Fashion and the Fleshy Body (In a White Jumpsuit): David Cassidy as Unsung Nonbinary Style Icon

Abstract

In March 1972, the pop idol David Cassidy played a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden dressed in a white lace-up jumpsuit. Although this outfit has been widely documented by fans, photographers and journalists, it has not been as widely discussed as signature costumes worn by his equally famous contemporaries — David Bowie and his man’s dress, for example, which helped make the musician the androgynous style icon he is known as today, or Elvis Presley in his iconic white jumpsuit, which redefined ideas of masculinity in American culture. Yet when discussed through Joanne Entwistle’s framework of dress as an embodied practice — David Cassidy wearing this particular jumpsuit, at this particular event — the individual garment regains a deeper meaning. Through an analysis of the jumpsuit and dress as an embodied practice, the stage is set to show Cassidy as a powerful conduit of social change who subverted gender norms in mainstream American culture in the late 1960s and early 70s — an unlikely but worthy nonbinary fashion icon.