sexual orientations, races, classes, places, and religions: this is for you.
Thank you for your strength. You are artistic, political, and a beacon of honesty. I hope I can
provide a community where you feel seen, heard, and understood and less alone.

And to my dad, the first interviewee ever, and my biggest fan. Thank you for the
unconditional love and support. I can’t imagine trying to raise me. Thanks for getting rid of that
horrible green dress. I love you!
3

Abstract

This thesis is in the form of a podcast with five episodes. It is an exploration of the
relationship between the LGBTQ community and their clothing, each episode is about identity
and expression, through the lens of fashion. The goal of this thesis to use clothing as an example
of how we should be free to express our identity, without societal restrictions, and how
intersecting identities can make this expression difficult, and even dangerous at times.

This project started as a “fashion memoir” where I examined my own identity and how
clothing was my tool on that journey. I wanted to understand the role clothing was playing in my
own life. LGBTQ dress is often erased from history, or not documented at all. To be “out” was
life-threatening under some regimes, both historically and contemporarily. The various
interviewees whose perspectives I chose to highlight aim to deconstruct both the modern
American social norm of transphobia, homophobia, and gender discrimination, and target
inequalities in dress that are still in place to this day.

The reason this thesis is captured on audio, versus a visual medium such as photography
or video, is that the physical look of the garments being worn is often of little importance to the
story. The relationship this podcast explores exists emotionally and mentally, and audio is the
best tool for capturing the tone, emotion, and intimacy of these interviews using authentic voices,
narration, and sound clips.

4

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... 2
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 3
Episode One: Pants are a Late Bloomer ..................................................................................... 5
Episode Two: The Phluid Project .............................................................................................. 22
Episode Three: Wild Feminist, Emma McIlroy ....................................................................... 31
Episode Four: Jasika Nicole ....................................................................................................... 42
Episode Five: “My Gender is Indigenous” ............................................................................... 54
Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 62
Bibliography – Interviews .......................................................................................................... 64
Bibliography – Text .................................................................................................................... 65
Filmography ................................................................................................................................ 69
Discography ................................................................................................................................. 70

5
Episode One: Pants are a Late Bloomer

00:00:00 - MUSIC: “Symphony No. 5” Ludwig van Beethoven.

00:00:06 - HOST INTRODUCTION: Ellen Ford
Welcome back to Outfit, a queer fashion podcast that explores the relationship between the
LGBTQ community and our clothing. It’s all about being gay and wearing clothes. My name’s
Ellen Ford. If you take a look at fashion over time, certain garments, color palettes, and specific
styles were used to signify things like class, military status, and gender. Over time, meaning and
ownership shifted as societies shifted. Well, to the American woman, pants are a relatively new
acquisition. To understand how pants and gender roles have evolved to what we know today,
let’s start in the 18th century. My guest is Dr. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell.

00:00:54 - INTERVIEW: Dr. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
I’m a fashion historian, I did my Ph.D. in art history but with an emphasis in fashion and I
studied at the Courtauld Institute. But I actually did my M.A. in History of dress.

00:01:07 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Guys, she’s a dress doctor.

00:01:11 - INTERVIEW: Dr. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
The 18th century was always my first love in fashion history and its sort of like if you’re
interested in cars the Formula One but the fashion equivalent because that’s really where the
6
innovation was taking place, the biggest and the best. Everyone was looking to France for
fashion inspiration. No matter which country you were in you were pretty much following
French fashion. That was the ideal everyone aspired to.

00:01:36 INTERVIEW: Dr. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
ELLEN FORD: And what were some of those trends that they were setting or what were they
wearing that people caught on to?

DR. KIMBERLY CHRISMAN-CAMPBELL: Well for men, the three-piece suit was the latest
and greatest in fashion and of course that consisted of coat, vest, and breeches rather than long
trousers. Long trousers were the workingman’s garment, if you were a rich man, you wore
breeches.

ELLEN FORD: And what were the women wearing?

DR. KIMBERLY CHRISMAN-CAMPBELL: Women we’re wearing the robe à la francaise or
robe à l’anglaise. These are two different styles of dresses that are functionally pretty similar.
And again a three-piece outfit consisting of a robe-like over garment, a petticoat which was
actually a skirt underneath that you could see in the front, and a triangular piece called a
stomacher that covered where the robe didn’t close in the front.

ELLEN FORD: Sounds like if you’re trying to picture all this, they’re very different, men’s and
women’s dress are polar opposites almost.
7

DR. KIMBERLY CHRISMAN-CAMPBELL:
Right, I mean yes there was a clear gender distinction between the suit and the dress, but at the
same time a lot of things that we now consider to be gender feminine were absolutely unisex,
lace, embroidery, silk and satin, high heels, jewelry, cosmetics. They were signs of wealth and
taste, rather than gender. Men who were dressed in a very elaborate or even at the time feminine
style were not considered to be homosexual. They were considered to be very heterosexual.
They were more associated with the world of seducers. They understood women, they related to
women. You can’t just look at a man in the 18th century and say oh well he’s wearing lace and
ribbons therefore he’s gay, not at all he’s just a really stylish guy. The homosexual community
was very much underground and it was punishable by death and that absolutely happened at the
time so it was not something that you could advertise and it was not advertised in the way that
we might think today we you’re wearing an earring or you’re wearing something flamboyant,
everybody was flamboyant.

ELLEN FORD: Everybody was flamboyant, so flamboyancy was wealth and taste.

DR. KIMBERLY CHRISMAN-CAMPBELL: Yes.

00:04:01 - HOST: Ellen Ford
In 18th century European society, garments were categorized by your biological sex, and people
didn’t really stray too much from that. Petticoats are for females, breeches and trousers are for
8
males. Most people only expressed their gender through their clothing reflecting the sex they
were assigned at birth.

00:04:15 INTERVIEW: Dr. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
ELLEN FORD: Do you know of any instances where people were subverting gender roles? Or, a
retaliation of gender roles in dress?

DR. KIMBERLY CHRISMAN- CAMPBELL: One very famous example and I’m sort of
hesitant to get into it because it’s sort of a long story, there’s Russian spies.

ELLEN FORD: Oh we love that.

DR> KIMBERLEY CHRISMAN-CAMPBELL: But the Chevalier d’Eon was a famous cross-
dresser of the 18th century. And the question is: was he a cross-dresser because he wanted to be,
or because he was forced to be? There were rumors of him being a spy in Russia and cross-
dressing to spy on Catherine the Great but then the King got mad at him and told him you have
to wear women’s clothes from now on. So it’s very hard to get at the truth of was this actually
something he would have done on his own and part of his career.

00:05:08 HOST: Ellen Ford
The Chevalier d’Eon was a French diplomat and a spy. During their career, they infiltrated the
Russian courts by presenting as a woman. They lived much of their life as a woman and claimed
to have been assigned female at birth. Upon death, the surgeon who examined their body found,
9
quote, “male organs in every respect, perfectly formed,” as well as quote, “remarkably full
breasts.”
1
This essentially suggests that d’Eon may have been born intersex.

00:05:32- INTERVIEW: Dr. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
And I think the truth is actually somewhere in between. I think he did have a taste for cross-
dressing. I’ve looked at his wardrobe bills and he was absolutely buying women’s clothes for
himself. And he made a lot of money by doing fencing exhibitions in women’s clothes. So he
was sort of a celebrity cross-dresser. Yeah it was a much more simplistic view of you’re either a
man or woman you’re not one trying to be the other. And the question was which is he.

ELLEN FORD: Which is he. I love that. I love that

00:06:08 - HOST: Ellen Ford
I’d like to think that that is Chevalier d’Eon were alive today, they would feel free using
they/them pronouns and could describe their gender identity as non-binary, or gender-fluid or
trans. Considering a King had the power to sentence people to cross-dressing as punishment—
European society is a long way from accepting women in trousers. Over in the United States,
anti-vagrancy laws basically said that, disguising yourself was illegal, and those laws were being
used to enforce gender norms in clothing. The New York Daily Times reported that a woman
named Harriet French was arrested under this law in 1856 in order to quote, “get more wages.
2
”
Another lady, Jennie Westbrook, was also dressing as a man in order to be paid like a man, she

1
(En.wikisource.org, 2019)

2
(Drover, 2017)

10
was arrested for this in 1882 and 1883. Her reasoning was that she could make $20 dollars a
week in her disguise, but as a saleslady in a fashionable store the pay would only be one-third
that amount.
3
There are a ton of examples of women dressing as men, for lots of good reasons,
which leads us to the Dress Reform era of the 1850s here in the United States.

00:07:21 - INTERVIEW: Dr. Kimberly-Chrisman Campbell
The history of trousers for women in western fashion kind of begins with Amelia Bloomer in the
mid 19th century, a feminist and dress reformer. These were very voluminous knee length
trousers that from a distance you might even mistake for a skirt they were so full. This didn’t
really catch on. There are some great letters from Susan B. Anthony talking about how she tried
to kind of wear this and the letter was actually to Elizabeth Cady Stanton I think where they had
both experimented with Bloomers. And although they found them comfortable and practical
decided it wasn’t worth the hassle they got for wearing them. So they both kind of considered it a
failed experiment.

