'Girl' clothes are for girls. 'Boy' clothes are for everyone.

September 15, 2015 8:13 AM

"As long as 'feminine' is treated as a synonym for 'weak,' girls are going to continue to be underestimated and boys are going to continue to be bullied when they step out of the gender box they've been put in." Why does gender neutral clothing always mean 'boy' clothes for girls?

And when did girls start boys stop wearing pink?

posted by divined by radio (126 comments total)

I don't agree with that at all though. Boy clothes aren't for everyone. They are often boxy, not form fitting, and made for people who are built like cisgender boys.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:28 AM on September 15, 2015

The headline is surely parroting the patriarchal point the author is criticizing, not endorsing it.
posted by oliverburkeman at 8:30 AM on September 15, 2015 [13 favorites]

I think if I were a parent, I'd have a bias towards short hair for a child of either gender (nail polish, glitter, and the color pink wouldn't bother me).

Whether the bias re short hair is purely functional or culturally induced, I can't quite say. Thoughts?
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:31 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

While I know what you're saying (as someone who's all ass and hips "boyfriend" *ugh* jeans will never be for me) it's more about the fact that basically little girls can wear trousers but little boys can't wear dresses.
posted by billiebee at 8:32 AM on September 15, 2015 [15 favorites]

I don't agree with that at all though. Boy clothes aren't for everyone. They are often boxy, not form fitting, and made for people who are built like cisgender boys.

Well, they're made with the assumption that you don't want to wear form-fitting clothes. I don't want to wear form-fitting clothes and never have, over a life of varying gender identity and gender presentation, and as a result have worn a lot of "men's" clothes.

We live in a society where we assume that showing body shape is best - traditionally for women, but that's changing - but that's not a cultural/historical universal.

One thing I notice in this type of conversation - butch/masculine/gender-non-conforming women are usually left out of it. The girls wearing "boys'" or "neutral" clothing are almost always clearly marked as feminine, have long hair, have body shapes accepted as feminine, etc. You don't, for instance, see a tiny butch girl wearing this stuff, because that would suggest that femininity itself isn't inherent in womanhood, and it would validate right-wing gender-panic stuff about how non-feminine clothes makes women ugly lesbians, etc.

The whole logic of "gender neutral clothes are boys clothes on feminine girls" is built on both the devaluation of certain kinds of femininity and the rejection of non-feminine women. Non-feminine clothes, yes, but only so long as the women are the right kind of women - just like you can show lesbians on television now, but if you show lesbians who aren't thin with feminine features, they're a joke and we're not allowed to show very many of them, either.
posted by Frowner at 8:37 AM on September 15, 2015 [41 favorites]

We have an 18-month-old girl, and I'm really not looking forward to negotiating this sort of stuff. I was a teenager in the mid-90s, when everybody in my cohort just dressed in baggy jeans and T-shirts. Girls "dressing like girls" were an exception instead of the rule. I'm not sure I'm up to navigating these waters.

On another note, we ordered some new pacifiers for our daughter the other day, and I noticed when they came last night that they were labeled "girl colors." Pacifiers. With a multicolored camo-like pattern. "Girl colors." Right.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:37 AM on September 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

If gender neutral clothes are only made for and marketed to the parents of little girls, it is less a sign of gender equality and more an indication of the misogyny that is so ambient in our culture. There is such a devaluing of anything traditionally feminine that we’d rather chuck it out triumphantly than ever demean our boys with it.

Exactly.
posted by jaguar at 8:38 AM on September 15, 2015 [19 favorites]

little girls can wear trousers but little boys can't wear dresses.

But that's not so much a matter of physical ability or functionality as cultural conditioning, which is precisely what is being questioned here.

Shouldn't the skirts/pants question be tied more to the age than the gender of the child? It seems intuitive to me that skirts might be more practical for very young children, while pants are better for tweens and teens; I may be way off here because I am not a parent.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:39 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

strangely coincident, last night i had a thought that might exploit this discrepency positively...mandatory barbie pink for all cop uniforms, cars, and tactical gear.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:45 AM on September 15, 2015 [36 favorites]

strangely coincident, last night i had a thought that might exploit this discrepency positively...mandatory barbie pink for all cop uniforms, cars, and tactical gear.

I enjoy your opinions and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
posted by sixswitch at 8:46 AM on September 15, 2015 [17 favorites]

It's because we are barbarians and it's the fashion to wear pants instead of a good, civilized tunic like they did in Rome.
posted by graymouser at 8:47 AM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

And yet the poor utilikilt is a source of endless mockery.

Seriously, if you made "tactical" or "police" business skirts out of Cordura, I'm sure you could get some of the prepper community to bite. Just point out how easy it is to carry on a garter.
posted by bonehead at 8:50 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

My kid went through a long pink-and-frilly phase. It probably wasn't the last such phase we'll see. I don't mind the pink (though I do wish it hadn't been the only color the kid wanted to wear for a year), but I do take issue with the frilly.

"Boy clothes" are more practical than "girl clothes". Witness the time when my kid was running around in a too-long skirt, tripped over it, and got a knock on the head so bad the teachers were worried about a concussion.

I realize there are fraught gender politics, here, but everyone deciding that "boy clothes" are for everyone? With, sure, everyone wearing all the colors? Sign me up!

Frankly, I think the fact that [many impractical types of] "girl clothes" exist at all is a giant sexist problem of enormous depth and history. It may be problematic to just ditch them, but it's also problematic to keep them around.
posted by gurple at 8:50 AM on September 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

strangely coincident, last night i had a thought that might exploit this discrepency positively...mandatory barbie pink for all cop uniforms, cars, and tactical gear.

Actually, Jon Arpaio has already subscribed to this newsletter, to put down people he didn't like.

Don't use feminization as a put-down.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:51 AM on September 15, 2015 [15 favorites]

"Boy clothes" are more practical than "girl clothes". Witness the time when my kid was running around in a too-long skirt, tripped over it, and got a knock on the head so bad the teachers were worried about a concussion.

The same could have happened if the pants were too long and got caught under the foot. Perhaps kids could wear clothes that are appropriate for running around.
posted by discopolo at 8:55 AM on September 15, 2015 [16 favorites]

My kid went through a long pink-and-frilly phase. It probably wasn't the last such phase we'll see. I don't mind the pink (though I do wish it hadn't been the only color the kid wanted to wear for a year), but I do take issue with the frilly. . . .

Frankly, I think the fact that [many impractical types of] "girl clothes" exist at all is a giant sexist problem of enormous depth and history. It may be problematic to just ditch them, but it's also problematic to keep them around.

Oh boy, a second thread in as many days where we can make sure every kind of person knows that what they put on their bodies is wrong and bad because Reasons. Maybe we could not?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:57 AM on September 15, 2015 [14 favorites]

"Boy clothes" are more practical than "girl clothes". Witness the time when my kid was running around in a too-long skirt, tripped over it, and got a knock on the head so bad the teachers were worried about a concussion.

But 'girl clothes' are much more diverse than that - the most adroit girl-clothes dresser of my acquaintance was, last night, wearing skinny pants, a sort of rayon crepe vintage secretary blouse and a cardigan, plus keds and a cute little pendant and a baseball cap with a sparkly ornament. That's just as suitable for my biking/walking/being sweaty and messy lifestyle as anything I wear. Also, "girl clothes" currently usually have stretch, which makes them better for biking (and I assume other types of everyday movement) - I wear women's pants most of the time because although I like the fit/look of men's pants, they're a pain on a bike.

I think that contemporary "girl clothes" are mostly "girl clothes" because of how much shape they show, their color and their ornament. Although a skirt can't currently be "boy clothes", "girl clothes" don't need to be skirts/long/ruffley/etc.
posted by Frowner at 8:57 AM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

"Boy clothes" are more practical than "girl clothes". Witness the time when my kid was running around in a too-long skirt, tripped over it, and got a knock on the head so bad the teachers were worried about a concussion.

It strikes me that the only "impractical" thing about that skirt was the length, not the fact that it was a skirt.

Consider: William Wallace fought a damn war wearing a skirt.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:58 AM on September 15, 2015 [18 favorites]

Related: the Medium collection Gender 2.0 is doing a running feature on "What I Wanted to Wear," highlighting the fraught clothing choices made by trans or gender-nonconforming people. Several of them note how hard it is for trans women to feel accepted wearing "gender-neutral" clothing:
What I Want to Wear
Getting Real, Getting Free

I think that's the flip side of the same phenomenon the article discusses -- in both cases, "male" clothing is unmarked, "female" clothing is marked. If you expect people to quarrel with your gender or refuse to accept it, the safest route is to avoid everything that doesn't mark you as feminine. It highlights the "gender-neutral = for boys" point, since a cis woman wearing a hoodie and jeans wouldn't be asked "why are you dressing like a boy?" but a trans woman might be asked "why aren't you dressing like a woman?"
posted by babelfish at 9:01 AM on September 15, 2015 [8 favorites]

Women play whole tennis matches wearing skirts. There's nothing inherently impractical about skirts at all, if they're the proper length for what you intend to do in them, and they're way more comfortable than trousers.
posted by holborne at 9:04 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

On another note - you can have voluminous "impractical" boy clothes, too - not common in the contemporary West, but hakama would suck on a bike, running in a really formal djelleba would be a bad idea, etc. (Come to that, running in a tiny wool suit isn't that easy either, but if we're talking about volume....)

