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Working Out What to Wear in Papua New Guinea: The Politics of Fashion in Stella
- The Contemporary Pacific
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 27, Number 1, 2015
- pp. 39-70
- 10.1353/cp.2015.0019
- Article
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In this article I discuss Stella, a new women’s magazine in Papua New Guinea. Noting that Stella provides a context for celebrating new Pacific femininities, I argue that the magazine’s representations of fashion are a crucial way in which this refiguring of the feminine occurs. Discussing the significance of what women wear through reference to anthropological insights about the relationship between clothing, gender, and status, I suggest that in PNG, clothing is a focal point of cultural debate. Through its playful politics, Stella intervenes in this debate, thus smuggling a deeply political message between its glossy pages. In addition, I demonstrate that through its selective aestheticization of the “local” and the “traditional,” the magazine acknowledges educated, young Papua New Guinean women’s desire to reconfigure “culture” in more inclusive ways.