ELLEN FORD: So Susan B. Anthony, let me get this straight. Susan B. Anthony writes a letter
to Cady Stanton and says, hey girl, have you heard bout these bloomers?

DR. KIMBERLY CHRISMAN-CAMPBELL: As I recall is was Elizabeth Cady Stanton who
tried it first. And then gave up on it, but Susan B. Anthony gave it a try anyway and she also said
you know what people made fun of me. It was before it’s time, it did not catch on.

3
(Newspapers.com, 1882)
11

00:08:30 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Great news, I found these letters and pulled an excerpt of my favorite one, where Cady Stanton
describes the harassment women were subjected to. I will now have Jackie Johnson, host of
Natch Beaut podcast, read it to you.

00:08:33 – MUSIC: William Tell Overture

00:08:45 - CLIP: Jackie Johnson
I soon found that the physical freedom enjoyed did not compensate for the persistent persecution
and petty annoyances suffered at every turn. To be rudely gazed at in public and private, to be
the conscious subjects of criticism, and to be followed by crowds of boys in the street, were all,
to the last degree, exasperating.
4

00:09:14 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Women were harassed in public until they went back to wearing the bustles and skirts they had
tried to escape in the first place. Susan B. Anthony will later write that she felt like wearing
Bloomers made people not listen to what she had to say anymore, that she wasn’t taken
seriously.

4
(Kesselamn, 1991)

12
00:09:33 - INTERVIEW: Dr. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
ELLEN FORD: So those are Bloomers and Bloomers fail. Ok, so then.
DR. KIMBERLY CHRISMAN-CAMPBELL: But then in the 1890’s, the bicycle craze hit
Europe.

00:09:45 - MUSIC: “Bicycle Race” Queen.

00:09:56 INTERVIEW: Dr. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
Women wanted to ride bicycles so they started wearing bloomers again. Often again with a skirt
over it. So that was another big moment for women in pants. In the 1920’s Coco Chanel was
living on the French Riviera she was instrumental in popularizing beach pajamas. So these again,
they look like skirts, really long. Really full, you don’t really see the legs but they were
bifurcated garments.

ELLEN FORD: Bifurcated, yes. Thank you.

DR. KIMBERLY CHRISMAN-CAMPBELL: Bifurcated, such a useful word. So Coco Chanel
was one of the people who re-popularized these in the 20s and 30s for the beach, not really worn
anywhere else. By the 30s and 40s you started getting the pajama pant for evening, the sort of
formal evening pajama. In the 50s, jeans and the rocker/biker look became more popular. Again
it tended to be a very casual very sporty garment but never really went away after that.

13
00:11:04 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Pants never really did go away but it took awhile for them to gain full social acceptance for
women. I want to introduce my next guest, Florence Arrow. She goes by Florrie and she will
turn 94 this year. Florrie’s perspective is important because she witnessed the coming of age for
pants wearing women. We’re about to walk into her house, which is in the heart of Los Angeles
in a beautiful, quiet neighborhood.

00:11:25 - AMBI: Birds chirping, outside Florence Arrow’s home.

00:11:36 - INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
FLORENCE ARROW: I can hear you.

ELLEN FORD: Hi Florrie, I’m Ellen.

FLORENCE ARROW: Hi Ellen.

ELLEN FORD: Nice to meet you.

FLORENCE ARROW: When I’m in the back of the house it takes me a little while.

ELLEN FORD: That’s ok I didn’t know if it worked or not.

14
FLORENCE ARROW: Everyone says it then they ring it again and I still didn’t hear it. Do
come in.

00:11:56 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Florrie was born in 1925 in the Bronx, New York. Her parents were Russian Jews who
immigrated in the early 1920’s. Both of her parents knew how to sew and got jobs in the garment
district of New York.

00:12:07 - INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
So my dad started working in a factory that made suits and cloaks, women’s suits and cloaks. I
can’t remember the name of the store but high end, like a suit would sell for $200 dollars.

00:12:28 - HOST: Ellen Ford
$200 dollars in 1920 is the equivalent of $5,289.12 dollars, so yeah, high end.

00:12:39 - INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
ELLEN FORD: So because your father was working sewing women’s suits and sounds like your
mother was also working in the clothing industry, where did your clothes come from?

FLORENCE ARROW: From them, what they would do in several factories, each person would
do what they do in the shop. We didn’t have a lot of money, or I would say money. But we wore
beautiful clothes.

15
00:13:07 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Florrie’s clothes were mostly dresses, and skirt suits, and shorts which were only reserved for
what she calls, the country. So I asked her about the first time she saw a woman in pants.

00:13:11 - INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
FLORENCE ARROW: One girl I know, she was 3 years older than me I was probably about 13,
and she had pants.

ELLEN FORD: What was that like?

FLORENCE ARROW: Unusual, I loved them and wanted to have them.

00:13:28 - HOST: Ellen Ford
So at this time, Florrie is 13, which makes it 1938, and women wearing pants is unusual. She
went on to tell me about her first pair of pants, which were jeans. She won’t get those for another
seven years.

00:13:44 - INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
FLORENCE ARROW: Maybe it was because it was jeans, I remember it a lot. I loved them, I
bought them, that my mother didn’t do. But I only wore them in the country. I wouldn’t wear
them to school.

ELLEN FORD: Was it a dress code rule or just uncomfortable for you personally?
16

FLORENCE ARROW: Well that’s what it was, if you don’t know any different, then you don’t
know. That’s it.

00:14:16 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Eventually Florrie’s life will lead her to Los Angeles. She’ll get married, buy a house and start a
family. Her daughter, Hillary, is about to become a legend at the elementary school across the
street. As of the 1960’s girls still wear dresses to school. Hillary is having none of it.

00:14:40 - INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
She always hated not wearing pants to school. Because she says, I like to go on the things to
climb and the boys want to, you know, look up your dress and she didn’t like that. So she was
always very upset. So she came home one day. My husband was a lawyer. She comes home and
she’s complaining, I don’t like it when I can’t wear pants…

00:15:12 - HOST: Ellen Ford
I had a feeling that Hillary might have some thoughts of her own to add. So I called her.

00:15:17 - AMBI: Phone Ring

00:15:20 - INTERVIEW: Hillary Booth
HILLARY BOOTH: Hi this is Hillary.

17
ELLEN FORD: Hi Hillary this is Ellen.

HILLARY BOOTH: Hi how are you?

ELLEN FORD: I’m fine how are you?

HILLARY BOOTH: Good I understand you had a nice chat with my mom.

ELLEN FORD: I sure did. She said you didn’t like the little boys on the playground looking up
your skirts and dresses.

HILLARY BOOTH: No. Not what I wanted in 4th and 5th grade.

ELLEN FORD: So she told me you did something about it.

00:15:24 - INTERVIEW: Hillary Booth
HILLARY BOOTH: It was kind of an ongoing saga at the school.

ELLEN FORD: Oh really?

HILLARY BOOTH: Well you know the 5th and 6th grade girls had been talking about it for a
while. Made the request to wear pants. The answer came back, no, the policy is dresses.

18
00:15:50 - INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
My husband says to her, you’re not going to get anywhere being mad, go talk to the Principal.

ELLEN FORD: And the Principal was a woman?

FLORENCE ARROW: Yes. Very nice, terrific, everybody loved her. But she was against pants.

00:16:06 - INTERVIEW: Hillary Booth
We were told no and then we all got together and it was a group of the 5th and 6th grade girls. So
we decided, we staged a sit-in because it was ‘69 or ‘70. (Laughter). So the bell rang, we all line
up, we walk up to the class, we go up stairs. And we got up to the door of the classroom and all
the girls just sat down.

00:16:33 - INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
She was very brave.

00:16:36 - INTERVIEW: Hillary Booth
So the Principal called an assembly with the 5th and 6th grade girls.

00:16:42 - INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
So she goes and talks to the principal and tells the principal that she doesn’t think it’s fair.

19
00:16:49 - INTERVIEW: Hillary Booth
The response from the principal was very consistent. Which was, you know tradition.
Traditionally, girls wear dresses and skirts to school. That’s always been the rule, you know
that’s just the way it is I mean she had no reason.

00:17:11 - INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
So she comes home and my husband says ok what happened, and he goes, tell me exactly the
words she used.

00:17:19 - INTERVIEW: Hillary Booth
So what she had said to us at the assembly after listening to everything she said well you know
I’ve heard your thought but—

00:17:29 INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
I don’t want you to wear pants.

00:17:29 INTERVIEW: Hillary Booth
I don’t want you to wear pants.

00:17:31 - INTERVIEW: Hillary Booth
Not you can’t, but I don’t want you to do it.

20
00:17:37 - INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
He says she didn’t say don’t wear pants he goes put your pants on.

00:17:43 - INTERVIEW: Hillary Booth
I said okay. So I called all my friends and said I’m wearing pants tomorrow. And we all showed
up in pants.