"Practical [for movement]" and "impractical [for movement]" is related to gendered clothes, in that women are often pressured to wear clothes that are exceedingly impractical for the movement that the women will be making in them - thin clothes for cold rooms, high heels for long walks, tight fits when you'll be bending and stooping - but you could certainly envision a utopia where clothes were organized not along gender axes but along "plain" and "fancy", "tight" and "loose", etc. So you might like plain tight clothes or fancy loose ones, for instance.
posted by Frowner at 9:04 AM on September 15, 2015 [13 favorites]

I've always taken "boy clothing is more practical" to reflect that clothing marketed to boys and men is often made with heavier, more durable fabric and with copious amounts of pockets. I can revel in decent skinny jeans (and I've hiked in mine; they're very practical) but overall the options for well-made frilly/pink/tailored clothing marketed to girls are not legion. But better than they used to be. C'mon, 511, work with me here.
posted by jetlagaddict at 9:04 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

I always wonder whether the Practicality People in these fashion threads apply this philosophy as ruthlessly to the rest of their lives, or if it's a brand of hostility reserved solely for clothing and appearance.

I mean, do you paint your home? Do you add seasoning to your foods? For that matter, do you have variety in your diet or simply eat Soylent every day? Anything beyond the bare minimum of everything risks impracticality. But while all the other myriad impracticalities of life get a pass, heaven forfend a ruffle.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:06 AM on September 15, 2015 [22 favorites]

The same could have happened if the pants were too long and got caught under the foot.
...
"male" clothing is unmarked, "female" clothing is marked.
...
I always wonder whether the Practicality People in these fashion threads apply this philosophy as ruthlessly to the rest of their lives, or if it's a brand of hostility reserved solely for clothing and appearance.

*shrug*. I'll justify my hostility by my kid's record of having gotten hurt by, or having destroyed, "girl clothes" because they were impractical for kid activities about ten times over five years, vs. 0 times for "boy clothes". Five years in which, overall, the kid has worn "boy" and "girl" clothes about equally.

Kid activities are just like adult activities, but more so.
posted by gurple at 9:07 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Things weren’t always like this. In Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America, historian Jo B. Paoletti reports that just over 100 years ago, boys and girls alike were put in white dresses until they were about six, because they could be easily bleached clean.

I've wondered about that in Winnie-the-Pooh. In the original illustrations, Christopher Robin looks decidedly feminine to my eyes. He's delicate, he's wearing what almost looks like a skirt, which is not a way that boys are drawn today. Disney's Christopher Robin, by contrast, is definitely a boy.
posted by clawsoon at 9:10 AM on September 15, 2015 [8 favorites]

Girl clothes tend to be made shittier, of course, and thus be easier to destroy. But I have a hard time believing that most parents who don't want to put their son in flowered leggings are doing so because he might somehow trip.
posted by babelfish at 9:11 AM on September 15, 2015 [10 favorites]

On this practicality bit, though - when I was a lot younger, I wore vintage dresses and platform heels every day, except when I wore skirts and tops. (It was fun as costume, but had a lot to do with my feeling a need to perform something I was not....those were some fantastic dresses, though, from back in the nineties before the price of vintage went up.)

I walked to work two miles each way every day year round, except for the same kinds of icy and snowy days that make me take the bus now. I walked miles and miles and miles in nineties platform heels. I marched in protests in them. I worked - an office gig, true, but it was a regular job. I also attended classes.

As long as the heels were well chosen (solid, with yielding rubbery platforms rather than stiff plasticky ones) and the dresses were cotton, those were practical clothes. Also, your feet stay warmer in chunky soles because they're not in contact with the cold, cold sidewalk.
posted by Frowner at 9:14 AM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

But I have a hard time believing that most parents who don't want to put their son in flowered leggings are doing so because he might somehow trip.

Never had any practical issues with the flowered leggings. Add them to the "gender-neutral" bucket!
posted by gurple at 9:15 AM on September 15, 2015

If I had a son, I wouldn't put him in girl clothes because he would be subject to abuse and bullying. (And so would I, probably.) It's as simple as that.
posted by clawsoon at 9:16 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Girl clothes tend to be made shittier, of course, and thus be easier to destroy.

But the important thing to mark is that this is not an inherent necessary quality of girls' clothing. It's not the fault of the cut or the ruffle. That they currently *are not* made well to stand up to activity is because nobody has yet demanded en masse that they be; it isn't because they *can never* be made well.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:16 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'll justify my hostility by my kid's record of having gotten hurt by, or having destroyed, "girl clothes" because they were impractical for kid activities about ten times over five years, vs. 0 times for "boy clothes".

But, again, it sounds more like him tripping on a skirt was a function of the length of the clothes, not the gender of the clothes. The tripping-on-a-skirt could have been alleviated by him having worn a miniskirt, yes?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:18 AM on September 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

Oh boy, a second thread in as many days where we can make sure every kind of person knows that what they put on their bodies is wrong and bad because Reasons. Maybe we could not?

Well, yeah. Equality for all, so equal condemnation for all behaviors. There are no right decisions. Everything you do, or I do, or anyone does, is bad. This is the only possible path to peace.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:19 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I thought by now (I was born in 1970) that we'd be done with this and everyone would be wearing what they liked. This is not the future I signed up for.

Also, I don't know who thought "fake pockets" on girl jeans was a good idea, but if I ever find that person, I will kill them painfully. I do not know what is with the 1.5" deep "pockets" but it sucks. I cannot buy "for men" jeans because there is a twelve inch difference between my waist measurement and my hip measurement. I mean, I can get "men jeans" to fit my hips, but then I can stuff two closed fists down the back of my pants without touching fabric. :(
posted by which_chick at 9:22 AM on September 15, 2015 [13 favorites]

That they currently *are not* made well to stand up to activity is because nobody has yet demanded en masse that they be; it isn't because they *can never* be made well.

Right, of course not! I'm just saying that "girl clothes fall apart" is not actually an answer to "why aren't girl clothes considered gender-neutral."

Never had any practical issues with the flowered leggings. Add them to the "gender-neutral" bucket!

Cool, when the kid gets shit on for wearing "girl clothes," we'll just tell the bullies "gurple said these are okay."

More seriously/less shadily: I'm sure everyone here is extremely enlightened on the subject of kids' clothes and gender! (Okay, I'm not sure, but I'm willing to take your word for it in this context.) The point is that as a society we treat masculine clothes (and books, and movies, and bodies) as default and neutral, and feminine ones as marked. That's true even if you specifically would put your child in all the skirts he wanted except that he fell down that one time.
posted by babelfish at 9:23 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

The tripping-on-a-skirt could have been alleviated by him having worn a miniskirt, yes?

You know, never had a practical problem with a miniskirt, either. Add those to the gender-neutral hamper, too! And give them the same norms as shorts, to avoid too-cold-to-go-outside-in-this and my-knee-is-a-bloody-mess issues.

Long skirts, ribbons, long ties / bows, ruffles and lace and other snaggy things. Those are the things we've had problems with.

And, no, I don't want to tell anybody they can't wear these things. I just wish my kid didn't feel all this pressure, this obviously-culturally-derived desire to wear them, that overrides all the practical concerns.
posted by gurple at 9:26 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, I don't know who thought "fake pockets" on girl jeans was a good idea

And yet, we have at home a pair of baby-sized booty shorts with honest-to-god pockets. She could keep a couple of crackers in there if she wanted to. WHY?
posted by uncleozzy at 9:26 AM on September 15, 2015

But that's not so much a matter of physical ability or functionality as cultural conditioning, which is precisely what is being questioned here.


Oh I agree. I meant "can't" as in "society finds it unacceptable" rather than "good reason why they shouldn't". She mentions Jaden Smith who I love for just being like "I'm wearing this piece of fabric today" which is all that clothes are. It's just a pity that my 6 year old niece gets to wear a black shirt and leggings and tiny converse without anyone batting an eyelid, but a 6 year old boy wearing a pink tshirt and floral leggings and tiny converse with glitter would get the side eye at best and bullied at worst. Exactly the same clothes but for colour and pattern. It's stupid.
posted by billiebee at 9:27 AM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

And yet, we have at home a pair of baby-sized booty shorts with honest-to-god pockets. She could keep a couple of crackers in there if she wanted to. WHY?

