Thesis Problem:  

Alternative fashion is perceived through the lense of the institutional gaze that has been embedded in our culture and naturalized. The gaze that claims sexuality, ornamentation, and Latinidad are vain, trashy, and fetishized.

Thesis Statement:

A person’s existence can be subversive. Sometimes not of their own choice. To exist as someone from a marginalized group is to subvert the hegemony.   A woman of color will always be subversive.   -Fetishized, to dehumanize, objectify, and to commodify   -Exotic, striking and attractive because unfamiliar, “exo” outside -Subversion, seeking or intended to subvert an established system or institution; a subversive person. It has become normalized to fetishize someone due to perceiving them as exotic. This naturalization process was a subliminal process that developed into the phenomenon that happens today but because of its gradual conditioning, has become almost imperceptible. The first phase was the creation of subtle racism through labeling people under the guise of needing a population census in 1790.  This dehumanized people of color by reducing them into just a category. The second phase was the dehumanization and commodification through media and marketing. Luxury is represented by exotic animals, flora, and unfortunately sometimes people. By pairing people viewed as exotic with animals, plants, and products, they become reduced further to no longer a person given a category, but instead no longer a person. This dehumanizes and commodifies some humans over others. Phases one and two then allow the perfect breeding groups for sexualization and fetishization. Phase three is when women of color can no longer be perceived without these lenses.   Since I am automatically perceived under these lenses, my willingness to make work with these motifs is an intentional act of subversion, reclaiming my choice to be subversive or not.    This body of work forces people to create assumptions based off of the lenses they’ve been conditioned to have and recognize that dehumanizing thoughts can be subliminal.   “Like other forms of representation produced in a context of inequality and domination, ethnic marketing is self-referential and more revealing of those who produce the representation than of those who are its subjects.”  - Arlene Dávila