Wearing class: A study on clothes,bodies and emotions in Turkey

The Turkish context

One of the differences between many European contexts and that of predominantly Muslim and secular Turkey is perhaps the value attributed to clothing and body images. By imposing new rules for Westernising and secularising the clothing of citizens, and by disseminating ‘modern’ bodily dispositions through schools, the new republic (1923), established after the demise of the Ottoman empire, imbued the ‘symbolic’ and ‘representational’ with huge importance. The modernisation experience, mainly driven by bureaucrats and the educated fractions of society, created an understanding in which changing outer layers, including clothes, items and domestic life, was considered a way of changing an actor’s essence. Although bodies have long carried signs of class and status, this shift caused what Bilgin (2004) refers to as Turkey’s ‘obsession with appearance’, which has been resistant to change.

Before focusing on taste hierarchies in the embodiment domain, the most important characteristic of the cultural field in Turkey must be noted. There has been a widely recognised hierarchy between Alaturka (Turkish) and Alafranga (Western) cultural forms from Ottoman modernisation onwards (Göle, 1997; Kandiyoti, 1997), and it grants Western cultural forms and styles high value. The limited cultural consumption studies done in Turkey suggest that this hierarchy still corresponds to class positions and proximity to Islamic lifestyle. For instance, the multiple correspondence analysis of cultural tastes conducted by Rankin et al. (2014) identifies a distinctive cluster that they label as ‘engaged cosmopolitans’. This cluster comprises people who embrace an urban and globalised culture; it is located near the highest economic and cultural capital and secular identity indicators. However, qualitative studies show that acquiring the items necessary for the Alafranga lifestyle does not necessarily yield symbolic value and that the particular ways of appropriating Western forms create finer distinctions between secular-leaning people who hold different levels of cultural capital (Üstüner and Holt, 2010).

Hierarchies in embodiment practices in Turkey became particularly clear with the discursive construction of ‘white Türk’ and ‘black Türk’ distinctions, which draw on bodily dispositions rather than racial categories. From the 1960s, massive flows of rural-to-urban migration made previously invisible fractions of society and their cultural habits visible. The bodily representations of the newcomers caricaturised in satire magazines and the categorising label given to them (i.e. ‘black Türk’) have disseminated into everyday language. Newcomers wore t-shirts with English slogans on them and combined those with traditional flower-patterned baggy pants, indicating an ‘in-between-ness’ that was seen by the Westernised upper-middle classes (i.e. ‘white Türk’) as tacky, polluting and banal. As Öncü (1999) suggests, the presence of these migrants was used by the middle classes to redefine their boundaries in opposition to the ‘absolute other’.

Those accorded with a symbolic ‘white Türk’ status have been the highly educated and secular upper-middle class, who hold ‘Alafranga’ tastes. In particular, the main carriers of this distinctive ‘white Türk’ repertoire are the new generation of professional-managerial middle class who accumulated wealth after the liberalisation of the Turkish economy. As many studies on this new middle class culture in Turkey commonly suggest, this fraction symbolises flexibility as opposed to the ‘infertility’ of public institutions, their flexible cultural repertoires lean towards the West and they are much more ‘liberal’ in their ideas of gender relations and religion (Bali, 2002; Kozanoğlu, 1992; Şimşek, 2005). Ayata’s (2002) study on new middle class suburbia in Turkey shows that this class specifically uses bodily tastes to mark the difference between their own lifestyle and that of inner city residents. Interviewees often mention the significance of body maintenance, healthy diets, use of cosmetics, grooming and beauty aids for their own identity and then devalue city people’s bodily tastes as ‘worn out, with signs of wear-and-tear on their bodies, the marks of pollution, disease and early aging’, all of which represent moral laxity to this new middle class (p. 40).