Because laundry time should be a time for surprises, namely "what the hell will I find in those pockets this time?"
posted by filthy light thief at 9:28 AM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

women are often pressured to wear clothes that are exceedingly impractical for the movement that the women will be making in them

In female social-perfomance clothing, sure. But men aren't allowed to wear yoga pants either. It's bad enough going for coffee in bike shorts.
posted by bonehead at 9:31 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

You know, I was hoping the recent superhero trends would change this. But nooooo. Black Widow has to wear some crazy PVC pseudo-bondage wear, while Hawkeye is super-SWAT guy in rumpled 511s. Where are the frigging purple tights!?!
posted by bonehead at 9:34 AM on September 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

As long as “feminine” is treated as a synonym for “weak,” girls are going to continue to be underestimated and boys are going to continue to be bullied when they step out of the gender box they’ve been put in.

And the very next sentence is:

Let’s have a moment of appreciation for 16-year-old Jaden Smith

This ain't the Capitol of Panem. Let's not use Jaden Smith as our go-to fashion example.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:34 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Don't use feminization as a put-down.

You're not following...I'm not the one who made pink either feminine or a put down. I'm not even saying pink is feminine. But, I bet cops think it is. Since that's the way it is, let's leverage it to neuter the thugs a bit.

Hence "exploit this discrepency positively".

disclosure: my wardrobe includes pink shirts, pink ties, i have pink shoelaces and pink earbuds. i am a straight cis dude.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:35 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

I think traditional 'girl clothes' are about as effective as leg irons and wrist shackles would be in physically restraining little girls, because you can barely do anything strenuous in such clothes without reducing them to rags.

In fact, they are far more effective because the prisoner soon learns to restrain herself without even realizing it.
posted by jamjam at 9:35 AM on September 15, 2015 [18 favorites]

Various things came over the transom when we did not know sex yet. My son looked fabulous in pink onesies. I just wanted to eat him, but I refrained.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 9:39 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Here is a case study from the hip central part of Stockholm, Sweden:

A friend of mine lives there with his wife, and they had their first kid two years ago. It was a boy, but they bought most of the clothes for him in the Girls’ departments of the stores. Quite a lot of cute things in pink.

Just a few weeks ago they had a second kid, and this time it was a daughter. Now they’re facing a problem: If she gets to inherit the stuff her brother wore, it will look like they make a point of dressing their girl in girly clothes. For this, they are going to get judged.
posted by Herr Zebrurka at 9:41 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

I think traditional 'girl clothes' are about as effective as leg irons and wrist shackles would be in physically restraining little girls, because you can barely do anything strenuous in such clothes without reducing them to rags.

I mean how traditional are we getting here? Petticoats and patent-leather slippers? Any skirts at all? Anything pink? Anything sold in any girls' clothing section anywhere?

Moreover as it happens the children in my world are mostly small boys, who shred, stain, or otherwise destroy literally every article of clothing they own, constantly. My cousin keeps spare clothes in her backpack for her sons because odds are they will destroy whatever they're wearing before day's end. So are they, too, imprisoned by their clothing then? Or is it actually that we sexist-ly expect little girls to keep their clothing in good, neat order and not little boys?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:42 AM on September 15, 2015 [13 favorites]

We need to stop devaluing femininity.
posted by panama joe at 9:45 AM on September 15, 2015 [8 favorites]

Or is it actually that we sexist-ly expect little girls to keep their clothing in good, neat order and not little boys?

My kid has "girl clothes" and "boy clothes", and several types of the "girl clothes" fall to tatters when, you know, used, or they become dangerous. The "boy clothes" don't.

Same kid, different clothes. I couldn't really care less about good, neat order. I don't believe that my frustration with the impracticality of some of the "girl clothes" derives from sexist expectations on my part. But, hey, I'm me, so I wouldn't, I guess.
posted by gurple at 9:50 AM on September 15, 2015

One of the comments on the story makes a great point that has crossed my mind a couple of times before: Why are women expected to dress up in the fancy clothes in our society? In the past, it was kings and dukes and knights - i.e. men - who wore the frills and the high heels and jewels.
posted by clawsoon at 9:51 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

j_curiouser: last night i had a thought that might exploit this discrepency positively...mandatory barbie pink for all cop uniforms, cars, and tactical gear.

splitpeasoup: Actually, Jon Arpaio has already subscribed to this newsletter, to put down people he didn't like.

Don't use feminization as a put-down.

I also don't view pink tactical gear for all police as a put-down, but a forced re-evaluation of perceived color norms. For example, "Around this time (in 2003) in the height of his mainstream fame, Cam'ron was known for popularizing the color pink. During this period, Cam'ron was always seen wearing pink clothing and even bought an all-pink Range Rover, which can be seen in his video for "Killa Cam"."
posted by filthy light thief at 9:51 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

My 4-year old pseudo-niece's clothes currently seem to be usually some kind of leggings and a t-shirt. They may usually be pinker and/or sparklier than 'boy's clothes' but I can't see that they are less practical. She certainly gets them dirty enough. I'm not thrilled with the intense color coding that society, or at least stores, are trying to push, but it doesn't mean that girls are being crippled by the *form* of the clothes.
posted by tavella at 9:52 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Pink isn't weak: see guns [that] are produced in bright blue, pink and rainbow colours and marketed like toys, under the tag line "My First Rifle".
posted by filthy light thief at 9:53 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

> On another note - you can have voluminous "impractical" boy clothes, too - not common in the contemporary West, but hakama would suck on a bike, running in a really formal djelleba would be a bad idea, etc. (Come to that, running in a tiny wool suit isn't that easy either, but if we're talking about volume....) "Practical [for movement]" and "impractical [for movement]" is related to gendered clothes, in that women are often pressured to wear clothes that are exceedingly impractical for the movement that the women will be making in them - thin clothes for cold rooms, high heels for long walks, tight fits when you'll be bending and stooping - but you could certainly envision a utopia where clothes were organized not along gender axes but along "plain" and "fancy", "tight" and "loose", etc. So you might like plain tight clothes or fancy loose ones, for instance.

I am bemused at how often it is still taken as a plain fact that men's clothing is so very practical compared to women being such slaves to uncomfortable fashion...as the men complain bitterly about the summertime heat while wearing three times as much clothing as I.
posted by desuetude at 9:55 AM on September 15, 2015 [7 favorites]

Mr. Stuck (British by birth [Welsh by the grace of God]) and I just got back from our honeymoon, which we mostly spent in the rural southern US. Now he's a bearded, rugby-playing man's man from coal mining country, but as a feminist and a Londoner, he was gobsmacked by the extreme fragility of American masculinity, as represented in how tightly policed men's clothing choices were.

Example: He wanted a simple pair of sneakers, but trips to 15-20 different stores selling footwear yielded almost nothing in any color other than black, gray, dark blue, military olive etc. In the end, exasperated, he bought a pair of day-glo coral-pink running shoes. From the women's section, which was brilliant with color choices. The clerk at the cash register tried valiantly to correct his "error", and every. Single. Time he wore them in public thereafter, for the duration of our trip, a stranger (always male) would comment jovially/nervously on them. A man! In pink shoes!! Was I, his wife, okay with this??

We bought an extra suitcase for all the new clothing we anticipated buying, but I just ended up filling it with stuff for me because the men's clothes were all too deeply boring for him.
posted by stuck on an island at 9:56 AM on September 15, 2015 [20 favorites]

Clawsoon's coment is correct. a bit of history rather than they way we are today would indicate how often in fact boys were dressed in girl clothes:
http://histclo.com/style/skirted/Dress/dresswhy.html
posted by Postroad at 10:01 AM on September 15, 2015

Fashion: othering people since forever.
posted by enjoymoreradio at 10:01 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

holborne: There's nothing inherently impractical about skirts at all, if they're the proper length for what you intend to do in them, and they're way more comfortable than trousers.

Except for chafing. Ugh.

Frowner: you can have voluminous "impractical" boy clothes, too - not common in the contemporary West, but hakama would suck on a bike

Hakama were originally for horse riding. You can tie them off at your knees, and there are plenty of ukiyo-e woodblocks and photos of intrepid Meiji era girls riding bikes, since hakama are practically bloomers. For that matter, you can ride a bike in a kimono as long as you hitch it up, too.

(In the "riding bikes" picture, there is only one male article of clothing that women started using in the Meiji era, and it's the black long "jacket" or haori the woman pushing the baby cart is wearing. Women have been wearing hakama since the 800s, although for some occupations only like shrine maidens, and some kinds of hakama are unparted)
posted by sukeban at 10:04 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Mod note: A few comments deleted. Let's not tank the conversation by attributing overt misogyny or false consciousness to other people in the thread?
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:04 AM on September 15, 2015

There's nothing inherently impractical about skirts at all, if they're the proper length for what you intend to do in them, and they're way more comfortable than trousers.