00:17:50 INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
And she went to school the next day—

00:17:52 - INTERVIEW: Hillary Booth
Enough of us did, a group of us did. We just wore them and never heard a word about it since.

00:17:58- INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
Principal didn’t say one word. And little by little. Her friends—

00:18:04 - INTERVIEW: Hillary Booth
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That was the night I was calling around saying hey, my dad said I could.

00:18:10 INTERVIEW: Florence Arrow
I thought it was wonderful. I was very proud of her. And I couldn’t see why they wouldn’t want
them to wear pants. You know if you wore something, I don’t know spooky or made fun of other
people, but what’s pants?
21

00:18:30 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Hillary will go on to become a lawyer, just like her dad. And she tells me that still to this day,
she thinks twice before wearing pants to Federal Court, and only in the mid 1990’s was it
acceptable for women to wear pants in State Court. You’re probably wearing pants right now
and you can thank a cross-dressing French Spy, a failed invention by Amelia Bloomer, Coco
Chanel, and a bunch of 5th and 6th grade girls in LA and massive number of other people who
have been erased from history, or hurt or even killed for being who they were. I hope you never
take for granted your bifurcated garments. This episode focused on European fashion in Western
culture but many other people should be included in the story of the LGBTQ community and
their clothing. And they will, so stay tuned for the next episodes.

00:19:20 - MUSIC: “Symphony No. 5” Ludwig van Beethoven

00:00:00 - HOST: Credits
Thank you so much for listening and subscribing to Outfit. This podcast was written, produced,
and hosted by me, Ellen Ford. Guidance and mentorship was provided by Willa Seidenberg,
Laura Castaneda, Tina Haatainen-Jones and Sasha Anawalt. Technical support was provided by
\Victor Figueroa and Sebastian Grubaugh. Original artwork was by Cherilyn Jack Juris. This
podcast was produced at University of Southern California Annenberg School for
Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles, California.

22
Episode Two: The Phluid Project

00:00:00 - MUSIC: “Passionfruit” Drake.

00:00:06 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Hi, welcome to Outfit, a queer fashion podcast about the relationship between the LGBTQ
community, and our clothing. I’m your host, Ellen Ford. Today we’re in New York City. I’m
with Rob Garrett Smith and Kristina Keenan and we’re at their store, The Phluid Project. The
Phluid Project is the “World’s First Gender Free Store”
5
which they have smartly trademarked.
It’s a store that has no men’s or women’s sides, the changing rooms are free to be used by
anyone, there’s an Instagram-able cafe with fake grass and neon signs, and their store doubles as
a runway if you want to strut your stuff to upbeat house music. Let’s meet Rob and Kristina.

00:00:43 - INTERVIEW: Rob Garrett Smith
I’ll go my name is Rob Smith. I’m the CEO and Founder.

00:00:46 - INTERVIEW: Kristina Keenan
I’m Kristina Keenan, most people call me KK. I am the Head of Design.

00:00:52 - INTERVIEW: Rob Garrett Smith
Pronouns are he/him.

5
(Nytimes.com, 2018)
23
00:00:53 - INTERVIEW: Kristina Keenan
My pronouns are she/her.

00:00:54 - INTERVIEW: Rob Garrett Smith
Although I’m in the process of changing my name to Garrett Smith, so I’m Rob Garrett Smith.
My mom wanted to call me Garrett Robert Smith. My dad thought Garrett was a gay name so it
became Robert Garrett Smith. So I think just the conversation maybe made me gay. (Laughter).
As an unborn child hearing this was like, oh maybe I’m gay.

00:01:19 HOST: Ellen Ford
Garrett has 30 years of retail experience with really strong brands and companies you’ve
definitely heard of, and has worked with marginalized groups and LGBTQIA youth for 15 years.
But he was sort of juggling two different lives and felt the need to connect himself.

00:01:36 - INTERVIEW: Rob Garrett Smith
I thought about what I was doing and thought I could do more than this. Somehow, instead of
two separate lives, merge my two passions into one thing. That’s why I just like threw on a
backpack and told my husband I’m going to go on a pilgrimage. I ended up in the Amazon for a
while and did ayahuasca ceremonies. You go in with an intention and you drink the plant, my
intention was, what am I supposed to do with my life? By morning I wrote down consider
opening a non-binary, gender free shopping experience and I wrote “Phluid” in quotation marks.

24
00:02:11 - HOST: Ellen Ford
The Phluid Project is spelled P-H-L-U-I-D. And it has a lot of meaning. The ph stands for
balance, and the word fluid means to flow easily. And of course project because it’s always
under construction.

00:02:26 - INTERVIEW: Rob Garrett Smith
The first person I called was Kristina. I said Kristina, guess what I want to do. We sat in a coffee
shop.

00:02:33 - INTERVIEW: Kristina Keenan
We sat in a diner, we were at Good Stuff on 14th Street. Rob told me about his trip and he’s like
I want to do this thing and I was like ok, let’s figure out a way to do it.

00:02:42 - INTERVIEW: Rob Garrett Smith
The first thing I did was started going to some brands like Champion and Levi’s and told them
what I was doing. Everyone thought it was wacky at the time, nobody really got it. Well what
was so funny is it was just smack in the face when you realize how binary everything is. Where
its’ like the men’s show and the women’s show, the men’s side and the women’s side. We
couldn’t find anything other than inspiration.

00:03:04 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Clothing is one of the first things that other people use to make decisions about us, it’s also the
first thing we ourselves use to start exercising independence. It’s not surprising that after running
25
fashion brands during the day and working with LGBTQ youth at night, Garrett made the
connection. He set out to fill the void in shopping for everyone who isn’t definitely man or
definitely woman.

00:03:31 - INTERVIEW: Kristina Keenan
I thought it was such a brilliant idea because like growing up for me, right now I identify as
masculine of center. So I’m a woman but I dress on the androgynous scale. So, like growing up
though, it was interesting for me because I’d go into the department store with my mom and I
had an older brother and all I wanted to do was shop with him in the boy’s section but I was
generally sort of directed to the girl’s section and being put into that, I always felt so
uncomfortable in my own skin. I think for me—it’s shocking that nobody’s ever done this in the
way that we’re doing it now.

00:04:16 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Every step of mainstream fashion manufacturing operates from a biological sex distinction.
Here’s what I mean. Patterning is either cut for a male or cut for a female. Fit models, who are
professional models that designers will use to make decisions about sizing, are either women or
men
6
. Most obviously, stores separate their clothes by biological sex. But even further than that,
color palettes, fabrics, and shapes are all gendered. Along binary lines. They really don’t have to
be. Kristina is in charge of designing Phluid’s in-house line of clothing. She designs without
gender limits. Phluid even has custom, gender-neutral mannequins.

6
(Fashion-Incubator, 2010)
26
00:04:57 - INTERVIEW: Kristina Keenan
For me it starts with inspiration that I see out in the world. So I’m always looking and I always
think there are ways that we can improve whatever has been made before us. Trying to make
garments that are solving a problem. We just recently launched our gender-free denim. We did
hyper stretch fabric so it really does accommodate a wide range of leg types. We did higher rises,
and longer pocket bags. The worst thing from a women’s jean you have these pocket bags that
are two inches deep and you can’t fit anything in them.

00:05:33 - INTERVIEW: Rob Garrett Smith
I wore women’s jeans. Kristina and I went to Levi’s and we tried on boys’ and girls’ jeans,
reversed, and tried to find the fits. I ended up wearing my 711’s for two weeks just to get a feel
for what the difference was. And I noticed that there wasn’t a good recovery in the leg, so my
thighs, just kind of saggy thigh jeans. My pockets, my lighter kept falling out of my front pocket,
was super frustrating. And then you just have to stick everything in your back pocket, and you
don’t always want to stick stuff in your back pocket.

00:06:04 - INTERVIEW: Kristina Keenan
Especially in skinny jeans. It’s not super flattering

00:06:08 - INTERVIEW: Rob Garrett Smith
And something just loose and oversize doesn’t work either. That’s just not the way to go. When
we started we exploded with color, Kristina’s color palette was like woooooow.

27
00:06:16 - INTERVIEW: Kristina Keenan.
Head to toe. Red, yellow.

00:06:19 - INTERVIEW: Rob Garrett Smith
Head to toe.

00:06:21 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Phluid also invites outside designers to show collections in their store. Claire Fleury is a
designer from Amsterdam who happened to be setting up while I was there. So in the midst of
chaos and house music, I asked her why she wanted her collection at Phluid. Listen closely,
there’s a lot of background noise.

00:06:35 - INTERVIEW: Claire Fleury
I’ve been gender-free for a very long time and I like that now it’s a thing and you can sort of step
into it. I loved their store from the minute the first time I saw it. And then actually my styling
assistant Thom, Thom Barranca said you should talk to Phluid Project. And sent them an email
and they said, “Yeah come over show your stuff.” and when I showed my stuff they were
twirling around the store in it. So I was like I think I’m in, that’s a good sign.

