Gender and Sexuality in Punk Fashion

In punk, body and dress became a key factor in the movement. Punk twisted ideals of normative beauty, fashion, and sexuality. Punk fashion was largely made of everyday objects, clashing and colliding on top of each other, making these objects into one whole pieced image of resistance. Using an overarching theme of black and other dark colors, dog collars, masculine army boots, feminine fishnets (ripped), chains, leather, and shredded clothes put back together with safety pins are all average components of punk fashion. This use of normal everyday objects represented a type of resistance to structure in the society which used these objects. Punk bares the body with certain items of clothes, revealing sexuality and freeing those within the movement of gender norms and social ideals.

In punk some women are dressed masculine and some men dress in women's clothes, while others represent no gender all together. Appearing wholly genderless was an image often supported in the punk movement as an act of ill conformance to society. Patti Smith writes about this movement towards androgyny in her book Just Kids. After being asked if she was androgynous herself, she responded: “I figured that must be cool” (Smith 140).

Women in punk largely attested societal norms put against them, creating a separation between themselves and the normative, preformed femininity: wearing black, ripped clothes, distorting skin through tattoos, cuts, and piercings, and dying hair unnatural colors of orange and green. “Uglyfying” the image of self therefore served as a mechanism of liberating oneself from beauty expectations drilled into women from early ages.

Another source of spectacle and shock within punk fashion was the embracement of sexuality. Sexuality is celebrated in the punk culture while deflecting the male gaze. Furthermore, BDSM culture and the S&M scene is largely visible in punk fashion. Ideals of domination and submission were exposed in fashion through themes of leather, collars and leashes, chokers, and smudged makeup. Sex is coded politically through advertisements and the media, never explicitly shown. Through its use of fashion and sexuality, punk exposed political ideals and sexual practices that were invisible in society.