I mean, maybe for you? I find them uncomfortable and impractical and unpleasant. If they are long they impede my stride and if they are short they add 100% more microaggressions to my day from men on the street who are apparently sent into a wild hormonal frenzy by the sight of a human leg.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:05 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

and if they are short they add 100% more microaggressions to my day from men on the street

This is not a quality inherent to the skirt.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:07 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

(I'm a firm believer in the idea that "femininity" and "masculinity" are divisive instruments, cudgels used to enact violence against anyone who fails to meet the arbitrarily assigned standards of their not-so-arbitrarily assigned role, to the point where saying the words themselves is starting to make my mouth feel like it's been filled with poison. So please forgive all of my scare quotes.)

The constellation of characteristics connoted by the word "feminine," at least in North America and Europe, are seen as both innately lesser than and completely inextricable from womanhood itself (which is, fully independent of "femininity," also seen as innately lesser than). We can't escape, we can't win. This is exemplified by the way that girls and women who are deemed insufficiently "feminine" are given helpful labels to demarcate them as existing in a separate space from 'standard' women: A non-"feminine" girl is "a butch" or "tomboy" where a "feminine" girl is simply "a girl." Once they grow up, "feminine" women are ridiculed for behaving in a manner deemed to be showy and frivolous, while non-"feminine" women are ridiculed for failing to fulfill their roles as appropriately attractive decorative objects. Oh, and we're all encouraged to fight amongst ourselves and absolutely fucking hate ourselves and each other, especially our bodies, no matter what.

You can say some of the same for boys and men -- a "masculine" boy is just "a boy" ("boys will be boys!") while a non-"masculine" boy is "girly" or "effeminate." But though he's forced to carry the horrifically destructive burden of resistance toward any kind of emotion aside from anger, a "masculine" man is also lauded for his physical and psychological strength, power, intelligence, and rationality. He is the default human being; we view the world through his eyes. A "feminine" woman, meanwhile, is denoted by her inescapable physical and psychological weakness, frivolity, dim-wittedness, and irrationality. To that end, even the most progressive-minded people will regularly translate a "delicate" person as "feminine." Impenetrable patience, submissiveness, and a hesitant demeanor are seen as fundamental indicators of womanhood (or an otherwise failed/broken manhood), while a dominant, rough-and-tumble, unapologetically forthright person is deemed "masculine" and is thus either a failed/broken woman or a man.

Behaviors that we tend to shore up with the labels of "masculine" and "feminine" are, when the rubber hits the road, simply variations in individual aesthetics and personality. We're only encouraged to ascribe such grave significance to them in order to keep everyone in line so the most foundational structures of sexism remain untouched, if not outright unnoticed.
posted by divined by radio at 10:07 AM on September 15, 2015 [9 favorites]

This is not a quality inherent to the skirt.

since nothing like that happens when i wear shorts of identical length i'm going to have to disagree.

like obviously the terrible men themselves are to blame but i don't think there's anything problematic about me choosing to avoid situations that make me uncomfortable/unhappy/murderously fucking enraged.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:12 AM on September 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

Obviously, in our culture skirts and dresses are "girl" clothes. Many skirts and dresses, depending on cut and fabric, might not be suitable for vigorous activity.

I contend, though, that "girl" clothes are "girl" clothes not because they are skirts/dresses but because of how they are designed to fit the body, the colors and the ornament. "Girl" clothes are almost always designed to fit tightly, to show the body (unless society deems you too old/fat, in which case you get the mushroom-colored muumuu). Often tight clothes have stretch, though, like leggings, which makes them very practical for movement. "Girl" clothes are usually brightly colored, which has nothing to do with practicality unless you're a guerrilla hiding in the mountains. "Girl" clothes have more ornament than "boy" clothes, and the ornament is coded feminine - so maybe ruffles and lace trim, maybe sequins, maybe a print, etc. This might have to do with movement if it's voluminous, scratchy, catches on things, etc, but just as easily might not.

Basically, "girl" clothes are not categorically impractical, and the insistence that they are impractical is a political insistence.

Seriously, why not wear something fancy? It's okay to like wearing fancy things. It's even okay not to be ready to hike the Blue Ridge Mountains at a moment's notice.

Also, for pete's sake, the amount of bushwacking that I do is extremely minimal. I don't actually need intensely practical clothes. I can get by in virtually all situations with stretchy pants and a not-too-binding shirt, and that could easily be lame leggings and a poet blouse if I could be employable like that.

Hakama were originally for horse riding. You can tie them off at your knees, and there are plenty of ukiyo-e woodblocks and photos of intrepid Meiji era girls riding bikes, since hakama are practically bloomers. For that matter, you can ride a bike in a kimono as long as you hitch it up, too.

Okay, in the utopian future when it somehow won't be offensive cultural appropriation, I now plan to wear hakama.
posted by Frowner at 10:13 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

If you use hakama for a purpose for which they were designed, and not as "exotic" adornment, is it still cultural appropriation?
posted by enjoymoreradio at 10:17 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

They're a standard part of the uniform for kendo and aikido (at least above a certain level), so you just have to take up martial arts :D

(Curiously, back in the day Ueshiba Morihei, the founder of aikido, insisted that female students wear hakama, since he felt the usual dojo trousers were underwear so it wasn't proper to see women in them only)
posted by sukeban at 10:17 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I always wonder whether the Practicality People in these fashion threads apply this philosophy as ruthlessly to the rest of their lives, or if it's a brand of hostility reserved solely for clothing and appearance.

Part of it is male performance in current US culture. Caring about appearance is in opposition to the demonstration that you're a rugged man. Of course, that male performance requires close attention to appearance to get right: certain colour of checked shirt unbuttoned in exactly this way, tight jeans but not too tight, worn, but not faded, the right kinds of shoes or boots, but no points or heels higher than 1/2", belt 1 1/2", belt buckle should be at least as big as your fist, but not as big as both, etc...

Male performance is often defined (to young boys) as a rejection of the female performance norm. If girls prefer this, then boys have to do the opposite to be male. Men have few options to strive towards (suits, construction/farm clothes and recently military garb being some of the main ones), but lots of options it's important to reject.

The oppositional nature of male performance for boys is often not well understood in these conversations. Boys, in many ways, are taught to become male by being not-girls, a negative to the female positive, rather than just aspiring to a positive male model.
posted by bonehead at 10:17 AM on September 15, 2015 [15 favorites]

Except for chafing. Ugh.

You're right; I should have said that I find them more comfortable than trousers.
posted by holborne at 10:18 AM on September 15, 2015

OK, to attempt to extract the non-fighty elements from my sentiments:

That girls' clothing, which is to say, clothing marketed and sold to girls, by which I mean *child* girls, is often of poor quality and non-sturdy is not inherent to the clothing and is in fact more likely the result of the exact fundamentally sexist place people here are decrying. Traditionally, girl children are expected to sit down and shut up and therefore there is little demand for sturdier clothing with more action-friendly embellishment. It is not because there is no humanly-possible way to make a ruffly dress that doesn't fall apart.

since nothing like that happens when i wear shorts of identical length i'm going to have to disagree.

like obviously the terrible men themselves are to blame but i don't think there's anything problematic about me choosing to avoid situations that make me uncomfortable/unhappy/murderously fucking enraged.

Nobody is saying anyone must wear anything at all. I certainly am not saying that all persons must wear skirts at all times. I am not even saying that it's problematic for a woman to avoid feminine clothing entirely, in part, or based on situation. Literally everyone should wear the thing that they want to wear all of the time and never wear a thing they don't want to wear. Ever. Even if what a person wants to wear is a bathrobe and no shirt in public. I don't care. Wear the thing.

I am just trying to say that yes, exactly this: the terrible men are the thing to blame. And it is THEM, not the skirts, not the ruffles, not the pink, that are problematic and should be ditched en masse by society.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:20 AM on September 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

When I was a little kid, I regularly kicked ass in a corduroy jumper. Yes, I think I ripped out the knees on every pair of tights I ever wore when I was little but a dress or a skirt isn't necessarily impractical. I have a fleece skirt that I often go hiking in and wear when I am skiing. It's crazy practical for keeping my bum warm on the lift and hiding it when I take off my rain pants in the parking lot.