00:07:03 - HOST: Ellen Ford
I love the term gender-free or gender equal. Because when people think gender neutral, they
think neutral colors? And neutral shapes, opinion less. Boring. This store is so loud and it’s
colorful and it’s intriguing. You can’t help but want to walk in from the outside. It’s warm and
28
it’s inviting. Phluid has something to say, and they do it loudly, they do it with color, they do it
with music, it’s highly engaging and highly stimulating. But it’s so much more than just a store.
Phluid allocated one-third of it’s square footage to a community space that’s used to hold events.

00:07:39 - INTERVIEW: Kristina Keenan
We hold events. There’s panels. There’s panels on sexuality, on mental health and that is also an
education, right? It’s not just bringing people together its helping other people. How do I use
pronouns?

00:07:55 - INTERVIEW: Rob Garrett Smith
Just the idea that this could be the place like Star Wars and the Resistance could meet

00:07:59 - CLIP: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

00:08:00 - INTERVIEW: Rob Garrett Smith
—and secretly meet here and change the world. I think it’s really cool meeting parents and
they’re like, oh my god my kid knows all about this and if I mis-gender their friends or use the
wrong pronoun, the kids just berate their parents. So they’re parents are like please teach me
because I don’t want to be berated by my child anymore.

ELLEN FORD: That’s great, so you’re getting a lot of parents in here?

29
ROB GARRETT SMITH: Oh yeah yeah yeah, I mean our audience in general is created for non-
binary, gender non-conforming, trans young people. We find that the support system of the
broader gay community, and then even more than that is the amount of allies. I would say over
half of our customers are allies who walk in and go, “Fuck yeah, of course! We believe in this!”

00:08:52 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Retail stores that fail to evolve with the customer are toast. Most of you have never even been
inside a Circuit City or gotten the Deliah’s catalogue dropped off in the mail. A study done in
March of 2016 by J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group found that only 48% percent of 13-20
year olds identify as, exclusively heterosexual
7
. So less than half of Gen-Z is straight. And over
half of Gen-Z said they know someone who uses gender neutral pronouns like they/them
8
. The
forecast is moving toward accepting a gender spectrum.

00:09:28 - INTERVIEW: Rob Garrett Smith
I think the time of consumption is over without conscious thinking and conscious capitalism.

00:09:31 - INTERVIEW: Kristina Keenan
It goes beyond that. It goes beyond just selling a t-shirt to somebody. It’s about having someone
be able to express themselves authentically.

00:09:42 - HOST: Ellen Ford

7
(Out.com, 2016)
8
(Out.com, 2016)
30
Designers, massive brands, and the younger generation of this country are already embracing
gender as a social construct and rejecting being told how to shop and what to wear.

00:09:51 - MUSIC: “Passionfruit” Drake

00:09:53 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Next episode, we will continue chatting with CEOs of contemporary brands but talk more about
activism and how political it is, to just get dressed in the morning.

00:10:08 - HOST: Credits
Thank you so much for listening and subscribing to Outfit. This podcast was written, produced,
and hosted by me, Ellen Ford. Guidance and mentorship was provided by Willa Seidenberg,
Laura Castañeda, Tina Haatainen-Jones. Technical support was Victor Figueroa and Sebastian
Grubaugh. Original artwork was by Jack Juris. This podcast was produced at University of
Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

31
Episode Three: Wild Feminist, Emma McIlroy

00:00:00 - MUSIC: “Eye of the Tiger” Survivor.

00:00:11 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Welcome to Outfit, the queer fashion podcast about the relationship between the LGBTQ
community and our clothing. I’m still your host, and I’m still Ellen Ford. As of 2018, only five
percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs are female
9
. Out of those 500 people, three are openly gay
men
10
. And one, one Fortune 500 CEO is an openly gay woman
11
. That’s. Not. Enough. Side
note: her name is Beth Ford, pretty good last name. Being a CEO is a crucial role where
representation matters. So, I found us a queer, immigrant, female CEO. Today’s guest is Emma
McIlroy we’re going to talk about running track, being Irish, and kicking down the door.

00:00:59 - INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
My name is Emma McIlroy, I’m the CEO of Wildfang, I use she/her pronouns. And you can call
me Ems.

00:01:06 - HOST: Ellen Ford
And we’re having a beer.

9
(Sofia Lotto Persio, 2019)
10
(Sofia Lotto Persio, 2019)
11
(Sofia Lotto Persio, 2019)

32
00:01:08 - INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
Cheers! Sláinte!

ELLEN FORD: What was that?

EMMA MCILROY: Cheers in Irish.

00:01 :11 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Okay so she’s more Irish than I am. Actually she was born and raised in Ireland, so you’ll hear
her accent. She got a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Cambridge, in England
12
. But her
real education came from track & field.

00:01:23 - INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
ELLEN FORD: You were an 800m runner.

EMMA MCILROY: Retired.

ELLEN FORD: Retired! My dad would say that’s the hardest race in track.

EMMA MCILROY: Your dad’s right. What’s your dad called?

ELLEN FORD: My dad’s name is Jeff.

12
(O'Connor, 2015)
33

EMMA MCILROY: Jeff is right. Well done Jeff.

00:01:35 - INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy.
I ran middle distance so when you run middle distance the way the session is built is to kind of
mess with your energy systems and destroy you internally. And destroy your physiology. But
also mentally no one really likes hard things but, you know really really hard things, definitely
no one likes those. It just kind of destroyed you emotionally, mentally, and physiologically.

00:02:02 - HOST: Ellen Ford
I used to be a sprinter, I ran the 400m, the 100m, the 300m hurdles, the 100m hurdles, the 100m
relay, and the 400m relay. I also played softball, of course, and basketball. But nothing destroyed
me more: emotionally, mentally, and physiologically, than all those times I was forced to pick
out a dress, or wear a bikini. I hate that word.

00:02:27 - INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
I’m really proud of who sport made me. I think sport, I mean some of it’s cliché but sport taught
me how to lose, a lot. I’ve lost a lot. I’ve definitely lost more than I’ve won. It taught me how to
work really, really hard. And how to work really hard through shit things. And work really hard
through painful unpleasant things to get to something that’s ultimately pretty good. I probably
built a lot of resilience, a lot of confidence, a lot of strength, bravery you know? To be like oof
this is awful but I’m going to do it anyway. And I think those things come through in my
clothing probably and in my self-expression. Happy to take risks, happy to do what feels right for
34
me and to be confident in what feels right for me, irrespective of what anyone else thinks of it.
And that’s always how I’ve always approached fashion, I’m much more focused on what I want
to look like and how I want to show up in the world rather than what anyone else thinks of me.
And I think I probably gained that thick skin or that confidence in track and field to be honest.

00:03:30 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Emma will eventually apply all of the toughness learned from sport and apply it to business to
get Wildfang off the ground. Wildfang was born from Emma’s keen fashion spirit, her
experience from working in brand management at Nike running and Nike football, but it was
almost derailed after a trip home to Ireland.

00:03:47 - INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
I went home to see my parents to tell them about this great plan that I had to quit my job. And
you know Northern Ireland is not the most progressive place. And they were like you are crazy
why would you quit your job that’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever thought about doing. You just
need to keep your head down and stay there. My confidence took a big knock and I phoned my
best friend when I was in Northern Ireland and was like, I don’t think I can do this thing with
you I think you’re going to have to do it on your own. She was like, no worries no worries just
get back here. The second I got off the plane and she picked me up at Portland I said, yeah of
course I’m going to do this. But there was just something about being home and being in that
atmosphere that shredded my confidence and filled me with doubt and I was like I probably
shouldn’t do it. It was super hard I come from a really working class background. And when
you’re making benefits, and PTO, and free sneaks, and great pay, it’s a pretty scary thing to quit
35
that. I’ll never forget having the resignation letter in my hands and I couldn’t even hand it over
because I was sobbing so hard. I was sniffling like hyperventilating that sniffling thing. The
second it left my hands, I felt amazing. I was like I’m done, I’m a CEO now I’m done.

00:05:01 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Emma McIlroy quit her job at Nike, cashed out her 401k, and put everything she had into
Wildfang.

00:5:08 - INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
I was so bored of fashion brands being super exclusive. And if you weren't cool enough you
didn’t make it in. And that never worked for me because I was never that cool. So I don’t buy
that. I think your ability to self-express should be agnostic of your age, your body size, your
sexuality, your ethnicity. Each person should be able to walk out the door in the morning feeling
like a fucking badass.

00:05:34 - HOST: Ellen Ford
So what does Wildfang make? They’re known for the infamous “Wild Feminist” t-shirt, and they
also have a specific style of printed, short-sleeve button ups. But my favorite piece of clothing
was designed as a response to First Lady Melania Trump. Remember in 2018 when she was on
her way to immigration shelters in Texas and she wore an olive green hacket that read, “I really
don’t are. Do u?”
13
Wildfang responded with it’s version of the jacket that read, “I really do care,
Don’t u?” Then, the company donated 100% of proceeds, totaling $250,000 dollars to an

13
(Rogers, 2018)

36
organization that provides legal services to immigrants and refugees
14
. That’s what Wildfang
makes. They make badass clothes that are meant to be a movement.

