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Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution Jo B. Paoletti. Indiana University Press, 2015.
In Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution, author Jo B. Paoletti brings together several strands of scholarship in her examination of how American cultural shifts impact gender roles and fashion, centering on the very brief late sixties fad of truly unisex fashion. Focusing on the 1960s and 1970s, Paoletti incorporates research from dress studies, social science, gender studies, history, media studies, and law -among others-to contextualize her examination of the many ways the three issues in her subtitle intertwine. "Yes, fashion is fun," she asserts in her introduction, "but clothing is also bound up with the most serious business we do as humans: expressing ourselves as we understand ourselves" (13).
Though this complex and compelling book begins with a brief note acknowledging the author's own generational placement in the center of the cultural and trends described, Paoletti's text is not structured as a linear history. Rather, she discusses the demographic changes that impacted both consumerism and the sexual revolution as a way to set the stage for her multifaceted approach to...