It boils down to feminine being bad and masculine being good. If you want to be equal, then equality wears men's trousers. The default is male, the oddity is female. This is a disservice to women AND men. Why is it so funny when sketch comedy does drag? Why does a man cross-dress in secret while I could walk into a women's clothing store and buy what is essentially a men's suit cut for my body type? Because female is a little ridiculous. And it's not because is actually is, it's because we say it is. And all the things we associate with femininity get corralled into the realm of ridiculous, too. We rope off a whole host of things and mark them as feminine and make males feel as if wearing certain things, saying certain things, and feeling certain things are a lesser version of human and that screws over everybody.
posted by Foam Pants at 10:21 AM on September 15, 2015 [13 favorites]

FYI - I know Audra Williams off-Mefi, and let her know this made it over here; she's observed that it doesn't look like many people have RTFA.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:26 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

I find leggings impractical because they show the outline of my underwear, and because they are too easy to accidentally rip, and they are always going baggy at the knee. I find most frilly / sequiny things impractical because I can't work out how to launder them properly and have them still look decent afterwards. Also in tight skirts I can't walk properly, and in flowy skirts I'm perpetually worried about the wind blowing them up, and either way how am I supposed to decently climb over a fence? And feminine-coded colours are all the ones that show dirt most readily.

However, I'm intrigued by the concept of practical but feminine clothes and will be looking out for them assiduously from here on.
posted by emilyw at 10:26 AM on September 15, 2015

SKORTS
posted by poffin boffin at 10:27 AM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

WITH POCKETS
posted by poffin boffin at 10:28 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

It boils down to feminine being bad and masculine being good.

Does it? I want my kid to be able to run and jump and play. I don't have a problem with clothes that let my kid do that, whatever the cultural baggage. But my kid is pressured by the culture, mainly at school, to wear clothes that totally get in the way of active play.

I don't think feminine is bad or masculine is good. I'm perfectly happy to see my kid wear practical, feminine clothes or practical, masculine clothes. I often encourage both of those types of clothing. I just wish the pressure wasn't there to wear stuff that interferes with activity.
posted by gurple at 10:33 AM on September 15, 2015

Or, I guess to be absolutely as precise as possible: While the wearing of a skirt may be problematic, as in causing a problem, for an individual person on a specific day in a specific context, the very existence of skirts is not problematic outside of an assumption that "women coded things" are inferior.

Also in tight skirts I can't walk properly, and in flowy skirts I'm perpetually worried about the wind blowing them up, and either way how am I supposed to decently climb over a fence? ... However, I'm intrigued by the concept of practical but feminine clothes and will be looking out for them assiduously from here on.

Now that I've quibbled over "problematic" I would like to add "practical" to my quibbling list as well. As frowner noted above, what's "practical" depends upon context. Yes, a long flowy skirt is impractical for fence climbing; if you, like me, have not climbed a fence in 30 years, is a long skirt then a fundamentally impractical thing to own? The odds of my having to climb a fence within the next 10 years of my life approach zero. Also, I mean...we change our clothes...like...a lot. Based on our expectations for the activity we're doing. There seems to have been this weird assumption in the thread that "feminine clothes are okay" means "and the most extreme form of this is now mandatory for all persons at all times."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:35 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

"... the most extreme form of [feminine clothing] is now mandatory for all persons at all times."

Put a "female-presenting" in front of that "persons", up there, and that describes the culture in my kid's preschool during the Frozen Era pretty well.
posted by gurple at 10:38 AM on September 15, 2015

Oh hey, this has a name. Status Contamination. Girls (can) achieve enhanced status through adopting (some of) the symbols and behaviors of malehood. Boys (usually) lose status through adopting (any of) the symbols and behaviors or girlhood. Notice even the difference there. Girls are often punished for taking on certain indicators of maleness. Boys are not punished for strenuously avoiding female association. This continues through the life cycle from birth.

It has been studied in the context of wage earning. (that's just an abstract, sorry I can't provide a full text. There are many academic articles about status contamination in the work force.)

HuffPo has probably many more than this regarding "Market Segmentation." Notice the headline alludes to the fact that "patriarchy hurts men and boys too!"

Forbes talks about it with regard to adult male purchasing.

Status contamination creeps into the laundry aisle.

And if we have to be women, we learn by the time that we're college aged that being straight (or passing as straight) is maybe going to help us, and we've learned how to push other sexual orientations out of our field vision. We focus on "hetero" activities and women who don't conform are hurt by this.

Status contamination may "harm" Porsche because now women are buying them.

And yes, I've mentioned this here on the blue before.
posted by bilabial at 10:46 AM on September 15, 2015 [34 favorites]

Surely refraining from climbing over fences and walls and things is itself a feminine behaviour, largely caused by the traditions of wearing impractical clothes? I love exploring the built environment I live in (and the rural environment I'm close to) and can't imagine restraining myself to the portion of the environment that's accessible to skirt-wearers while retaining safety and decency.

Obviously people's don't have to wear clothes of the same level of practicality all the time, but still, it's very much a tradeoff for me between femininity and practicality.
posted by emilyw at 10:49 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Clothes without pockets are for people with purses. Clothes with pockets are for everyone.
posted by Sunburnt at 10:50 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Surely refraining from climbing over fences and walls and things is itself a feminine behaviour, largely caused by the traditions of wearing impractical clothes?

Or the tradition of living in a city where we don't really have that many fences or the need to climb them? If I climb the fences in my immediate vicinity I'll be arrested for trespassing and at any rate the only thing I'd see is what kind of garbage bin my neighbors have.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:52 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

I wear an a-line skirt with deep pockets coupled with capri tights and I can do anything I want. Also, just wearing yoga pants is rather practical for lots of activities were you don't want clothing catching on anything. However, guys wearing yoga pants would probably get a lot of snickers and I don't mean the candy bar because that kind of getting snickers would be awesome and getting laughed at is not awesome.
posted by Foam Pants at 10:57 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Everybody is diff-rent
Everyone has different needs
Some of us live in apaaaaartments
Some of us wade through weeds
Some of us wear jeans that do not rip
Some of us wear dresses but do not trip
Everybody is diiiiff-rent
So wear just what you please!
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:00 AM on September 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

One weird side effect about masculine clothing being the default is that there's nothing I (a trans guy) can wear to definitively make a statement about how I'm trying to be read. If I'm not immediately read as male, I don't think people assume I'm trying to look "like a boy" and failing, they think I'm a lesbian/tomboy. Whereas I was out with an AMAB person wearing feminine accoutrements (skirt, earrings, though no makeup) and it was immediately (correctly) assumed that they were gender-variant.
posted by desjardins at 11:17 AM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

Status Contamination is also why given names shift from masculine to feminine, and why names ending in "-son" are being given more and more to daughters.
posted by fings at 11:20 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Gotta say, at the peak of grunge, I personally liked it when my girlfriend wore the overalls and I wore the skirt over jeans.
posted by Nanukthedog at 11:20 AM on September 15, 2015

One weird side effect about masculine clothing being the default is that there's nothing I (a trans guy) can wear to definitively make a statement about how I'm trying to be read

Indeed, with the irritating consequence, too, that anything that isn't ultra generic masculine feminizes you. Admittedly, feminizes you into greater safety, which is not what happens with trans women, but still less than ideal. There are a whole host of things that I'd like to wear that make me read as feminine simply because they aren't, like, a bow tie and a sweater vest.
posted by Frowner at 11:22 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

In fact, I spent part of the summer attempting to incorporate more androgynous/feminine items of clothing into an overall masculine presentation, and all that happened was that people were much nicer to me, because I was no longer a gender freak/trans person/queer but instead a cis straight lady, as testified to by the fact that I was wearing a boxy but crew-necked woven silk shirt.
posted by Frowner at 11:24 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've only worn a skirt once (at a church camp of all places, and a Pentecostal church camp of all possible churches) but I noticed that it provided significantly more air circulation than a pair of pants or shorts. I wouldn't be averse to buying a few pairs to make it through the summer without succumbing to heat stroke, but I'm sure the social backlash would more than outweigh that benefit.
posted by bracems at 11:32 AM on September 15, 2015

What trends to the masculine is accepted as the default to desire, and anything that moves in that direction is considered to be a more appropriate way to blur and bend gender lines than what moves the opposite direction. To that, I also think any style or manner of dress that trends to the feminine is always looked at with a more critical and judging eye. But to me that's odd because "feminine" is not inherently bad or a tool of the patriarchy designed to keep women down or whatever, rather, femininity has been co-opted by the patriarchy to be constructed "weak" and "lesser" and I say it's time to kick that shit thinking out of femininity.