00:06:24 - INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
I want to see us make more and more of a social impact. And a social justice impact. I mean we
gave away half a million dollars to charity last year. For a business that still loses money, that’s
fucking bonkers.

ELLEN FORD: It’s bonkers. It’s hard to even imagine.

EMMA MCILROY: Yeah but it’s cool. It’s very cool. Even if Wildfang goes under tomorrow
and I fail as a CEO, I know we did something good. You know when people say is Wildfang a
queer brand? I’m like yeah, and it’s a black brand, it’s an immigrant brand, and it’s a trans
brand, it’s a women’s brand. It’s fucking all those things it’s all those things that everybody got
left out on. The most important thing to me is wherever our consumers identify on the gender
spectrum on the sexuality spectrum on the political spectrum, they show up for each other.
That’s all that fucking matters.

00:07:05 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Emma is an expert at creating communities. She did that with Wildfang in a couple ways: first
and foremost, through it’s clothes and messaging.

14
(Hardy, 2018)
37
00:07:12 - INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
It’s so funny you know, when you tell people, when you make people feel shitty about
themselves, their potential just falls off a cliff. When you allow people to feel great about
themselves and it’s shallow but fashion is a part of that. When you walk out the door everyday
and feel a.) Like yourself and b.) Like you’re awesome, you get your next date. You get your
next job interview, you get your next mortgage, you have your next great idea. Things just open
up. We used to talk about ourselves as the cool big sister and the idea was basically that someone
had your back. And we wanted our community to behave that way. We wanted our community
to stand up for each other, to call others out. To provide both a place where you felt braver but
also safe. It was both.

00:07:56 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Secondly, Wildfang speaks to it’s community directly by using a really giant, bright white
marquee at each of its stores in Portland Oregon, New York, and LA. Some of my favorite signs
read, she came, she saw, she fucking voted. Or, more feminism, less bullshit, and, I believe
Christine Blasey Ford and I still believe Anita Hill. Or, I’m a Miranda and I’m voting for
Cynthia.

00:08:21 - INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
Yeah we started doing it in our Portland store and people would tell us, you didn’t change your
sign today why didn’t you change your sign? And we were like oh wow people want to hear
what we’ve got to say and the other thing that became clear was that it was a way we could have
an opinion. You know it’s really hard in a store that’s filled with clothes, or a website that’s
38
filled with clothes, it’s hard to say, you know what? It’s really shitty that you put kids in cages.
Or it’s really shitty that a young black man just got shot for absolutely no reason by the police. It
got really hard to figure out how we could share the messages that had absolutely nothing to do
with what size denim you wear.

00:09:05 - HOST: Ellen Ford
And thirdly, they built a community by hosting election night parties at their stores. I asked Ems
tell me about the night at Wildfang after the 2016 presidential election.

00:09:15 - INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
The night it happened we had 600 people at Wildfang we had a party and it was fucking rad
party until obviously the results came in.

00:09:20 – MUSIC: “In the Hall of the Mountain King” 4
th
Movement Edvard Grieg

00:09:23 – CLIP: “47 state calls from election night in 1 minute” CNN Reporter Wolf Blitzer
Donald Trump we project will win in Kentucky. Nebraska and Wyoming. North Dakota and
South Dakota.
15

00:09:31 – INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
And then it turned into literally the saddest party I’ve ever been at.

15
(YouTube, 2016)

39
00:09:34 – CLIP: “47 state calls from election night in 1 minute” CNN Reporter Wolf Blitzer
Louisiana. Montana. Kansas. Indiana. West Virginia. Oklahoma. Tennessee. Mississippi. South
Carolina. Alabama. Missouri. Ohio. Florida. Idaho. Georgia. Utah. Wisconsin. Arizona. An
astounding upset victory.
16

00:09:45 – INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
And I stood up and gave a very heartfelt speech and what happened next was wild. 50% of the
people left immediately they we’re like fuck this I’m out of here. And then 50% of the people
didn’t leave, and then just, didn’t leave. They we’re there ‘til like 2am. They we’re basically like
I don’t want to be anywhere else. This is like the worst thing that’s ever happened and I would
rather be at Wildfang that anywhere else. And it was like oh that’s cool, that’s really cool.

00:10:05 – HOST: Ellen Ford
After the election, Emma pulled her team together, went around the room and asked everyone
what they were afraid of. People who had just gotten engaged we’re worried their right to get
married would be stripped away, or that they wouldn’t be able to travel home safely to other
countries.

00:10:20 – INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy
I wasn’t sure if we had a future at that point, based on the fear of my team of the future and
investor reaction. And then what happen was, we decided to not market for the next three days.
No one could face. I didn’t know how to market to someone and be like get 10% off your next

16
(YouTube, 2016)

40
order after what just happened it was like fuck that, yeah it was like fuck that go have a beer and
cry somewhere. So I just wrote a letter and sent it out to our fans. And just kind of said, were in
the same place you are, we’re super shocked and super sad. And if you need us you know how to
get us. We actually doubled our customer service in case anyone wanted to talk to us. And so the
next three days were the biggest three sales day of our year. It was completely bonkers. We were
all like what the fuck what are people buying? And it was like Wild Feminist, Wild Feminist,
Wild Feminist. Everything that went out the door was wild feminist.

00:11:07 – HOST: Ellen Ford
And just like that, Emma’s faith was restored. She knew that Wildfang needed to exist and the
community she built proved that it is not going away quietly.

00:11:15 – INTERVIEW: Emma McIlroy.
When you get in that room, you better kick it down for every queer, Irish, fucking immigrant,
and woman that comes behind you. Because that’s the only way they’re ever going to get
through that door. And it really helped me frame it up from like a, oh poor me, no one looks like
me, or no one sounds like me, or I don’t come from money. Or whatever. To more like ok, I’m
really fucking lucky I get to be in a room with these guys with a lot of money and I need to take
it off them. I need to take it off them because every queer kid that comes behind me and tries to
start a company. Or every woman, female-identified, or immigrant, or Irish person that comes
behind me. They need to be able to look at me and say, well she did it.

41
00:11:34 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Wildfang is a perfect example of queer fashion because it’s about putting up a fight for what you
want to wear, and it’s bigger than what you want to wear. It’s about freedom and self-expression,
it’s about social justice and equality, it’s about having role models and representation in power
so that everyone has a cool big sister who has your back. Next episode we talk about intersecting
identities so stay tuned.

00:11:54 – MUSIC: “Eye of The Tiger” Survivor.

00:12:00 - HOST: Credits
Thank you so much for listening and subscribing to Outfit. This podcast was written, produced,
and hosted by me, Ellen Ford. Guidance and mentorship was provided by Willa Seidenberg,
Laura Castaneda, Tina Haatainen-Jones and Sasha Anawalt. Technical support was provided by
\Victor Figueroa and Sebastian Grubaugh. Original artwork was by Cherilyn Jack Juris. This
podcast was produced at University of Southern California Annenberg School for
Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles, California.

42
Episode Four: Jasika Nicole

00:00:00 - MUSIC: “Sky High” Donald Byrd.

00:00:04 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Welcome to Outfit, a queer fashion podcast about the LGBTQ community and our clothing, I’ve
been saying queer fashion a lot and I realized that my image of queer fashion is probably not the
same as other people’s image. Unless you’re steeped in queer culture, what probably comes to
mind is like, a gay white guy. So I asked a whole bunch of USC students, what comes to mind
when I say queer fashion?

00:00:37 - VOX POP: ANONYMOUS STUDENT 1
Boas.

00:00:38 - VOX POP: ANONYMOUS STUDENT 2
Sequins.

00:00:40 - VOX POP: ANONYMOUS STUDENT 3
Stylish, high end?

00:00:42 - VOX POP: ANONYMOUS STUDENT 4
Stylish.

43
00:00:43 - VOX POP: ANONYMOUS STUDENT 5
I thought of like John from Queer Eye.

00:00:46 - VOX POP: ANONYMOUS STUDENT 6
Rainbows.

00:00:47 - VOX POP: ANONYMOUS STUDENT 7
Rupaul’s Drag Race.

00:00:49 - VOX POP: ANONYMOUS STUDENT 8
Gay? (Laughter).

00:00:50 – VOX POP: Ellen Ford
Gay?

00:00:52 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Mmk, well there’s a whole lot of people whose identities aren’t just rainbow and boas. And
whose perspectives are excluded from the media landscape of queer fashion and fashion in
general. Well not on my plastic Casio watch.

00:01:01 - MUSIC: “Sky High” Donald Byrd

44
00:01:08 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Today we explore the intersection of queer fashion with other identities like race, class, and body
type, with my guest Jasika Nicole.

00:01:18 - INTERVIEW: Jasika Nicole
I am a queer woman of color live in LA now I am an actor and a maker.

