About
"The Jumpsuit: Challenging Gender Roles"
During World War II, with men being requisitioned to fight wars across the Atlantic and the Pacific, women joined the U.S. workforce in numbers never seen until that point, taking the place that men had traditionally occupied in the production line. And women were not only performing industrial jobs: they were working in physically demanding tasks that had always been thought of as the exclusive domain of men. With this fellowship I intend to research the way that women’s clothing changed during the war, making connections between what women were now allowed (and expected) to wear and their future emancipation. I specifically intend to focus on the jumpsuit, and how it connects the expanded role of women in the industrial workforce to the women’s liberation movement of the 1960’s. The end goal of this research will be a new body of sculptural work that will formally and metaphorically draw from wartime women’s workwear, making connections between clothing, feminism, labor, and female liberation.
Annica Cuppetelli is a Lecturer II, Stamps School of Art & Design.