Short Form: There's nothing inherently "weak" or "lesser" about the structure and design of feminine dress. With a little modification all clothes of all gender types can be just as practical and useful as any other. We just have to get over our programming about "boys" versus "girls". (and uh, yeah, that's not a small or easy task...)
posted by Annika Cicada at 11:35 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

The article is not really about whether women or girls should do anything, but instead questioning why boys don't wear dresses but girls do. Not "should," but "do."
posted by jaguar at 11:47 AM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

I've only worn a skirt once (at a church camp of all places, and a Pentecostal church camp of all possible churches) but I noticed that it provided significantly more air circulation than a pair of pants or shorts. I wouldn't be averse to buying a few pairs

Teehee...they're just skirts. Not a pair of skirts. But this was really cute and made me giggle. ;]
posted by fiercecupcake at 11:49 AM on September 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

In contra dancing, at least modern contras in the North East of the U.S., skirts are increasingly accepted as menswear, to the point where a guy in a skirt wasn't counted as being in costume for a Halloween event. Lots of men who are otherwise entirely gender-conforming in their street wear will change into skirts at contra dances. Commonly cited reasons for men to wear skirts include better ventilation, the way it floats up during twirls, and signalling that they would not offended if a man were to ask them to dance.

Interestingly, the contra dancers overlap quite a bit with a related folk dance community, the Scottish dancers. Scottish has a strong distinction between kilts and skirts. Kilts are masculine. At formal balls almost all the men will wear them. But skirts are feminine. I've heard a Scottish instructor observe that all the men they know who wear skirts (rather than kilts) are somewhat non-gender-conforming in other ways. It's as if all the Scottish dancers who wanted a skirt for the ventilation or the twirl went into the kilt camp, leaving only the men who wanted to present as feminine to wear skirts.
posted by d. z. wang at 11:56 AM on September 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

If I had a son, I wouldn't put him in girl clothes because he would be subject to abuse and bullying. (And so would I, probably.) It's as simple as that.

I wonder about this as the parent of a 2.75y/o. He thinks it's a gas to get his toenails painted and we're more than happy to indulge him (though the yellow color he picked in the grocery last week ends up just making his toenails look dirty/diseased; mental note: push him towards the green one he was also holding next time). But at some point this sort of thing gets pushback from the gorillas who haven't painted stripes down their backs and how do I handle that? Hope he's gotten enough message at home that it's cool to be happy and that he's also inclined to stand up for himself on this stuff? Try to explain - as best you can to a wee one - about the insane gender politics and prejudices of the world?

The prospect of trying to explain the awfulness of the world without in any way sounding like I am condoning it is just wearying.

But I am with Audra Williams on what I think was the subtext of that opening story: deliberately misgendering an author because of young boy prejudices is horsehockey. Why would that teacher not simply leave out this fact till the kids were into the book? Subvert biases or avoid them. Playing into them with falsehood doesn't seem like it helps anyone.
posted by phearlez at 12:09 PM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese: That girls' clothing, which is to say, clothing marketed and sold to girls, by which I mean *child* girls, is often of poor quality and non-sturdy is not inherent to the clothing and is in fact more likely the result of the exact fundamentally sexist place people here are decrying. Traditionally, girl children are expected to sit down and shut up and therefore there is little demand for sturdier clothing with more action-friendly embellishment. It is not because there is no humanly-possible way to make a ruffly dress that doesn't fall apart.

When I went shopping for panties for my daughter, I found myself wondering where the "active play" panties were. How do these frills not chafe? How do these little bows not fall off?

I still haven't figured it out.
posted by clawsoon at 12:16 PM on September 15, 2015

Reading the article, I want to point out that this is something I see actively changing, at least in the liberal parts of the U.S. I moved from the Midwest, where most boys avoid "girly" things like the plague, to Seattle, where I regularly see young boys with long hair, skirts, and nail polish, not as part of deliberate gender presentation, but just as things they like. I see much less "pink princesses are stupid" here and more "pink princesses are not inherently gendered and can belong to boys too." Obviously it's still early in this cultural shift, but I think it's real and here to stay.
posted by thetortoise at 12:24 PM on September 15, 2015 [8 favorites]

...Seattle, where I regularly see young boys with long hair, skirts, and nail polish, not as part of deliberate gender presentation, but just as things they like.

As a parent of a rising Kindergartener in Seattle, I hope I see some of what you speak of, someday. Certainly hasn't been the case in my kid's preschool experience, or in her summer camp this summer, in which she was mixed in with 5-12s.

One or two boys with longish hair is about what I've seen so far.
posted by gurple at 12:27 PM on September 15, 2015

As a parent of a rising Kindergartener in Seattle, I hope I see some of what you speak of, someday. Certainly hasn't been the case in my kid's preschool experience, or in her summer camp this summer, in which she was mixed in with 5-12s.

Yeah, it's a small trend, for sure, but it's something I literally never saw in Missouri, and I'm also seeing (this is my job) more kids' media actively representing and discussing boys liking "feminine" things. This kind of expansion of "boy stuff" is probably coming primarily from families that are consciously feminist and pushing against gender programming, but I suspect we'll see it making more inroads into the culture in a few years. The pushback against Target's gendered toy labeling, for example, is a small thing, but it may open up possibilities for kids of all genders.
posted by thetortoise at 12:37 PM on September 15, 2015

All I'm saying is... Girls can find sexy boxers and boyshorts, but it's hard for a large man to find sexy panties in this world. And Manties don't count!
posted by symbioid at 12:44 PM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Amen Symbioid, Amen. That said:

This page may help with your issue

;-)
posted by Annika Cicada at 12:49 PM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Sooner or later, it will become acceptable for men to wear skirts/kilts as casual wear without transgressing against gender norms. Garments of this form hav a comfort advantage over trousers, and it probably won't be long until some pioneering dude decides to seize them for Team XY. Perhaps expect the first broskirt to be a boxy number in heavy dark denim, perhaps with tactical pockets to emphasise its (and its wearer's) essential masculinity; it'll be followed by artisanal hipster numbers styled on craftsmen's leather aprons and accessorising well with Herschel backpacks.
posted by acb at 1:39 PM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sooner or later, it will become acceptable for men to wear skirts/kilts as casual wear without transgressing against gender norms.

What do you mean "will become" acceptable?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:20 PM on September 15, 2015

I was particularly amused by this image result. I'm not entirely sure this can be honestly called a kilt.
posted by jeather at 2:24 PM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Sooner or later, it will become acceptable for men to wear skirts/kilts as casual wear without transgressing against gender norms. Garments of this form hav a comfort advantage over trousers, and it probably won't be long until some pioneering dude decides to seize them for Team XY. Perhaps expect the first broskirt to be a boxy number in heavy dark denim, perhaps with tactical pockets to emphasise its (and its wearer's) essential masculinity; it'll be followed by artisanal hipster numbers styled on craftsmen's leather aprons and accessorising well with Herschel backpacks.

I am sure you're right, but don't see how this is in any way a rebuttal to the article's central point, which is that things only become acceptable for men when they are brought into line with a very specific, aggressively unfeminine aesthetic. It will just be more of the same, simmering soup of misogyny only then people who wear "feminine" skirts will be even *more* criticized; "why would you wear a feminine skirt when a perfectly superior masculine one exists," etc.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 3:12 PM on September 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

There *are* companies marketing clothes to boys that have more traditionally feminine signifiers.
A friend of mine is one of the proprietors of a company that makes clothes for girls, but they have partnered with a bunch who make clothes for all kids.. see clotheswithoutlimits.

And my memories of skirt wearing would be a lot better if they didn't also come with somebody yelling at me "don't climb that in that skirt" or "don't sit with your legs so wide! You're wearing a skirt, be a lady". (Although I think eventually they gave up.. a few years ago at a family wedding I was again climbing something and yeah, wearing a skirt, and nobody said much..) I didn't make my peace with the fact that skirts can be awesome again until my late twenties...
posted by nat at 3:34 PM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

And my memories of skirt wearing would be a lot better if they didn't also come with somebody yelling at me "don't climb that in that skirt" or "don't sit with your legs so wide! You're wearing a skirt, be a lady".

This, so much. My memories of wearing skirts as a kid are all the ways I somehow found to wear them "wrong." So I would insist on skorts or rompers, only to be told by adults that those weren't ladylike attire. Ties seem so much more complicated, and yet nobody has ever told me I'm wearing one "wrong." Still working through all my internalized misogyny and association of masculinity with practicality. It's a process...
posted by thetortoise at 3:56 PM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

On the issue of practicality: the Royal Armouries Ms. I.33 depicts unarmoured fencers, men and a woman, in tunics or gowns. The problem of length is avoided by tucking the bottom of the garment up into the belt. Depictions of activity in lots of robe or gown like articles of clothing across cultures show this sort of practice. Some issues of practicality come from the design and quality of the clothing. Some come from the awareness of how to use the clothing. These issues or not intrinsically tied to their coding as feminine or masculine. As a US citizen I live in a culture that does in fact strongly couple practicality and gendered coding of lots of types of clothing together; however, it may not be obvious that it could be any other way without knowledge of clothing history and clothing of other cultures.

I can see that the current situation regarding feminjne coded clothing doesn't have be this way; however, as a father unfortunately I have to deal with the fact that there is not much I can do in a few years to change it so radically that feminine clothes are no longer seen as weak. Small things maybe. I am working on changing my attitude towards pink, and I hope my sons won't pick up on it. I love clothing of all types, for men or women. I wish peopke were freer to where what they like without worry.