00:01:27 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Jasika is an actress on Fringe, Scandal, the Good Doctor. You might recognize her voice from
the Nightvale podcast or Alice Isn’t Dead. But I am most enamored with her skills as a maker.

00:01:40 - INTERVIEW: Jasika Nicole
I learned how to knit from a book, I learned how to make furniture with wood from a book, I
learned how to upholster from a book. I learned how to do a lot of things on my own.

00:01:52 - HOST: Ellen Ford
I describe her as America’s Crafting Sweetheart. Here’s what I mean when I say she’s a maker.

00:01:58 - INTERVIEW: Jasika Nicole
I would say I make 100% of my clothes and I make maybe 25% of my shoes.

00:02:07 - HOST: Ellen Ford
45
So Jasika is extremely talented, she makes her own clothes. She makes her own everything really
and she’s an advocate for queer people of color being visible in the crafting world. Which is so
white.

00:02:20 - INTERVIEW: Jasika Nicole
ELLEN FORD: I wanted to have you on to talk about your relationship to clothes as an actress,
as a sewist, as a queer person, as a person of color.

JASIKA NICOLE: So many intersecting identities

ELLEN FORD: So many intersecting things. So your Instagram bio.

JASIKA NICOLE: What does it say?

ELLEN FORD: It says, my crafting, like my feminism, is intersectional.

JASIKA NICOLE: Is intersectional!

ELLEN FORD: Please elaborate on that.

JASIKA NICOLE: I think that the crafting world it has a lot of great things about it but it has a
lot of problems. And one of those problems is a lack of visibility of POC and queer people in the
community. It’s not that we aren’t there but I don’t think that we get upheld in the same ways.
46
Because the face of. The face of knitting. The face of sewing. The face of woodworking. They
all have very specific looks. And none of them are mine. There are lots of conversations about
making and sustainability and upcycling and recycling and the truth is that poor people have
been doing that have been salvaging old clothes with holes in them and fixing them up, and have
been buying second-hand and making it work for themselves and their families. Poor people
don’t get pats on the back for surviving.

00:03:39 - HOST: Ellen Ford
A really good point that Jasika makes is that when the conversation about fixing the problems
with fashion and crafting insist on investing in pieces that are all organic fabrics, and textiles,
and sustainability, and made in the USA that price point excludes a whole lot of people.

00:03:58 - INTERVIEW: Jasika Nicole
JASIKA NICOLE: When I was growing up, I grew up pretty poor, we couldn't invest in a $40
dollar t-shirt, and be like we’re going to treat this t-shirt really, really well and it’s going to serve
you. No, we went to K-Mart because our money would go the furthest at K-Mart.

ELLEN FORD: Can you tell me what getting dressed was like for you, when you were little?

JASIKA NICOLE: Oh my gosh. Okay. When I was little, there was a very specific point when I
was first allowed to pick out my own clothes.

ELLEN FORD: How old were you?
47

JASIKA NICOLE. I’m going to say it was like 3rd or 4th grade. My mom picked out all my
clothes for me prior to that. And she. You need to know a little about my mom. We’re in
Birmingham, okay? My mom is white and she has got brown kids or at that point it was just me.
And she was a hairdresser. She had, she called it a tail. And you couldn’t describe it as a rat tail,
she would cuss you out. It’s not a rat tail, rat tails are skinny and wimpy. Hers was thick. She
basically had a mullet. Like a very well done, beautiful mullet.

ELLEN FORD: Like a luscious mullet.

JASIKA NICOLE: Her hair at the top was like wavy, and bouffant and it was big and then
starting right behind her ears is where the tail began. And it went halfway down her back. And
she would get stopped on the street from people going “Ooh girl, your hair looks so good.”

ELLEN FORD: They loved it, what year was this?

JASIKA NICOLE: They loved it. This was, I was born in ‘80. So we’re talking like ‘85, ‘86, ‘87.
She had that tail into the ‘90’s, every shade that you can think of.

00:05:46 INTERVIEW: Jasika Nicole
JASIKA NICOLE: All I ever wanted to do was fit in. And all my mom wanted me to do was
look like a model in some kids’ magazine. She had me in these knee socks with funky colors and
48
like, looking back I’m like that, was kind of a cute outfit. But that the time I certainly didn’t
appreciate it.

ELLEN FORD: Horrifying. At the time it’s devastating.

JASIKA NICOLE: It’s awful. So when she finally started to let me choose my own clothes I
mean I was just as Gap’d out as you could be. And I couldn’t even afford Gap so I would like
take my cousins hand me downs. They had huge pit stains in the arms and you know coffee and
tea stains all over them and I would just bleach the crap out of it. And I was like no I need this
Gap shirt because these name brands that everybody around me was wearing I felt like if I wore
those then people wouldn’t care that I was a person of color because I went to a mostly white
school. They wouldn’t care that I was poor. Meanwhile there’s like holes in the shirt. It’s so clear
that I’m poor. And Keds used to be really popular but we couldn’t afford Keds, so we would get
the $5 dollar pair of shoes at the K-Mart and then I would save the blue sticker from my old
Keds and they’re like totally worn out but I would glue them on the back so I would have these
bright shining white cheap shoes with these falling apart rubber Keds sign on the back of it. It
was pitiful. It was real pitiful.

ELLEN FORD: It’s heartbreaking to hear the lengths people go through to try to fit in.

00:07:19 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Eventually, Jasika will save up enough money from working at Express, and the Limited, to
move to New York City and try to make it as an actress. Spoiler alert, she’s obviously made it.
49
And New York City is going to be crucial in her exploration of all the different aspects of her
identity.

00:07:32 - INTERVIEW: Jasika Nicole
JASIKA NICOLE: So, I used to work at the Express in Birmingham I had like 15 jobs as I tried
to save money to move to New York. I had all these Express clothes and clothes from the
Limited and the Gap that I had bought with my money. I moved up to New York with them and I
was like, “I have got a great wardrobe.” I’m so excited. And after a few days there I was like,
“Oh gosh, this is weird I feel so normal.” It was the first time I didn’t want to feel normal
anymore. But it took getting out of Birmingham I think a lot of times it takes getting out of the
box that you feel like you’ve spent so much time in. And once I move to New York. I was like
oh I can wear anything I want. And before I ever came out or really had any serious conversation
with myself about my sexual identity. I definitely had a period of time where I was dressing
like... I’m pretty femme, but there was a period of time where my hair was cut short and I would
wear these newsboy caps all the time and these shirts with a button down collared shirt
underneath it. And baggy pants.

ELLEN FORD: That’s so funny for me to hear because it’s so different than the Jasika that I
know.

JASIKA NICOLE: And now I can look back and realize, “Oh, I think I might have been dressing
like the person I wanted to date?”

50
00:09:03 HOST: Ellen Ford
Oh boy, this is such a thing in the LGBTQ community where it can be complicated to explore all
the facets of your personal identity and distinguish those from your interpersonal preferences.
But don’t worry Jasika gets it all straightened out.

00:09:20 - SFX: Drums/cymbals

00:09:21 HOST: Ellen Ford
Her acting career is going to take off, and when it does, learns about the what I call the One-and-
Done rule when it comes to celebrity fashion.

00:09:29 INTERVIEW: Jasika Nicole
JASIKA NICOLE: I remember when I first had my publicist, they said specifically, you don’t
wear the same thing.

ELLEN FORD: Oh on a red carpet. You can’t be seen twice.

JASIKA NICOLE: Yeah you can’t be photographed in the same thing twice. So when I first got
started I was like, “Oh, okay?” So I remember going out, it was like going to prom all the time.
Like going to find the perfect outfit two days before the event and stressing out that it didn’t fit
well. And the shoes. And the accessories. And the jewelry. And all this stuff. And I was like this
is such a racket. It wasn’t fun and I had always enjoyed shopping. And I think a lot of people
don’t realize there are human hands behind the clothing that is made for them.
51

ELLEN FORD: Yes.

JASIKA NICOLE: And I remember I was living in Vancouver and I was working on a show and
this was years ago. And the Rana Plaza tragedy was all over the news. And that was the very first
time that I really started thinking about, who’s making my clothes.

00:10:32 - HOST: Ellen Ford
In 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, collapsed. It was eight stories high, and 1,134
people lost their lives. It was mostly a garment factory, but also a bank and apartment buildings.
It was the deadliest structural failure in modern human history. It made clothes for brands like,
Walmart.
17

00:10:55 - INTERVIEW: Jasika Nicole
I started getting into the idea that it might be cool to not have to rely on ready-to-wear. Again, all
these things kind of happened in the same period of time and I was like I wonder if I can make
clothes for myself that fit me well, that didn’t look homemade, that fit my body, and fit my
tastes. I wonder if that is something I’m capable of doing, so that’s where it started.

00:11:23 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Jasika’s been making her own clothes for about six years now, and it started as just her own
personal wardrobe items, but then as an actress going to auditions she found that she could really

17
(En.wikipedia.org, n.d.)
52
enhance the character by making specific outfits, or as she calls them “auditions lewks.” Which
again, helps her not shop for something that she might only wear once.

