Politics of Dress and Appearance

Abstract

In October 2020, Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin appeared in the Finnish fashion magazine Trendi wearing a black blazer with a plunging neckline and no top underneath, which caused an uproar in the social media (see Odom 2020). Her outfit choice was branded 'inappropriate' for someone in a top political position. In the article accompanying the photograph, Marin explained that she usually tends to look the same; she wears the same kind of clothing and has the same hairstyle in order to avoid discussion about her appearance. She knows that women's appearance is a constant subject of discussion and criticism, and her choice of appearance is a political statement. (Peltola 2020.) Her typical outfit consists of a black tailored suit with trousers and a black or white shirt, which is a 'standard uniform' for a politician. As studies of parliamentary representation from the perspectives of gender studies and performance studies, for example, have demonstrated, institutional power also operates through performative acts such as modes of behaviour, norms of dress and other institution-specific cultures (see e.g. Rai & Johnson 2014). Institutional parliamentary cultures are usually based on a gendered hierarchy that favours men (Lovenduski 2014), of which the dress code of black or dark suit is a good example: it indicates traditional male attributes of power, authority and confidence. The reason why Marin's and women politicians' appearance is a constant topic of discussion is that they draw attention to the hidden expectations that a politician and a prime minister is a particular kind of man (cf. Lovenduski 2014, 19).The articles of this theme issue of Ethnologia Fennica (2/2021) discuss the politics of dress and appearance. They analyse the role of dress and fashion in expressing, formulating and contesting various political ideas and ideologies, social norms, cultural ideals and social statuses.In her article "Behind the scenes. The Mari teacher's wardrobe in Central Russia", Ildikó Lehtinen discusses teacher's attire as a political phenomenon in the context of the Mari people, a Finno-Ugric minority living in Central

Capturing urban diversity through languages: Long‐term changes in multilingual residential neighbourhoods in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area

“…Since the 1990s, structural changes in global political and economic landscape have increased international mobility to Finland, which include the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Finland joining the European union (EU) in 1995 and signing the Schengen Agreement, the EU expansion and the opening of the labour market to member states from Eastern Europe in 2004-2005, and the boom in the Finnish ICT sector since the 2000s. Besides voluntary immigration for work and education, Finland also received a significant number of refugees fleeing war zones from Somalia and the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s (Lehtonen, 2016) and from the Middle East since 2002 (Koivisto, 2011). Also, the returning Ingrian Finns from Russia and Estonia received automatic residence permits between 1990 and 2010.…”