Class-cultural conflicts became much more diverse after the 1980s with the rise of political Islam, which increased the visibility of religion in public spaces. By providing conditions for upward mobility, it challenged the associations between representations of piety and class position. As mentioned previously, headscarves had become especially visible in urban centres with rural-to-urban migration; they were thus associated with fractions that did not have access to Western styles of education, living and spending. However, after the 1980s, as recognised by many scholars, conservative fractions and middle-sized small-city entrepreneurs began to accumulate capital due to the liberalisation of the economy, leading to the bifurcation of the bourgeoisie and middle classes into two different segments in terms of religious sentiment (Buğra, 1998; Özcan and Turunç, 2011; Yavuz, 2003). Consumption markets responded to the demands for new goods and services appropriate for pious fractions (Göle, 1999; Navaro-Yashin, 2002; Saktanber, 2002; White, 1999, 2002), and ‘soon a wide variety of products positioned as “Islamic,” ranging over summer resorts, clothing, decorative objects and food, became available to the newly emerging, religiously-oriented middle/upper classes’ (Sandıkçı and Ger, 2007: 194). If we focus on clothing styles, the new fashionable style of veiling has generated an aesthetic variety enabling women to mark their identity in consistency with the particulars of refined urban taste (Sandıkçı and Ger, 2010). Many studies on veiling suggest that, unlike fashionable veiling practices, conventional coverings, which are loose and do not require covering the bosom, have been associated with lower class status in the national cultural repertoire (e.g. Çınar, 2005; İlyasoğlu, 1998; Sandıkçı and Ger, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2010). In contrast, women have begun to aestheticise veiling, both in their pursuit of a distinction from rural, unsophisticated and traditional ‘others’ and in their efforts to demonstrate similarities in terms of cultivated dispositions with secular and modern women. However, as Gökarıksel and McLarney (2010) suggest, the Islamic culture industry certainly caused the devaluation of certain kinds of self-fashioning representations, leading to the exclusion and marginalisation of Muslim identities that are incompatible with the dynamics of the new market.

The data

As this brief historical overview shows, the new republic’s appearance laws and institutional projects, rural-to-urban migration, class mobilities and the disassociation of religious representations from class positions have influenced the values that are inscribed to the bodies of certain fractions, sharpening the embodied cultural hierarchies. To explore how different embodiment styles are perceived by consumers, this analysis draws on in-depth interviews held with 44 women living in three different districts in Ankara. This research looks only at women’s practices in order to focus on the dynamics stemming from class-cultural processes rather than gender differences. This focus enabled me to tailor an interview outline covering the details of practices that are more commonly engaged in by women (i.e. make-up and cellulite treatment). Resonating with the reasoning of other district-based samplings (e.g. Mendez, 2008; Savage et al., 2005), these districts were selected according to their socio-economic status and socio-cultural character. The inhabitants of these districts are heterogeneous both in terms of class position and proximity to Islamic lifestyles. The respondents were recruited by using a snowball sampling technique; thus, despite the heterogeneity of the sample, the study has methodological limitations that hinder generalisations. The mean age of the sample is 43.6 years, 28 interviewees are or have been in paid employment and the mean monthly income of the households is approximately 4000 Turkish liras (approximately 1200 euros as of Feb 2016). Among the sample, 11 interviewees adhere to the Islamic rules of covering, and 1 stopped wearing a headscarf a while ago.

The interviews generated rich data on embodiment tastes and general attitudes of women to bodily practices, but in this analysis, I will only draw from the parts where interviewees shared their experiences in relation to presenting their everyday embodiment practices in interactional contexts. I analysed these parts by adopting Glaser’s (1965) constant comparative method, which requires coding the categories and comparing the context within which they appear. For this, without taking capital volumes into consideration, the responses were labelled one by one, and those that appeared constantly were kept to be explored in detail. This strategy generated six modes of emotional experiences; expectedly, the boundaries between some of these were fluid. In other words, some interviewees exhibited more than one emotional state or explicitly referred to a change in their ways of experiencing interactional situations as they aged. After the identification of common responses, I then examined the volumes of cultural capital that these interviewees hold. Resonating with the findings of a number of studies (e.g. Reay, 2005a), some responses were more common to culturally cultivated fractions, while others were only observable within the narratives of culturally disadvantaged fractions. Some of these modes accommodate conflicting contents (e.g. aspiration vs. resentment); however, they are all telling since they all draw on respondents’ understandings of the structure of embodiment taste in Turkey. Holt’s (1998) measurement, which uses both the individuals’ and their parents’ occupational status and education level, was used to differentiate high and low cultural capital holders, but only after the emotional modes were identified. However, it is best to consider this measure as an indication of cultural capital, not as cultural capital itself. As the contextual background illustrated, the hierarchical ordering of dressed bodies in Turkey derives from various complex dynamics, including migration background, religious orientation and employment conditions, which cannot be grasped via a single measurement index. Despite its limitations, however, the ranking seemed consistent with the insights I gathered from visiting these interviewees’ houses, witnessing their everyday routines and listening to their life histories.