Gowns would be so practical for small un-potty trained toddlers to start wearing again.

I envy the old men who walk around my neighborhood in izaar.
posted by Mister Cheese at 5:23 PM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Gowns would be so practical for small un-potty trained toddlers to start wearing again.

All of the photos of my grandfather and great uncles as small children are of them wearing what I would call dresses, not just white but frilly and lacy. But that's what small boys were dressed in at the time, unthinkable as it might be today.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:49 PM on September 15, 2015

This is definitely relevant to my interests. I have a ten month old daughter. She inherited a bunch of clothes from her male cousin when he outgrew them, and I'm a jeans-and-tshirts kind of woman anyway, so in addition to pink dresses and flowery things people have given us she has lots of "gender neutral" and some outright "this was specifically intended for a boy" clothes. She is constantly assumed to be a boy when we're out and about if she is wearing anything short of pink frills. Jeans with a coral colored top? "Oh, he's so sweet!" A onesie with green frogs and flowers? "What a cute little boy!" Black leggings and a yellow shirt? "Hello little man!" Seriously short of putting one of those stupid headbands with a giant flower onto her head to scream THIS IS A FEMALE BABY, I can anecdotally agree that "neutral" reads as "male" for which "neutral" means "anything other than pink frilly princess clothes". I don't really get it. I'm not really offended that people think she's a boy, it just... strikes me as odd, that people (1) insist upon determining a random baby in public's gender themselves rather than asking, if they care, and (2) seem to assume male unless she's in extremely gendered clothing advertising otherwise.

I did struggle with dressing her in some of her cousins extremely gendered male clothing, things that say things like "little boy!" on a shirt or shirts with moustaches and things like that. On one hand I want to not care if my daughter wears things like that, but on the other hand I'm writing it off to being opposed to unnecessarily gendered clothes, period. (We similarly don't own any "Daddy's little girl" or "princess" outfits either)

I do also struggle with what we'd do if we had a boy, and how many of my daughter's outfits he would inherit. The onesie with baby pink stripes in stars? Yeah, I'd probably do that. The dresses? I'll admit it, I'd struggle with that, mainly because I have 100 better things to do than to explain myself to the random strangers who would feel a need to judge and comment on my sartorial choices for my kid. It's one thing if the kid chooses to dress in a non-conforming way, but I would struggle with making the decision myself and then having to defend it constantly.
posted by olinerd at 8:12 PM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I have 100 better things to do than to explain myself to the random strangers

Taking my friend and her newborn out to brunch every Sunday has quickly taught me one thing: random strangers don't need to know they're wrong. If it makes them happy, they can go right on thinking that the little one has my eyes. Who am I to correct them? Certainly not the daddy.
posted by darksasami at 9:12 PM on September 15, 2015

I guess what bums me out the most, is how conforming with gender norms are actually damaging people over the long term, but since it's figuratively "in the air we breathe" we usually don't see those effects, but we sure can immediately feel the shame and stigma for not confirming to the gender norms. What proves my earlier statement in what you said, olinerd, is that you have no qualms dressing your daughter in "more masculine" clothes, yet never mention dressing your daughter in feminine clothes (though you avoid the trite garbage, which high fives on that), and explicitly state you'd struggle with the opposite direction. Your comment Illustrates the frame parents have to live in so perfectly well, and it pains me to read it. Hugs, here's to a better word someday, I hope.
posted by Annika Cicada at 5:43 AM on September 16, 2015

Taking my friend and her newborn out to brunch every Sunday has quickly taught me one thing: random strangers don't need to know they're wrong. If it makes them happy, they can go right on thinking that the little one has my eyes.

It's a rare week someone doesn't go on about how much my adopted son looks just like me. I mostly resist my urge to explain our lack of biological connection and how well this illustrates the role confirmation bias plays into people's spotting of physical similarities. Usually I smile and say something like "no, he's way better looking than me" or if I'm cheeky I go with "it's interesting how that happens, isn't it?" I have so far not used "yes, and he's inherited just as many traits from my wife."

Really, they're just looking to share a little happiness with a stranger. They thought my kid was cute and wanted to convey that because it makes them happy and such things usually make other people happy to hear about their kids. Much of the other gender-coded stuff is the same; they're not trying to pigeonhole my kid in some way, they just are using a language that leans heavily on gendered pronouns and where the genderless options like "it" are dehumanizing and insulting.

Personally I try really hard to find genderless ways to talk about this stuff with strangers but I cut them some slack here. I'm way more concerned with what is, to me, more harmful things like only praising girls on appearance and boys on brains.
posted by phearlez at 6:35 AM on September 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

Gender isn't inherently "bad", how we do it needs help.
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:14 AM on September 16, 2015

Did anyone say it was bad? Certainly wasn't my intention to indicate I thought it was, though at <3 almost everything is irrelevant gender-wise for my kiddo. Since huge bits of it are full of toxic land mine junk that's an excellent reason to avoid coding anything as gender-specific for his age. Even vaguely benign things potentially just reinforce a belief for him that he'll be entitled to the preferential attention and more lax behavioral standards that studies show boys receive.
posted by phearlez at 9:04 AM on September 16, 2015

last night i had a thought that might exploit this discrepancy positively...mandatory barbie pink for all cop uniforms, cars, and tactical gear.

This is such a goddamned good idea, my jaw has literally dropped
posted by skewed at 9:12 AM on September 16, 2015

The actual stupidest difference in clothing gendering: having the buttons on different sides. Is this still a thing? Because if so, I'm pretty sure I made the sweater I sent for a baby shower "wrong." (And I don't care, because what the fuck ever, it's green and lacy and it's baby-sized and climate-appropriate and I fulfilled my social obligation by mailing it in time.)

I have read about people remaking baby/children's clothes to hand down to a child of a different gender by moving the buttons and buttonholes to the other side and that is just the most ridiculous wasted labor I can think of at this exact moment.
posted by asperity at 9:26 AM on September 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

Regarding gender being "bad": There seems to be a prevailing attitude in western culture that "gender is bad because femininity is harmful to women" and there's a trend to veer away from overly feminine articles of clothing and styles because it seems to me based on conversations I have, that the reactionary response to harmful gender programming informs us to trend towards the masculinity over femininity. That's because femininity is seen as bad and harmful, and if we could just escape the feminine, we'd be able to eject from concepts of gender altogether because anything with feminine in it is gender and anything absent the feminine is suddenly without all that bad gender stuff.

That's what it looks like to me based on a lot of discussions I've had, and my counter argument to that is that feminine stuff is not inherently gendered and masculine stuff is not inherently genderless. Rather that femininity can have a respected place at the table and femininity can be reclaimed and turned into something that does not have feel like crap to an overwhelming number of women. It seems to me a lot of us feel negative about femininity based on our upbringing and experiences. I believe we benefit if we look a little deeper at our opinions and feelings about gender and femininity and ponder why the default position for a lot of women is to trend away from it, and for men it's totally verboten.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:55 AM on September 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

The actual stupidest difference in clothing gendering: having the buttons on different sides.

This has been the bane of my existence when switching from women's to men's clothing. It's more than balanced out by the existence of pockets, though. I could shove a state-fair-winning eggplant in the pockets of the men's chinos I am currently wearing.
posted by desjardins at 12:54 PM on September 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

There seems to be a prevailing attitude in western culture that "gender is bad because femininity is harmful to women"

The harms "femininity" inflicts upon women weren't made up out of whole cloth, and the practice isn't maligned without just cause -- it was invented to explain women's inferiority and justify their oppression, just as "masculinity" was invented as justification for male supremacy. And "femininity" without all of that pesky oppressive stuff isn't "femininity," it's human personality.

It seems to me a lot of us feel negative about femininity based on our upbringing and experiences.

A lot of us feel negatively about "femininity" because its frankly arbitrary boundaries have grievously harmed us and our loved ones. Because we've spent our entire lives being taught that "femininity" is equivalent to womanhood itself and thus to fail to meet its standards is to be a broken failure of a female human being. And that although embodying textbook "femininity" might grant you access to authentic, true womanhood, it's also considered equivalent to frivolity, stupidity, and weakness (because, you know, women). That poisonous duality is the main feature of "femininity," not a bug.

femininity can have a respected place at the table and femininity can be reclaimed and turned into something that does not have feel like crap to an overwhelming number of women

How? By completely redefining it? As it currently exists, "femininity" is the method of delivery for the lifelong lesson that girls and women are weak and contemptible. The reason it makes an overwhelming number of women feel like garbage is because its entire purpose is to make us appear manipulable and submissive, whether we agree to it or not. The third wave's attempts to reclaim and empower "femininity" as it's been taught and understood for thousands of years are treading the same territory as religious folks who cherry-pick only the parts of their holy texts that they agree with and then hold those parts up as representative of the whole. Whether any of us like it or not, inferiority has been baked into "femininity" (just as superiority has been baked into "masculinity") from the outset. So if you try to pluck that specific aspect out and leave the rest intact as-is, you're ignoring the intent and the full ramifications of everything our culture has been coding as "feminine" for thousands of years, to the point that you're not even really talking about the same thing anymore.

