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ginnyzero · 4 years

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5 Things Women Hate about Women’s Fashion

Comedians joke about this, comic writers use it as punch lines. And Women’s fashion is this huge industry that is considered a lot more experimental than men’s fashion. Because apparently, men won’t put up with the shit that women do. Or, women just haven’t managed to find a way to force the industry to have some common decency standards.

So here is a list of common complaints that women have and even I have.

Vanity Sizing

I’m putting this at number uno. This has been a problem for decades. Years ago, even back when I was a child in the 80s, some smart ass decided that if a woman thought she was a smaller size then she’d be more likely to buy a product. Thus began the psychological practice of vanity sizing. And no woman could go to a store without having to try things on.

This sucks. Women do have standard sizings. The US has standard sizes. Europe has standard sizes. Fashion designers actually learn to make patterns in standard sizing! There are graphs. In fact, most of your home sewing packets with patterns are in standard sizes.

And as the years have gone by, Vanity sizing has gotten smaller and smaller as this psychological trick really doesn’t work as well as they’d want you to believe. Look, I cry when I put on a 00. I don’t want to be that tiny. It’s not a great feeling. Let me be a Small. Let me be a size 4. Even a size 2 feels like too small. Contrary to the industry’s beliefs making a size 18 a size 12 doesn’t make that size 18 actually feel any smaller as a person.

It just makes shopping that more bloody difficult. Am I a small? Am I a medium? Or am I an extra small? (The higher the price point, usually the smaller I am.)

The other issue with vanity sizing is that in grading a pattern, there are literally no standards. The company can say that a size 16 is whatever they want to whatever measurements they want. And this creates a problem with grading. Grading is the method that patterns are increased and decreased to create different sizes from the original sample pattern. Pattern makers make good money because it’s a science to be able to translate the sample into a bigger size and keep the correct proportions of a garment. So, if you buy something that has huge armholes and the armholes just keep getting bigger the bigger the pattern gets, it’s because it wasn’t graded properly and vanity sizing (and a bad pattern grader) are to blame.

This can happen to even the most expensive of garments, say wedding dresses. You spend thousands of dollars on something, you want it to fit! Well, here is my advice, don’t try to have the pattern altered. Don’t raise the neckline especially. Because that’s going to change the entire pattern. It will come back too big. The entire pattern’s measurements are based on the bust. So, if you think the neckline of your wedding gown is too low, choose another gown. Period.

No pockets

Ugh. What happened to pockets? I had pockets in high school. I remember having good front pockets on my jeans during high school. Now, if I want to have front pockets in my jeans instead of small pockets or even fake pockets I have to wear my father’s jeans that shrunk in the wash. Look. I’m a daddy’s girl. I have limits! (And yes, when I worked at my father’s shop I wore male jeans pretty much exclusively even though they bulged in the front when I sat down because they were comfy and had front pockets for my wallet.)

A lot of people blame the handbag industry for this. I don’t. The handbag industry has been around for centuries and before handbags became a status item women had sneaky ways of putting pockets in their clothes. Those big skirts could hide a lot of things including pockets. Chatelaines are awesome.

I blame two things. The recession of the mid-2000s and stretch denim.

Okay, fancy evening dresses and cocktail dresses and such haven’t had pockets really since the sixties. (Fifties full circle skirts allowed for these lovely things called pockets.) But back before lyrca was added to everything patterns had to be created with what was called ease because woven fabrics unlike knits just don’t stretch no matter how hard you pull on them. That’s why you had to “break jeans” and shoes in. You had to manually break down the threads of the denim or stretch the leather of your shoes to get that comfort ease to your clothes.

Denim companies do a lot of prewash and pre-wear work on denim pants and they still came out stiff and would shrink in the wash because cotton. (Stone wash denim is literally put in a big washtub with stones.)

Then Lyrca came about. Spandex was found to be useful for something other than biker shorts and bathing suits. And the Lyrca and Spandex companies began to push and push and push these new fibers. And Fashion really got into it. Look at how tight we can now make jeans.

Then the recession happened. And the first thing that has to go is any extra fabric. So in combination with the fact that fashion “trends” were for really tight pants and these new gadgets called cellphones created unsightly lumps in those really tight pants, front pockets ended up disappearing because hey they could save material cost and manufacturing time. (Yes, any minute of sewing time and excess of material that they can shave off your clothes to save a penny was taken into account in those days.)

And as anyone knows, it’s really difficult to get something back once it’s gone. Once a policy has been instituted, it’s next to impossible to get rid of it. See gas service charges etc.

But we aren’t supposed to be in a recession anymore. There are still super tight pants and dresses without pockets and well, it’s bothersome. Because it’s actually safer to carry something in a pocket than it is in a handbag if you’re a woman. I’d rather have my wallet in my front pocket than in a purse because 9 times out of 10 I don’t have a secure place to leave my purse while working.

Baby Doll T-Shirts and Short Shorts

Sigh.

I put these together because they seem to feed off each other. Why is it that women can’t find a normal wide cut t-shirt or a pair of shorts that at least go to her fingertips? Shorts that are more “bermuda” style and are comfortable aren’t a second skin and don’t chafe. Especially, and I mean especially because girls/women are subjected to some of the most extreme and male pandering dress code rules lawyering that there is in existence.

I went to a Christian School. My dress code insisted on skirts at mid-knee or lower and my shirts had to be within 2 fingers of my collar bone. And I had thin fingers. Even back during the 90s this was a tall order!

I don’t know when tight t-shirts called “Baby doll” (oh don’t get me started on the sexist nature of that name) t-shirts came into being and became popular. And somehow, somehow all the other t-shirts for girls disappeared. Oh yeah, we had a brief resurgence of “too big” 80s style clothing. But that’s not really the same as normal style t-shirts. And around the same time, the short short “daisy duke” style shorts came back into style for all fabric types.