Emotional responses among women with lower cultural capital: Resentment, aspiration, indifference

Resentment was the most repetitive emotional response common to the interviewees holding low levels of cultural capital and it generally stemmed from these interviewees’ perceived ‘style failures’ in contexts where they thought that their physical appearances were being scrutinised by strangers. These experiences mostly take place in settings where they have to demand service from professionals. ‘Dressing up’ before interacting with people of professional status is a strategic choice made after these interviewees realise that their routine embodiment practices do not elicit the respect of certain people. Zerrin’s following account represents the feeling of resentment generated by such experiences:

It happened in the hospital. I needed to have surgery; we wanted to see a professor, but they didn’t give us an appointment. Can you believe it! Then we went for the second time, my husband wore a tie, I dressed up. They then welcomed us by calling my husband ‘gentleman’ … They never try to dismiss people who are well dressed. But when staff perceives someone as poor, it is a different case. And it hurts, you know. It’s a shame; maybe [poor people’s] conditions only let them to look like the way they look.

This kind of response was quite common, for instance, Vildan told me that she was not treated properly in a shoe store due to her appearance and had to ‘dress up’ and visit the store once more to feel better. Derber (1979) demonstrates that members of subordinate classes are regarded as less worthy of attention in relations with members of dominant classes and so are subjected to subtle but systematic face-to-face deprivations. Without doubt, if bodies were not ‘classed’, there would not be shared notions about the contents of respectable appearances. It is also revealing that, although Zerrin clearly resented being ‘read’ as less worthy of attention, at the end, she referred to the symbolic power of embodiments by taking herself out of the illustration and speculating on the emotions of the imagined ‘poor’. Interviewees who have similar experiences tend to present these moments of resentment as rare occasions taking place when they fail to prepare a public self different than the private one. They wanted me to recognise that, unlike the utterly disadvantaged ‘poor’, they are able to ‘pass’ as middle class and elicit respect from the upper-middle class ‘others’. However, Skeggs’ (1997) ethnography reveals that those conscious attempts are likely to be inefficient. In her study, working class women who are aware of the importance of ‘investing’ in their bodies draw upon representations of the visual codes of the middle class body. She suggests that since ‘representations are not dispositions, and since symbolic appearances need to be converted into symbolic capital through being legitimated by those with power, those lacking the necessary resources will never be capable of knowing what getting it right really means’ (p. 86).

Another mode of emotional response was aspiration, again common to those with lower levels of cultural capital but generated by a distinctively different framing of hierarchical interactional contexts. These were experiences of interviewees who conceive of people from different statuses as being more successful in terms of presenting a ‘quality look’. In these cases, the narratives tended to have less defensive tones, the emotional experiences were less disturbing and the categorising gazes were not explicitly criticised. The case of Ceylan, who wears a headscarf, is a good example because her aspiratory comments not only reveal that she perceives a hierarchy within different embodiment forms but also suggest that she locates herself at the lower end of it:

Ceylan: Women who work generally wear modern clothes, they are physically well-kept. Their shoes and bags always match. I mean, when you take the bus in the morning, those business women are all stylish, good-looking, caring about their hair and their appearances.

Irmak: How do you think they differ?

Ceylan: Maybe you can learn how to do it right, but you can’t do it as good as the ones whose source comes from the inside. You can improve only to a certain point, after that you stop … When I wear thick socks with classic shoes, [her upwardly mobile niece] tells me ‘take them off and wear the thin tights’ … Whenever I go there, she criticises me. For example, when I wear a large skirt with an elastic waist, she tells me ‘you look like a peasant, you don’t look beautiful at all’. She knows everything … I wish I was able to match everything like her, but I’m not.