00:11:45 - INTERVIEW: Jasika Nicole
ELLEN FORD: What’s going through your head when you’re getting ready for an audition?

JASIKA NICOLE: Okay so you do want to try and present yourself in a way where the people
who are auditioning you can easily see how you would fit into that role. So I wouldn’t go in for
the role of a doctor wearing like a big flowery dress or something like that. I would want to wear
something understated so they were really just focused on my face. But if I go in for you know
like a hot-to-trot lawyer, or something like that she’s real sassy and she makes a lot of money
and she’s been representing clients all over the tri-state area. Then I’ll show up in a cute wool
pencil skirt and some heels. Auditions are stressful because you’re going into a room of people
and being judged, that is what it is down to the brass tacks, but I noticed that when I would wear
things that I had made, my confidence just started out at a higher level. Because I was like, no
matter how this audition goes, I fucking made the dress that I’m wearing and I look great, and
you can’t ever take that away from me. And it also is a reminder that I am more valuable than
just how I look. So all of that being said I started doing the ‘audition lewks’ series because I
thought it was really fun to go through my closet and put these outfits together to create a
character that is not me!

53
00:13:07 - HOST: Ellen Ford
So, case-in-point that the clothes you wear have a big impact on the way people perceive you,
and a big impact on self-confidence. Our community doesn’t have just one way to dress gay and
queer fashion doesn’t necessarily mean drag shows or Queer Eye on Netflix. If you’re the least
bit interested in learning how to sew or alter your own clothes, follow Jasika on Instagram
@jasikatrycurious J-A-S-I-K-A-T-R-Y-C-U-R-I-O-U-S she is wealth of knowledge and super
generous in helping people learn for themselves. She’s a real teach-a-man-how-to-fish kind of
gal.

00:13:44 - MUSIC: “Sky High” Donald Byrd

00:13:47 - HOST: Credits
Thank you so much for listening and subscribing to Outfit. This podcast was written, produced,
and hosted by me, Ellen Ford. Guidance and mentorship was provided by Willa Seidenberg,
Laura Castaneda, Tina Haatainen-Jones and Sasha Anawalt. Technical support was provided by
\Victor Figueroa and Sebastian Grubaugh. Original artwork was by Cherilyn Jack Juris. This
podcast was produced at University of Southern California Annenberg School for
Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles, California.

54
Episode Five: “My Gender is Indigenous”

00:00:00 - MUSIC: “Pynk” Janelle Monáe

00:00:19 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Welcome to Outfit, a queer fashion podcast about the relationship between the LGBTQ
community, and our clothing. I’m your host, Ellen Ford. Today we explore Native American
gender identity. There are lots of indigenous tribes who recognize up to five different genders.
Those gender identities are free to be performed through dress, social roles, and language within
their unique tribal culture. Often times these people are highly esteemed in their communities.
This is a culture of gender identity that is in stark contrast to how contemporary American
gender identity has been constructed.

00:00:55 - INTERVIEW: Ryan Young
My name is Ryan Young, I use they/them pronouns, I’m from the Lac du Flambeau Reservation
in Northern Wisconsin.

00:01:04 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Ryan is “Two Spirit” which is a gender identity that honors both the feminine and masculine
spirits in one person.
18

18
(Brayboy, 2017)
55
00:01:10 – INTERVIEW: Ryan Young
I’m very empowered when I use the word Two Spirit just because growing up I thought that
these identities were separate. Being queer was one thing and being native was another thing but
Two Spirit really rebuilds that relationship. You know because I’m never just queer in a space or
just native in a space. I’m always these things all the time.

00:01:33 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Two Spirit comes from the Ojibwa language, which is Ryan’s tribe. Not all tribes use exactly this
term, for example the Navajo people use the term nadleeh
19
which means individuals who have
the characteristics of the opposite sex, and the Lakota use the term winkte
20
which loosely
translates to a “male-bodied person who adopts the clothing, work and mannerisms that Lakota
culture considers feminine.”
21
These terms are specifics to these tribes and shouldn’t be taken up
by people without a tribe.

00:02:03 - INTERVIEW: Ryan Young
It’s translated from and Ojibwa word, “niizh manidoowag” which means Two Spirits. Because
Two Spirit is a gender identity but it’s rooted in culture and it kinds of informed the way that you
are going to contribute to the community.

19
(Trans Bodies Across The Globe, 2010)
20
(Web.archive.org, 2002)

56
00:02:18 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Two Spirits contribute in some of the most important ways. They are Medicine Men and
Women, they are Shamans, they are artists and healers.
22
All this natural ability, and compassion
and intellect is thought to become highly developed during a life of self-questioning.
23
Their
spiritual gifts are celebrated, but even though there is a historical recognition, it wasn’t
automatically accepted. One of the first things that European settlers tried to stamp out, was the
Two Spirit tradition.
24

00:02:48 INTERVIEW: Ryan Young
RYAN YOUNG: I will get a lot of questions on my hair because I started to grow my hair out so
that is probably my biggest feminine feature. It’s interesting because I like that it look feminine
but it’s also a cultural thing to have your hair long.

ELLEN FORD: Oh really?

RYAN YOUNG: Your hair is your spirit so you're supposed to take care of it and when the
residential schools were happening during colonization a lot of native children were getting their
haircut to make them conform to western ideas of how boys and girls should represent
themselves.

22
(Pember, 2016)
23
(Brayboy, 2017)
24
(Brayboy, 2017)
57
00:03:24 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Even within their own family, Ryan’s little sister has a hard time conceptualizing more than two
genders.

00:03:29 - INTERVIEW: Ryan Young
My little sister she would always ask me, are you a boy or a girl. As a kid that was something she
was always asking. And so I would be like I’m both or neither or just would flip around the
answer all the time. But then even as she got older she was like well you have to pick one
because that’s the stuff that people are getting taught in school. I was like well no you can do
whatever you want, even in the pictures where I do wear makeup she’s like, well you can’t do
that, and it’s like, I just did. (Laughter).

00:04:07 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Ryan was born in Japan, their parents met while stationed there in the Navy. Then Ryan lived on
their reservation, Lac du Flambeau, for several years. Their mother is native, and their father is
non-native. Ryan told me about the time their grandmother first noticed that they were Two
Spirit.

00:04:23 - INTERVIEW: Ryan Young
My grandma was always really respectful about it and like her and quite a few other folks like
when my mom talked to people and let them know they were like well we knew, you could tell
by their energy and stuff. My grandma would talk about how there were things I would do as a
little kid that just kind of showed her that... she knew there was something different about me. So
58
it was funny I remember my grandpa had a little bit of an issue with it, and she was like, well
either you’re going to treat Ryan the way we’ve always been treating him or I’m not going to
cook your food anymore. So then he got on the page pretty quickly.

ELLEN FORD: Can you remember any of those things when you were little that maybe your
family recognized that stood out?

RYAN YOUNG: My cousin had told me this story where her mom always wore lipstick. There’s
not a lot of people that really wear make-up in my family. But her mom would wear lipstick and
when I was a little kid and she would come and kiss me I loved the lipstick on my lips. The
color. So just was always to do things like that. I think I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and I went in
drag for Halloween and my mom helped me do my eyebrows and put my costume together. So
we went to Goodwill and she picked out some fabrics and she actually sewed my outfit together.

ELLEN FORD: Your mom sewed your dress together. I love that.

RYAN YOUNG: So there’s pictures of me with her doing my make-up and it was a really cool
experience, I was nervous about wearing it but secretly I really wanted to.

00:06:09 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Ryan is a visual artist, they will earn a BFA in Photography and Printmaking this year. A
hallmark of their work is using contemporary phrases on top of photos. Ryan’s latest project is a
59
screen printed t-shirt with a black and white portrait of Christopher Columbus, and across his
eyes a banner of text reads, trust no bitch.

00:06:29 - INTERVIEW: Ryan Young
I did one piece where my friend Orion has this text projected on him, and it says, my gender is
indigenous, and so just you know, creating statements that always bring in both, or the different
ways I identify, bringing that together.

00:06:45 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Ryan’s identity is definitely expressed confidently in their art. But even once you know who you
are, it can still be challenging to have your clothes reflect that. Especially when gender neutral
clothing isn’t really readily available yet.

00:06:58 - INTERVIEW: Ryan Young
My relationship with it up until coming out was very intense so I didn’t really get more
expressive until after coming out. I definitely jumped to my feminine side quickly. I started to
wear makeup and kind of just looking for more clothes that are neutral I guess. My own
comfortability is—I don’t like to wear dress up clothes because they’re very gendered.

00:07:29 - INTERVIEW: Ryan Young
ELLEN FORD: You know, I have to be honest, when I was researching is, I thought wow what a
reprieve from American modern society today which is so rampant in homophobia and
transphobia that these indigenous cultures are so accepting to different gender identities. But
60
really, there’s still so much fear in coming out. It’s not this comfort and safeness it’s still such a
journey and challenge.

