When it came time to pack for Romania, I had no reason to expect that people in Bucharest would dress differently than people in Minneapolis. In fact, I thought that anyone who held that opinion had a false idea that Romanians were “backwards.” But before I left, I decided to Google “Are there clothing rules for women in Romania?” The Romanian respondents tried to distance themselves from the “kind of country” that would have a dress code, and instead move toward their “Western neighbours.”
One hilarious comment even joked about the question itself:
Understandably, these comments reflect a desire to present Romania as a place that has moved beyond dress codes. This image, of course, is untrue: every country has “dress codes for women.” If I were to walk down the street naked in either Romania or the United States, I would not be well-received for my nude diversion from the norm.
At this point, it becomes essential for me to state clearly what I am arguing, and more importantly what I am not. This paper does not contend that Romanians generally have sexist attitudes toward women wearing shorts. I neither claim that Romania’s clothing culture is “conservative” nor that the United States is somehow “better.” However, this paper does reflect on incidents of judgment and cat-calling that I experienced in Romania. These incidents could have occurred in the United States as well. Ultimately, these experiences have helped me realize that Americans and Romanians alike can benefit from taking a long, hard look at what we wear and why we wear it.
After my pre-packing Google frenzy, I ended up tossing whatever clothes I found most comfortable into my suitcase. Within the first few weeks of being in Romania, my peers and I could not have been happier with the weather: it was time to bring out the shorts. One of the first incidents happened at the local mall, where one of my peers had the back of her leg slapped by an older Romanian woman. We also received some honks from male drivers while walking down the roads of Cluj and Constanta. But the situation became clearest when we attended midnight Easter services at an Orthodox church. Two of my friends wore dresses that would have been perfectly appropriate for Easter service at most American churches: in fact, they were exactly the kind of dresses that almost every woman would have worn for Easter. While we were waiting for the service to begin, two Romanian women began to whisper to each other, gesturing at my friends’ exposed knees. After these events, I began to believe that shorts and short skirts were unacceptable for women in Romania, and I attributed this issue to patriarchal norms which I thought were more present than in the United States. This initial perception was wrong. Although I still believe that female short-wearing in Romania to be generally less common than in the US, I do not have enough information to make a judgment on why that might be.
The progression of my thoughts about this topic has reminded me of the misconceptions that cultural comparisons can bring about. When we first arrived in Romania, we felt that it was hot enough to wear shorts. For Romanians who would later experience the sweltering heat of mid-July Bucharest, pants were the only sensible option during April. I went from seeing women wearing jeans in what I perceived as “sweltering heat,” to realizing that shorts are actually quite common in Romania for people of all genders. Every observation I have made in Romania is inherently cross-cultural: I have brought my own assumptions from the United States without even realizing it. As I became angry over what I perceived as Romania’s patriarchal clothing norms, it was hard for me not to place Romania in a teleological frame. I found myself thinking that Romania was “behind” the US in female emancipation, and that it would eventually “catch up.” This was a harmful framework to assume. A multitude of social, political, and economic aspects influence the dress norms of a culture. These aspects are present in the United States as well as Romania. As a non-Romanian, I feel that I can make few generalizations about what influences Romanian clothing norms without conducting detailed research.
However, I can say that there have been times when my peers and I have stepped outside of the norm by wearing shorts, for one reason or another, and that we have had unfavorable experiences that seemed related to our clothing. Our experiences challenge us with a complex question: to what extent do we need to respect the norms of our host country? Should we avoid wearing shorts while in Romania? To this question I answer a strong “No.” The right to dress oneself as one wishes is fundamental to human dignity. Of course, a Romanian woman’s decision to wear an ankle-length skirt must be respected, but she too must respect those who wear shorts. We must learn to honor the unique ways that we express ourselves through clothing.
So if we can wear shorts on the street, can we wear shorts to church? Or to the opera? Although I am firm in claiming that I should be able to wear shorts in public, it makes me more uncomfortable to imagine wearing shorts to church because it is a private space. But this designation of public and private space brings up another question: who owns the public space in Romania? Do I as a guest have an obligation to comply with the standards of my host? As Justin pointed out during my presentation, standards of dress for something as bourgeois as the opera have been set by Western, colonialist powers. Additionally, Natalie brought up the fact that to get dressed up for the opera, an individual needs money for appropriate clothing. Two-hundred years ago in Romania, men would have attended opera-like events in Ottoman dress: a silk robe, a sash with saber, and a fur hat. The dress norms that we experience today are neither stagnant nor objective. So the question may not be “should I comply with the standards of my host,” but rather “who is the real host here”? To what extent do we own the clothes that we wear?
Today, in Romania, the United States, and elsewhere, capitalistic and patriarchal values manipulate the clothes that we can put on our bodies. I cannot claim superiority for wearing shorts any more than the Romanian women who criticized me can claim superiority for wearing long skirts. We are all caught in a Foucaultian exchange of power, in which we have the agency to rebel. Seeing different reactions to my shorts has pushed me to question which clothes I wear, and why I wear them. In the end, wondering about shorts has encouraged me to think about American culture more than Romania itself: about the spaces where my body is respected, the eyes under which it is not, and the power I hold by choosing my clothes each morning.
Shorts at the Opera and Other Transgressions