Fields et al. (2007) suggest that emotions help people locate themselves within stratified social life. If people feel unhappy after they assess their social worth in relation to others, they reposition themselves through emotional work. Depending on these emotional cues, Field et al. argue that ‘we exercise interactional strategies in the “emotional micropolitics” of day to day interactions to determine and claim our own and others’ “place” or social status’ (p. 158). Therefore, the feeling of admiration reveals with whom we would like to affiliate ourselves; in Ceylan’s case, this is vaguely women who work. More precisely, she is referring to women who have a particular status in the employment market, not to the embodiment practices of any woman who works. Ceylan herself is already in paid employment, working as a cleaner at a local nursery. Nevertheless, she implicitly locates the aesthetic outcomes of her tastes/practices as inferior to the ‘working woman’ image she has in her mind, which clearly excludes representations of lower class working women. Such self-positioning was common to many other interviewees with limited cultural capital. For instance, Seher directly equated cultural resources with having good taste as she suggested that ‘while someone interacts with more cultured people, with people having good taste in clothing, that person tries to give the impression that she is similar to them, tries to imitate them in a way’. Similarly, Fatma, who migrated to Ankara from a small village, had to motivate herself and cope with stress when she tried what she calls an ‘urban style’, thin tights, for the first time by telling herself, ‘Fatma, look, you might not be lacking anything compared to the other women you have seen’. Despite her efforts, Fatma only rarely wore the tights when she was younger and stopped buying them altogether as she got older.

These seemingly ‘naive’ feelings of aspiration show how culturally privileged groups manage to legitimise their ways of engaging with their bodies as representative of good taste. McRobbie’s (2004) analysis of the BBC TV show ‘What Not to Wear’ reveals the significance of aspiration and consent in understanding the ways in which the symbolic power of certain appearances are reproduced; it also demonstrates the workings of symbolic violence. In these make-over shows, the victim’s/participant’s habitus is scrutinised in front of the cameras and her routine tastes are usually humiliated before the upper-middle class experts step in to improve her and save her from her ‘misery’. McRobbie suggests that these shows would not work if the participant did not acknowledge her place in regards to the experts and come forward to ask for help. Although her response to hierarchy is aspiration, Ceylan never questions why her skirt with the elastic waist is of less symbolic value compared to the power suits of the white-collar women on the bus. Ceylan’s and other interviewees’ similar self-fashioning experiences resonate with Bourdieu’s (1989) suggestion that

agents, even the most disadvantaged ones, tend to perceive the world as natural and to accept it much more readily than one might imagine – especially when you look at the situation of the dominated from the social eyes of a dominant. (p. 18)

In addition to the sharp responses discussed above, remaining indifferent to potentially distressing moments of self-presentation was also common to the interviewees with low cultural capital. It is important to note, however, that the state of ‘not being bothered’ does not suggest that these interviewees disregard categorising gazes. Indifference was generated when the interviewees accepted the fact that their conscious attempts of improvement would remain partial and would not imbue their appearances with long-lasting high symbolic value. Eda’s following comments illuminate how embodiment practices inspired by feelings of stylistic aspiration are perceived by her: as a denial of one’s social status:

Of course, people give preferential treatment according to people’s clothing style … But I wouldn’t care; I cannot dress up in the name of showing off, or give them the impression that my [life] conditions are very good. I am who I am; there is no need, why should I present myself above what I really am. Let’s say that I dressed up, tried to look different, before I go to a meeting at my daughter’s school. They might be impressed, thinking ‘Ooo! Is this Gamze’s mother?’ [mimicking an approving and impressed tone]. What then, it would stop there! I am not a business woman, I won’t be seeing those people face to face somewhere else … I really don’t care much what they would think of my looks.

Eda has a clear sense of the hierarchical ordering of aesthetic representations as well as her place in this order. Like others who expressed similar views, Eda thinks that any conscious physical alteration to locate herself ‘above’ where she ‘naturally’ belongs would be pretentious. For her, not being a business woman means that her embodied capital, even if she manages to further accumulate more by conscious imitations, will not be converted to other forms in other fields and will not enable her to access more distinguished social networks. Therefore, from the social location where she stands, aspiratory engagement seems not only artificial but also impractical. Similarly, Oya, after telling me that she does not have an appropriate dress to wear in an approaching wedding party of her husband’s friend, explains that the attitudes of people change according to one’s appearance but also argues that it does not work on her: ‘if you don’t have it, and if you can’t get it, you just say to yourself “it doesn’t matter”’.