RYAN YOUNG: I think a lot of my experiences or exploration of my expressions and stuff was
always behind a locked door. The use of homophobic slurs as everyday conversation was
basically what my high school was. I was a very quiet introverted person that just wanted to keep
my head down and get out. I think there were a lot of ways that I was trying to make sure that I
was dressing the right way. Because I had a higher voice too. I could literally say one word to
someone and they would say oh you’re gay. So people would joke about my voice being girly,
and I miss that. I miss that voice. (Laughter).

ELLEN FORD: So you didn’t want your clothes to read any certain specific way because you
felt like your voice is already doing something and this and that and you’re just trying to blend
in.

00:09:00 - HOST: Ellen Ford
Ryan and I both get asked a lot of we’re a boy or a girl. And unfortunately, it my experience, it
means the person you’re interacting with is trying to determine how to treat you. You don’t need
to know someone’s biological sex to treat them with dignity and respect. I think it’s pretty
awesome that in indigenous culture, gender was not the most important piece of information
being exchanged through clothing. And that people’s gifts were celebrated and individuals were
free to contribute in the way that felt most authentic. My personal gender identity is best
described as, I don’t know, a golden retriever.
61
00:09:35 - MUSIC: “Pynk” Janelle Monae

00:09:37 – HOST CREDITS: Ellen Ford
Thank you so much for listening and subscribing to Outfit. This podcast was written, produced,
and hosted by me, Ellen Ford. Guidance and mentorship was provided by Willa Seidenberg,
Laura Castañeda, Tina Haatainen-Jones and Sasha Anawalt. Technical support was provided by
\Victor Figueroa and Sebastian Grubaugh. Original artwork was by Cherilyn Jack Juris. This
podcast was produced at University of Southern California Annenberg School for
Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles, California.

62
Summary
Thesis audio: https://soundcloud.com/user-476848509/albums

Queer fashion, as discovered by the research within this podcast, is simply the risk taken
to reject the social norms of dress, and self-express in the most authentic way. Clothing, visually,
has almost no importance; the choice to be visibly different in a world that demands conformity,
is queer fashion.

Throughout the reporting, I found that most often it is not sexual orientation that plays
into clothing choices, but gender identity. Gender identity is a personal trait, while sexual
orientation is an interpersonal preference. The use of clothing as signals for sexual partnerships
within the LGBTQ community exists, but my reporting focused on how clothing is used as a tool
for exploration and discovery of one’s own personal identity. Gender is more often conveyed
with clothes, than sexual preferences.

It was of extreme importance for me to include a wide range of perspectives that included
people of all ages, gender identities, body types, sexual orientations, races, classes, cultural
heritages, and places. The podcast format allowed for personal conversations with each
interviewee and it was of absolute importance for their own voices and tones to be captured,
which conveys the experience of a queer person trying to dress themselves, the experience of
hearing the voice, without the distraction of the images allows listeners to get inside the stories
of these people. My own understanding and journey with clothing allowed for a connectedness to
63
my interviewees and an understanding between us, which made an environment safe for their
stories to be told.

This project was born from a need to gather my own thoughts on queer fashion, and a
desire to understand the history of the LGBTQ community and dress. These stories are the tiniest
tip of the iceberg of a brave history and bright future for people who use clothing to express
themselves truthfully.
64
Bibliography – Interviews

Interview with Chrisman-Campbell, Dr. Kimberly on January 14, 2019.
Ambient recording at The Phluid Project on January 21, 2019.
Interview with Fleury, Claire on January 21, 2019.
Interview with Keenan, Kristina on January 21, 2019.
Interview with Smith, Robert Garrett on January 21, 2019.
Interview with McIlory, Emma on February 4, 2019.
Interview with Arrow, Florence on February 5, 2019
Historical Reenactment with Johnson, Jackie on February 9, 2019.
Interview with Booth, Hillary on February 12, 2019.
Interview with Nicole, Jasika on February 25, 2019.
Interview with Young, Ryan on March 11, 2019.

65
Bibliography – Text
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTPgaPD1LI4. [Accessed 25 Mar. 2019].

Brayboy, D. (2017). Two Spirits, One Heart, Five Genders - IndianCountryToday.com. [online]
IndianCountryToday.com. Available at: https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/two-
spirits-one-heart-five-genders-9UH_xnbfVEWQHWkjNn0rQQ/. [Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].

Drover, Mallory. (2017). "Fashion Crimes: The Rabbit Hole of Criminalized Cross-Dressing in
US History: Mallory Drover ’19 at Boston MFA – Antioch Co-op," last modified November 9,
2016, https://co-op.antiochcollege.edu/fashion-crimes-the-rabbit-hole-of-criminalized-cross-
dressing-in-us-history/.

Eileen Boris. "Fashion Works." Feminist Studies 43, no. 1 (2017), 169.
doi:10.15767/feministstudies.43.1.0169.

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton As Revealed in Her Letters, Diary and Reminiscences: Stanton,
Elizabeth Cady, 1815-1902: Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming: Internet Archive." Internet
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En.wikisource.org. (2019). D'Éon de Beaumont, Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André
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En.wikipedia.org. (n.d.). 2013 Savar building collapse. [online] Available at:
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Hardy, A. (2018). The Brand That Fixed Melania Trump’s Tone-Deaf Jacket Already Raised
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"Interactive Map: Gender-Diverse Cultures." Independent Lens. Accessed March 22, 2019.
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Kesselamn, A. (1991). THE “FREEDOM SUIT”. Gender & Society, 5(4), pp.495-510.

Komar, Marlen. "The Evolution Of Androgynous Fashion." Bustle. Last modified March 30,
2016. https://www.bustle.com/articles/149928-the-evolution-of-androgynous-fashion-
throughout-the-20th-century-photos.

Medicine, B. (2002). DIRECTIONS IN GENDER RESEARCH IN AMERICAN INDIAN
SOCIETIES: TWO SPIRITS AND OTHER CATEGORIES. [online] Available at:
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[Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].

Medicine, B. (n.d.). [online] Fashion-history.lovetoknow.com. Available at: https://fashion-
history.lovetoknow.com/clothing-around-world/north-america-history-indigenous-peoples-dress.
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[Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].

Newspapers.com. (1882). Clipping from St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Newspapers.com. [online]
Available at: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/9054879/st_louis_postdispatch/. [Accessed 23
Mar. 2019].

Nytimes.com. (2018). Breaking the Binary. [online] Available at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/style/phluid-project-nonbinary-fashion.html.

O'Connor, R. (2015). Emma McIlroy: ‘I remember holding the letter of resignation in floods of
tears’. [online] The Irish Times. Available at: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/emma-
mcilroy-i-remember-holding-the-letter-of-resignation-in-floods-of-tears. [Accessed 23 Mar.
2019].

Out.com. (2016). Less Than 50% of Teens Identify as Straight, Says New Study. [online]
Available at: https://www.out.com/news-opinion/2016/3/11/less-50-teens-identify-straight-says-
new-study. [Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].

Rogers, K. (2018). Melania Trump Wore a Jacket Saying ‘I Really Don’t Care’ on Her Way to
Texas Shelters. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/us/politics/melania-trump-jacket.html. [Accessed 23 Mar.
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Sofia Lotto Persio, P. (2019). An openly gay woman is now leading a Fortune 500 company for
the first time. [online] PinkNews. Available at: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/07/30/fortune-
500-beth-ford-first-lesbian-ceo/. [Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].

Strassel, Annemarie. "Designing Women: Feminist Methodologies in American
Fashion." Women's Studies Quarterly 41, no. 1/2 (2012): 35-59.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/23611770.

Trans Bodies Across The Globe. (2010). Navajo Cultural Constructions of Gender and
Sexuality. [online] Available at: https://transgenderglobe.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/navajo-
cultural-constructions-of-gender-and-sexuality/. [Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].

"'Two Spirit? Tradition Far From Ubiquitous Among Tribes." Rewire.News. Last modified
October 13, 2016. https://rewire.news/article/2016/10/13/two-spirit-tradition-far-ubiquitous-
among-tribes/.

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Filmography
Star Wars: The Last Jedi. (2017). [DVD].

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Beethoven, L van. (1808). Symphony No. 5 in C Minor. [Symphony].

Byrd, D. (1973) Sky High. [Vinyl].

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Mountain King.

Monae, J. (2018). Pynk. [mp3].

Rossini, G. (1892). William Tell Overture. [Opera].

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Asset Metadata

Creator Ford, Ellen Rose (author)

Core Title Outfit: a queer fashion podcast that explores the relationship between the LGBTQ community and their clothing

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism (The Arts)

Publication Date 10/21/2019

Defense Date 04/21/2019

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Fashion,gay fashion,gender,genderqueer,identity,lesbian fashion,LGBTQ,OAI-PMH Harvest,queer

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Seidenberg, Willa (committee chair), Castaneda, Laura (committee member), Haatainen-Jones, Christina (committee member)

Creator Email ellenfor@usc.edu,ellenrford@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-139932

Unique identifier UC11675386

Identifier etd-FordEllenR-7210.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-139932 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-FordEllenR-7210-3.pdf

Dmrecord 139932

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Ford, Ellen Rose

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

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