Tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Feminist Hero and Fashion Icon
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, feminist icon and US Supreme Court Justice, passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer. Ginsburg dedicated her entire career to eliminating gender and anatomy-based discrimination in the US, and she worked until the day she died.
The second woman to serve on the Supreme Court, her activism spanned her outspokenness, her commitment to her ideals, and her fashion. Ginsburg’s words and votes improved equality in estate ownership laws, reproductive rights, equal pay, healthcare rights, voting rights, marriage equality, and more.
Ginsburg passed on the first day of Rosh Hashana, which in the Jewish tradition is known as a tzaddik, or person of great righteousness. The title has been given to biblical figures and spiritual masters.
Ginsburg voted in favor of every every decision for LGBTQ rights from the Supreme Court, including striking down Colorado’s anti-gay Amendment 2 and Texas state laws criminalizing sodomy. She was a major proponent of gay marriage, arguing in words that proponents would understand. “You’re not taking away anything from heterosexual couples. They would have the very same incentive to marry, all the benefits that come with marriage that they do now.” More recently, she voted that anti-queer discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, and therefore illegal — gaining rights for queer people in employment, housing, health care, education, and more.
The Supreme Court is comprised of nine judges, responsible for determining the outcome of cases that could not be solved by lower courts. On each issue, judges would express their views and then ultimately vote. The votes were categorized based on whether they aligned with the majority view, known as the majority-opinion vote, or minority view, the dissent vote. Ginsburg was famous for her dissenting votes.
Known by her admirers as “Notorious RBG”, she used fashion as a tool to get people to listen to her and take her seriously — a difficult feat as a woman living in a sexist society. She is a great example of how fashion and activism intersect.
Ginsburg was famous for wearing jabots, or collars in place of a men’s tie with her judicial robes, some of which expressed a symbolic meaning. She had a majority-opinion collar and a dissent collar based on how she was voting.
Majority-opinion collar
Dessent collar
Here are some of my favorite RBG quotes and outfits.
“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.”
— 2009
"People ask me sometimes, when—when do you think it will it be enough? When will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are nine." — 2015
"My idea of how choice should have developed was not a privacy notion, not a doctor’s right notion, but a woman’s right to control her own destiny, to be able to.” — 2019
"Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation." — 2001