One distinctive objective feature of the interviewees who remained indifferent is that they had the lowest income levels. Their bodily forms fail to receive recognition and respect from the upper classes, but that seems to be less important when there are acute material challenges to be faced. This response can also be related to the qualities of the working class habitus. Bourdieu’s (1984) study shows that those who have limited economic and cultural capital tend to be more concerned with ‘being’ rather than ‘seeming’. The middle classes, on the other hand, are predisposed to excessive concern with appearance, since they are aware of the symbolic and material profits that derive from investing time and effort in these practices. However, it is also important to consider that the indifferent responses that interviewees shared with me may also be a strategy adopted unconsciously to avoid emotional damage in interactions with the upper class, even though no such conscious thought processes appeared in the interviews.

Emotional responses among women with higher cultural capital: Self-confidence, superiority, complacency

Presenting one’s dressed body in unfamiliar or formal settings is not equally stressful for every individual. Unlike those who had unpleasant experiences, a number of the interviewees were clearly satisfied with the physical outcome of their self-fashioning practices, which consequently imbued them with self-confidence. This response, like the others, is generated by constantly comparing one’s embodiment forms with others who participate in the interaction. The testimony of Sibel, who wears a headscarf, revealed how the aspirations of those who have low cultural capital enhance the advantaged ones’ self-confidence and reinforce their perception that they are the ones who know how to ‘get it right’. At one point in our interview, I asked her how she evaluates her sartorial tastes in comparison to other women whom she encounters in her daily life. She answered,

These things that you have been asking about, clothing and stuff … They develop from your childhood onwards by being directed through upbringing … For example, I have a friend, she says ‘whenever I go shopping with you, every time you helped me with selecting, I always wore those pieces with great joy and comfort; thanks to you I was always stylish as I wore these pieces. Because I don’t know what to buy, like the way you know it …’ She is my high-school friend. Her family is of peasant origin … Her father is an electrician, her mother is a housewife. Her parents are quite ordinary.

This extract suggests that Sibel, the daughter of a culturally privileged urban family who abides by rules of Islamic covering in a modern style, assumes that she is rightfully entitled to be self-assured. More revealing is how she relates her friend’s lack of command of good sartorial taste directly to her restricted class habitus. She, like many of the other culturally and economically distinguished interviewees whose accounts could not be presented here, conceives her bodily practices as naturally yielding the right, good-quality aesthetics that are approved of even by those who do not have such competences themselves.

A number of culturally privileged interviewees’ self-assurance was so uninterrupted that it imbued them with feelings of superiority and made them clearly position themselves above the people that they interact with. This response revealed itself in intentional dressing-down strategies and also in the harsh categorising rhetoric of others’ tastes and practices, which might be considered as ‘middle-class gaze’ literally. Contrary to the dressing-up strategies of the less culturally advantaged interviewees, the culturally privileged interviewees tend to ‘lower’ their styles closer to the styles of social circles that they have to join temporarily. As exemplified by Demet, who wears a headscarf, these interviewees also recognise that the embodiment styles in Turkey are value-wise hierarchically ordered; however, unlike the interviewees who resent, aspire or remain indifferent, they locate themselves closer to the higher end of the spectrum:

My husband’s family lives in the slums. They all wear the same style, as if they arrange it intentionally. They all wear large skirts, usually with flower patterns, and an ordinary blouse, and also tülbent¹¹ … They are undeveloped in many senses, you know. They don’t have any sense of matching clothes. Usually I have specific clothes for those visits; I buy ordinary stuff just in order to wear there … But they see and feel the difference between us very well. They send us their sons and daughters before they [the children] apply for a job; they want us to go out shopping with them, to make sure they look right in the job interviews.

There are many similar anecdotes that suggest that the culturally cultivated fractions of both covered and not covered interviewees explicitly devalue the clothing and corporeal styles of the rural-to-urban migrants as well as the working class. This devaluation is often in parallel with the corporeal expression of the white Türk/black Türk distinctions discussed before. For instance, the sartorial style that Demet criticises above (flower patterns, tülbent, large skirt) hints at rural clothing and thus exemplifies the discontent with newcomers continuing their ‘black’ status and their failure to ‘upgrade’ their tastes to urban, modern ones. More importantly, certain accounts demonstrate that this devaluation often exceeds the aesthetic realm and accommodates moral judgements, leading to exclusion and disadvantage on the part of the judged ones. For instance, after expressing her dislike of one of the clothing pictures I showed her and suggesting that the style reminded her of ‘ordinary housewife style’, Şehnaz said,

Even if you go to the express market here in the neighbourhood, you would see how differently they treat people who look like the woman in the first picture. Well, if you ask me whether I think they deserve this [disrespect], I would say yes, they definitely deserve it. Unfortunately, these uneducated groups are unbelievably inconsiderate, so other people get tired of this inconsiderateness and consequently they treat them badly. People whose job requires face-to-face interaction recognise you in the first minute, from your dress, from your hair, from how you look in general.

