ABSTRACT
Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne Eicher note that "dress … signifies the apparel worn by men and women [and it] also refers to the act of covering the body with clothes and accessories" (1965: 1). John Berger, in Ways of Seeing, suggests that women's dress and dressing up allow them to become both object and subject, or what he terms "the surveyed" and "the surveyor" (1972: 46). As objects of the male gaze, women are the surveyed. However, in the act of "watching" themselves, a ritual that is learned at a young age, women become surveyors. Berger, here, introduces the idea of women as subjects or agents (surveyors) capable of constructing and manipulating their self-image. Revisionist scholars, expanding on the concept of women as subjects, emphasize the ways in which women manipulate dress and dressing up – particularly as a strategy to attain visibility and to articulate particular concerns, be they cultural, economical, personal, or political (Hollander 1993 [1975]; Weiner and Schneider 1989; Barnes and Eicher 1993). This body of literature positions women as agents with clearly defined intentions, which they express or communicate through dress and dressing up. Agency, here, is neither fixed nor permanent; it is negotiated at particular historical moments or on specific occasions. Carnival is one such occasion when women use dress and dressing up to create a self-image through which they can "articulate" their opinions.
