Vivie Nguyen always tries to do presentations on issues that people may not have thought about too deeply.
Nguyen, the assistant director of Campus Life and Cultural Resource Center, looks to pop culture and the media to see how she can deconstruct it with a feminist lens.
"Queer Eye for the Straight Hipster: The Influence of Queer Culture on Fashion" was no different in that respect. The event, both organized and presented by Nguyen, took place Wednesday, Nov. 28 from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Center for Spiritual Life.
"I'm really trying to reach a wide audience, but also look into identity and biases and aspects of queer culture that affect not only gay individuals, but also straight people as well," Nguyen said of the presentation.
For this particular presentation, she chose to focus on fashion, and how gay individuals in the industry effect it. Nguyen specifically examined the hipster look, and how it stemmed from queer culture.
"That, for some people, makes it difficult to identify by physical traits and by dress who's queer and who's not," Nguyen said.
Nguyen said that while this phenomenon can effect the interactions in people's dating lives, there are also positives that can come of it.
"Those are the things I'm talking about, that maybe people haven't considered before," Nguyen said.
The presentation was composed of this type of cultural commentary. Nguyen discussed the top gay men in the fashion industry, how the mainstream audience viewed the merge of sexuality and style on the runway, what it means for gay men to dress straight women and gender expression and dress in queer culture.
Nguyen noted that people weren't as openly gay in the past as they are now, and how they dressed used to be an indicator, or "marker," of their sexual orientation. She then introduced the term "metrosexual," which emerged during the presentation, followed by the rise of queer culture within the mainstream. She then introduced the hipster trend, which welcomes androgyny.
She said it was good that androgyny had become more acceptable, but that this could present dating problems, particularly for gay men. If a gay man depended on a physical marker of orientation, he could risk encountering a homophobic person and put himself in a dangerous situation.
After Nguyen finished her presentation, she invited the student attendees to discuss the various topics, paying particular attention to the idea of markers.
Though dramatic haircuts were suggested as a possible marker for queer women, sophomore Lindsay Gay had a different perspective.
"Coming from the black community. ... that's never been a marker for me," Gay said of hairstyles.
Though the way that they dressed might be an indicator, she didn't assume based on clothing, either. She instead used social cues to figure out someone's sexuality.
Nguyen noted that in Indiana, she doesn't see many blatant markers, sparking discussion from the students about how much DePauw's fashion climate differs from that of a big city.
"Maybe that's why we're not noticing it as much here, which ultimately, I think, makes it more difficult," Nguyen said.
Senior Jordan Ragasa, an attendee, thought the presentation was insightful.
"I never really thought about the connection between queer culture and hipster culture, and how there's that interplay between how the hipster movement is kind of normalizing queer culture in the mainstream," Ragasa said.
Ragasa thought the discussion afterward gave the audience a chance to analyze what they heard, since a lot of students don't often talk about queer topics on campus.
"We don't really have spaces where we can articulate how mainstream society views LGBT people," Ragasa said.
Ragasa said events like this could help people look at the discourse and get engaged in the discussion.
"We're not just passive recipients of what's going on," Ragasa said. "We're actually analyzing these different connections."