Clothing and Textiles Research Journal

The purpose of this study was to investigate Brush's (1992) integrative perspective of female business owners. The sample included 22 women apparel-manufacturing owners purposively chosen to participate in on-site interviews. A 36-item interview schedule was used to assess business owners' current business practices, provide information about their family, and to characterize their career as a business owner in apparel manufacturing. A Windows version of NUD*IST 4 was used to analyze the data. These women perceived being their own boss as a benefit and measured success in non-economic terms. Motives for business creation were personal fulfillment and professional achievement. They expressed regret about ownership if spouses were reported as unsupportive or if children were in the home. Brush's (1992) integrative perspective was validated, in part. These women perceived themselves in a network of work and family relationships.

The first half of the twentieth century witnessed a number of innovations and ambiguities in the clothing of young children. Dominant, popular period literature reveals mixed cultural sentiments regarding how children, and especially boys, should be dressed. Our analysis of this literature and of new clothing styles offered for the first five to six years of a child's life reveals that a larger re-visioning of gender and age boundaries was underway. Between 1896, the first year infantwear (the androgynous white dress) was offered in the Sears catalog in the United States, and 1962, the first year gender-specific wear for newborns appeared in the catalog, complex processes of visual negotiation and evolution occurred. "Revolutionary" changes in playwear and "interim" dressy garment innovations helped to bridge masculinity and femininity across the first years of life, hence easing the transition toward more modern, streamlined styles for boys, in particular. Integrating three fashion theories (Hollander's, McCracken's, and Kaiser, Nagasawa, and Hutton's), we interpret the changes in young children's clothing during this period as part of a complicated, evolutionary (male) "flight from femininity": one that required negotiating complex ambivalences and ambiguities in order to construct a binary system of modern, gendered infancy.

Body image is the mental picture we have of our bodies, has both perceptual and affective components, affects how we interact with clothes, and affects how that clothed appearance is presented publicly. The purpose of this article is to theoretically justify the inclusion of body image in textiles and clothing subject matter in institutions of higher education. Although pioneering efforts have addressed the body from aesthetic and social psychological standpoints, no theoretical justification integrates both aesthetic theory and social psychological concepts as applied to body image. We present discussions of both aesthetic and social psychological theories and concepts related to body image, make suggestions for curricular strategies at both undergraduate and graduate levels, and provide links to various stakeholders. We argue that textiles and clothing educators have a significant role to play in research, education, and outreach efforts related to body image and appearance-related behaviors and can address important quality of life issues.

In this paper, I use a social view of disability developed by disability activist-scholars to encourage research in the textiles and clothing field. Early research on "clothing for people with special needs" occurred within a socio-political context dominated by a medicalized view of disability. A social view of disability is compatible with textiles and clothing scholarship on appearance and social realities. The paper includes suggestions for research directions that would benefit the disciplines of textiles and clothing and disability studies.