I believe we benefit if we look a little deeper at our opinions and feelings about gender and femininity and ponder why the default position for a lot of women is to trend away from it, and for men it's totally verboten.

Questioning why many women no longer feel the need to align with "femininity" seems deeply essentialist to me. Same as it ever was, every girl continues to be taught (if not by her family, then by her teachers, schoolmates, religion, culture, etc.) that rejecting "feminine" norms is not in her personal or professional best interest, as every boy is taught the opposite. To that end, "femininity" is verboten for boys and men because it's a set of behaviors demanded exclusively of girls and women. That's it. There is no other reason.
posted by divined by radio at 2:34 PM on September 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't disagree that it's harmful. I understand the history of how femininity has been used to harm women. I think there's a nuance in my comment that was poorly communicated.

Furthermore I am not questioning the correctness of anyone's choice of gender presentation or the direction anyone chooses to go. Rather I am trying to say "let's look at the harm, where it comes from, what amplifies that harm and dig into what motivates people" Which is exactly what you are doing, I'm not in opposition to you. I think what you have experienced is important and needs to be heard clearly. And very very loudly.

Apologies if I came off as essentialist. I hate that I might have and re-reading my comment it comes off like I am. What I am trying to do is communicate the experiences I have had with why "boys don't wear dresses" and make sense of it in a broader context.

Hugs, people.
posted by Annika Cicada at 5:18 PM on September 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think it can be helpful to look at how femininity and girls/women have been devalued in the same ways, and to look at how a lot of feminist responses to that devaluation have actually reinforced that devaluation.
posted by jaguar at 9:08 PM on September 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

I mean, I guess, imagine the girliest girly girl who ever girled. Do you think she should automatically be dismissed, professionally and intellectually? If not, are you working toward a world in which she wouldn't be?
posted by jaguar at 9:09 PM on September 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

femininity can have a respected place at the table and femininity can be reclaimed and turned into something that does not have feel like crap to an overwhelming number of women

How? By completely redefining it? As it currently exists, "femininity" is the method of delivery for the lifelong lesson that girls and women are weak and contemptible.

I feel like a problem in this conversation is that we're not clear on what is meant by "femininity", since it's a big snarl of meaning with a lot caught up in it, and since (IYAM) it's not actually a very useful term except (as divined by radio points out) as a term of abuse.

It seems like "femininity" might mean a lot of stuff.

I suggest that "femininity" is sometimes a relatively neutral characteristic which then has a bad value put on it - as when we say that it's feminine to care about people's feelings or feminine to pay attention to bodily grooming or feminine to wear clothes that show the shape of the body, but then we define those things as bad.

Sometimes "femininity" is defined as "things that need to be done but are tiring or that it's socially advantageous to have as unpaid labor" - so it's "feminine" to care for children or take care of the house and it's "feminine" to know how to do things like sewing on buttons. Basically, these are actively good things to do, but we label them "feminine" in order to devalue them.

Sometimes "femininity" is constructed as restriction or weakness itself. It's "feminine" to wear clothes that are unsuitably restrictive for a given activity (so while a restrictively cut skirt might be perfectly suitable for a reception, it's not suitable for a job where you need to bend and reach a lot); it's "feminine" to be physically weak and never be physically aggressive; it's "feminine" to never show oneself except after careful grooming, no matter the occasion; it's "feminine" to defer to others and put others first regardless of circumstance; it's "feminine" to determine how you dress by whether you are attractive to men (ie, you can and must wear revealing clothes if you're young and thin, but you should wear mushroom-colored sacks if you're old and/or fat). It's not feminine to be aggressive, physically strong, funny, loud and wearing clothes regardless of whether they're appropriate for your fuckability level. It's not feminine to express sexual desire except when men want you to express it. So all these things here seem like what divined by radio is talking about - things that are "feminine" that can't and shouldn't be recuperated.

I feel like the difficulty is that these things are so tightly interwoven.

Also, I think that this big jumble of "femininity" is incoherent, now that I think about it. Why is "wearing clothes that show your body" feminine? Why is it "feminine" to have a fancy hairstyle? Those are things that anyone should feel free to do. Why is it "feminine" to enjoy taking care of a baby? Why is it "feminine" to know how to sew on a button?

I mean, I can imagine a world in which we have a cluster of things that are "feminine" but gender-neutral, so to speak - one could say "he's a very feminine guy" and mean "he paints his nails, cultivates a lovely singing voice and operates our community mediation service", and the word "feminine" would be free of its gendered/negative/massive-ball-of-meaning connotations. So "feminine" would be more of a technical descriptor rather than an emotionally laden term.
posted by Frowner at 9:03 AM on September 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

Julia Serano's Empowering Femininity

In our culture, a trait is deemed “feminine” if it is often associated with women. Common examples include being verbal and communicative, emotive or effusive, being nurturing and having an appreciation for beautiful or aesthetically pleasing things. Similarly, other traits are deemed “masculine” solely because they are often associated with men (being competitive or aggressive, physical exertion or using brute force, being silent and stoic and being mathematically or technically oriented). What all of these traits share is the fact that they are all human traits that are found to varying degrees in all people regardless of their gender. Most of us express some combination of traits from both the feminine and masculine categories.

I would argue that there is nothing inherently wrong with feminine traits—like all human traits, they are often useful and play important roles. However, in our male- and masculine-centric culture, there are several forces that conspire to undermine feminine traits and the people who express them.

[...] While I am all in favor of jettisoning compulsory femininity for girls/women and compulsory masculinity for boys/men, entirely doing away with all such behaviors seems unwarranted. After all, many of these behaviors (being nurturing, competitive, emotive, technically oriented, appreciating beauty or physical exertion) are simply human traits that are unnecessarily categorized as “feminine” or “masculine” by society. This approach also mistakenly assumes that people have no individual inclinations or tendencies with regard to these traits. In reality, many people find that, regardless of the gender they were assigned at birth or how they were raised, they tend to gravitate toward behaviors that are deemed feminine, masculine or some combination thereof.

posted by jaguar at 9:19 AM on September 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

The word "feminine" will never be any kind of useful technical descriptor, not until you remove the prefix. It will never be free of gendered connotations, not until you take women out of the equation -- considering both "masculinity" and "femininity" were both constructed in support of the established structure of male supremacy, "femininity" has never been and will never be neutral.

As far as I'm concerned, there is absolutely no reason to group together personality traits or aesthetic preferences in order to give them the labels of "feminine" or "masculine" other than for the purposes of maintaining the gender hierarchy. It's all just human personality. I could not disagree more vociferously with Julia Serano's take on this topic and I know myself well enough to know that's where I need to drop it.
posted by divined by radio at 9:27 AM on September 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

The construct of gender is completely fucking broken and needs to be overhauled from the ground up.

What I meant by "femininity" was strictly related to the article of this FPP, which is the style, design and construction of clothing. Not behavior, not traits. But clothing.

In that manner, from androgynous to hard femme styles and fashions, you can reconstruct the clothing to be more durable. You can make it "pretty" and functional.

Sorry to confuse the matter. As far as behaviors go, there's nothing inherent to any behavior that marks anyone as masculine or feminine beyond the completely terrible gender programming we were all handed growing up.
posted by Annika Cicada at 9:46 AM on September 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

That said, some people have to live with and engage the completely broken and totally made up bullshit gender norms just to get through the day with some semblance of a life that approaches what most everyone else considers "normal". And for that subset of the population, the gender norms, as harmful as they are, are less harmful than the alternative. Gender as a language is all fucked up, but what do you do with the people for whom that fucked up language is the only tool they have to communicate their self-evident gender?

I guess...to me it seems that our biological sex is really really complicated stuff that's not very deterministic or essentialist at all, I see gender and sex assignment as a jumble of a lot of variables that all interact in some way to make a "sex assignment" that humans made up from a really basic level of understanding of biology (has pee-pee must be man, does not have pee-pee must be woman) and then the concepts of gender were developed from that. So, to me, it seems that even though "gender is all our imagination", it still exists in relation at a very basic level (beneath our constructs of masculine or feminine) to our sexual biology and even if we completely dismantle all terms of differentiation between all apparent sexes and genders, there will remain some level of biological truth to communicate what we now refer to as "gender" even after the patriarchy is torn down and a better thing is constructed in it's place (if ever?)
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:16 AM on September 17, 2015