A dress chosen simply because it’s liked can become, in the eyes of others, a clue to the character of the person wearing it. This is the observation at the heart of “Semplicemente donna” (“Simply a woman”), a reflection written by Anastasia Merli of Gen SM on the way women’s appearance is observed, interpreted and judged.
“Before a woman even has the time to tell her own story, someone has often already begun telling it for her. And almost always, that story starts from what can be seen,” Merli writes. Judgment arrives quickly, while getting to know a person takes time: “Intelligence, wit, ambition all take time to emerge; appearance, on the other hand, presents itself to the eye in an instant and risks shaping everything that comes after.”
The author uses the length of a skirt as an example. What it covers or leaves uncovered, she observes, is often loaded with a meaning that the woman wearing it never intended to convey. “A short skirt becomes provocation. A long one, modesty.” For Merli, the problem doesn’t end with the judgment itself: it also lies in the assumption that one can understand something about a woman through an aesthetic choice.
“Women are granted, at least in appearance, an ever-broader freedom of choice. They can dress as they wish, show themselves, cover themselves, change style and mind,” the text reads. Yet alongside this freedom, Merli notes another habit: “You’re free to choose, but someone else will still feel free to decide what that choice says about you.”
In her argument, she recalls Simone de Beauvoir and her description of woman as the “Other,” an identity built in part through the gaze of others. According to Merli, that gaze today may take less explicit forms, but it still produces interpretations. From this comes the gap “between who one is and what others believe they have understood,” to the point where “a part risks being mistaken for the whole: the body for the person, the outfit for the character, appearance for intention.”
The reflection refuses to assign a fixed meaning either to clothes that reveal or to those that cover. “Every uncovered inch doesn’t have to become emancipation, just as every covered inch shouldn’t be read as a sign of modesty,” Merli writes. The freedom to choose, in her view, also includes the freedom not to have to explain that choice every single time.
This is where the author arrives at what she calls “the right to banality”: to be able to wear a dress simply because it’s liked, to be elegant one day and careless the next, to want attention or not. “To change one’s mind without having to answer for an image someone else built in my place,” she adds.
The piece closes by returning to the image it began with. For Merli, a woman should be able to choose for herself, without having to wonder each time how she will be judged for what she wears. “And when, at last, a skirt goes back to being just a skirt.”