As revealed here, denying respect based on embodied competences is often considered natural, facilitating the reproduction of inequalities in everyday life. Şehnaz conceives of those people who do not engage in embodiment practices similar to hers as representations of ‘ignorance’ and believes that her bodily style rightfully determines the respect and attention shown to her. Similarly, Zekiye admits that she had to dress ‘down’ the night she attended the wedding party of a staff member, since she had to interact with people ‘who don’t have good taste’ and who could only ‘be considered stylish with respect to or according to their own location or capacity’.

Self-confidence and superiority were not the only responses common to high cultural capital holders. The other mode of emotional response identified in the analysis, which I label as complacency, was similar to the ‘indifference’ of the lower cultural capital holders on the surface, but, in contrast, it was not marked by negative tones. This emotional mode was usually experienced when there happened to be a mismatch between the respondents’ style and the others involved in an event. Nevertheless, while the interviewees with relatively limited volumes of cultural capital remained vulnerable (felt resented) or conceded to dissatisfactions with the presented self (remained indifferent), those who remained complacent, as exemplified in Melda’s following response, were secured by the comfort of their already acknowledged status:

We went to a circumcision party last summer; it was a brunch. When they told me it is a brunch, I wore denim shorts and a plain t-shirt. There were some people who looked like me but the majority were wearing formal clothes. I realised this immediately, but if you ask me whether I felt sorry, I would say no because it was a circumcision brunch. I wasn’t underdressed; I thought they were the ones who were overdressed!

Melda gave this example when I asked her if she ever felt uncomfortable because of the way that she presented herself, but the way that she narrates her recollection shows that the occasion was in no way emotionally stressing. She was still convinced that it was not a ‘style failure’; indeed, as accounts of other interviewees suggest, it is very unlikely for the culturally privileged to experience emotional vulnerability or timidity that would influence their future interactions. While indifferent responses corresponded to an acceptance of the lower value accorded to one’s routine embodiment practices, complacency was closely linked to the embodier’s self-assurance. The interactional context that my covered interviewee Hilal refers to below (a classical music concert) was particularly revealing because it showcased that, at certain points, embodied notions of class cross-cut the Islamist-secularist divide in Turkey. It is important to note that the activities that are considered ‘high culture’ in the West (like classical music) have remained in the interest area of the secular fractions of Turkey:

You learn these rules as you climb those steps, because you also start wandering around the higher steps. I experience, I observe, I watch and I know the rules. For instance, my husband offered to go to a classical music concert, and I believe we can fit in there very well. I asked some friends whether they have ever been to such a concert; they said no. They asked me what I would wear if I go to such an occasion; they consider it a challenge, I assume. But I didn’t feel troubled about it. I combined a stylish and classic outfit with grey and red tones, very plain.

Hilal felt complacent presenting herself in a cultural activity that is framed as ‘secular’. While many of her covered acquaintances would feel insecure deciding what to wear for such a potentially intimidating occasion, Hilal clearly feels at ease. The ‘stairs’ she has climbed seem to have taught her how to ‘get it right’, or have at least given her an emotionally protective and encouraging self-confidence, making her believe that she ‘gets it right’. It is important to note here that a covered women’s appearance, even or especially if she has ‘modern’ and cultivated taste, may still receive the disapproval of her secular counterparts. However, I did not focus on the emotional experiences that stem from this political clash since my emphasis was not on the devaluation of the embodiment of piety. Therefore, I did not consider, for instance, whether Hilal managed to gain the full approval of the concert’s overwhelmingly secular audience. When my emphasis on class is considered, what deserves attention is the fact that it was Hilal, as a holder of high levels of cultural capital, who felt unhesitant about presenting her body outside of her own social circle, and not the other covered interviewees who lacked the necessary material and cultural assurance.