And they haven’t gone away. I’ve stopped buying shorts because it’s either they’re tight and/or they don’t have any coverage. I’ll wear a dress (a nice comfy t-shirt dress) before I’ll buy shorts. (And I can’t buy capris because I’m petite and they fall wrong proportionally and I’d have to hem them. And by hemming them I’d lose the pretty details at the hems which is the reason I’d buy them in the first place!) In the 80s, at least the shorts were long and I wore skin tight biker shorts but at least they went past my fingertips. (Granted, I think my mother made them after the popular styles in stores for me. But she was thrifty like that.)

This has gotten so bad that it’s filtered down to the styles of young girls. The young girls people protest shouldn’t be sexualized. That they need to be able to run and play just as well as boys. And maybe we should just have a child’s section instead of a girl’s and boy’s section if you’re going to end up forcing parents to shop in the “boy’s” section for their little girls to have clothes that aren’t tight, short and ‘too old’ and ‘inappropriate.’

There are parents out there that can’t stand this so much for their little girls that they’re trying (bless them) to start alternative clothing lines. (One or two items of clothing is not a line but digression.) And I wish them all the best. In fact, I wish that they’d all get together actually create an alternative clothing wear BRAND for little girls with all of their awesome ideas instead of being 101 little tiny companies. (Because it’s ridic.)

At the same time, adults would also like clothes that aren’t tiny shorts and tight t-shirts that cut our circulation off at the armpits! Once again, I blame the recession. You can also blame “body conscious” celebs like the Kardashians for this ridiculous trend sticking around. Ugh.

Gendered colors, motifs and patterns

Let’s spring off that last one shall we?

Gendered clothes. Gendered toys. Gendered butterflies for girls, dinos for boys. If you look at the aisles and the areas of clothing and toys in stores, companies have indoctrinated us into this belief that pink is for girls, blue is for boys and that girls don’t like dinosaurs or dragons or trains or anything remotely car related.

This is bull.

Okay, there are probably two topics that can get into a history rant, it’s gendered colors and wedding traditions. (White started with Queen Victoria, it’s not traditional, wear blue. It’s lucky. “Married in blue, he’ll remain true.” And Debeers in the 30s pushed diamonds for engagement rings, before that stones like sapphires and emeralds were popular. Resist the indoctrination.) In the last, oh, 75 years, gender colors have been flipped.

Pink wasn’t for girls before the 50s. Pink was for boys. Why? Pink was a warm color. A strong color and stimulated babies. Blue is soothing. It calms girls down. Honestly, colors are colors. However, over time and after the 1940s with pink being used for homosexuals by Nazi Germany and the ascendance of Barbie, pink became to be associated with femininity, fragility and girls. Boys were put into blue and strong primary colors. Girls were regulated to pastels and ivory. Maybe if it was Christmas they got a pretty red dress. (Because Red is scandalous you know on a woman. Men remember women in a red dress. Red is the color of prostitutes.)

And then screen printing came into being. Clothes could have everything from pictures to logos to all over patterns printed onto the fabric. And things became even more divisive. Girls couldn’t like math or science. The boys got those types of patterns. Girls didn’t like trains or cars. Boys got those patterns. Girls got flowers and fruit or butterflies or pretty unicorns.

It’s insidious. It’s patronizing. It’s degrading. It plays into the idea that girls aren’t as smart as boys. They’re only good for home making and having babies and that girls are weaker than boys. Stop already!

I really think my children’s section is a better and better idea than a gendered boy and girl’s clothes section.

As a young adult, I would have killed for a fitted button down shirt with Shenron the Dragon on it from Dragon Ball Z. But no, that was a boy brand. Hell, if they had something cool from Sailor Moon on a fitted button down I would have taken that too, especially if was Amy, Rei or Lita related. (Forget getting any of the outer senshi on clothes but err, they were more my jam. I took fencing okay.)

Girls want cool things. They want action related things on their clothes. They enjoy science. You know what turns girls off to science. (In fact most kids off to science.) School. (High School Chem was awful.) Give girls and women the ability to have clothes that aren’t 100% pink and purple all the time! Clothes that don’t rely on horrible gender stereotyping because that’s what companies think sells. Give girls options.

(And you know, if the boy wants the pink feather boa, let him have it. For fuck’s sake.)

And this leads to my next bit.

Little bows everywhere.

OMG. When Victoria Secret was doing non underwire, t-shirt bras without bows, I bought like three of them. And I’ve worn one out so badly I had to toss it and I almost cried. They are/were the most comfy things ever and have wonderful support. Okay, shout out done.

Back to little bows. This is almost and I say almost limited to lingerie companies. You go to the store, you’re trying to find a bra and you run across on almost every bra you find either scratchy lace or little tiny ribbon bows. They aren’t there for any sort of function. It takes time to tack those things on so they only add to the cost of the bra. They aren’t even big enough to be noticeable. And they are everywhere. Near the straps, at the middle of your cleavage. They’re lumpy.

“But bows are cute and feminine and girls want cute and feminine undergarments!”

Yeah. Not all women.

And I say that this is mostly limited to lingerie companies but it does sneak into things like shoes and socks and occasionally handbags and jewelry. Little bow jewelry.

I’m not a bow person. Seriously, I put them on my Christmas Tree, but they’re black. They’re nice on the Christmas Tree. They aren’t nice on my person.

Bows are frankly childish. Sure. There are some women who like them. But if they like them, they’re going to be wearing them in a place for them to be seen outside of their regular garments. Okay, I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for shiny things. I buy either completely plain bras or bras with rhinestones. There really is no in between. I’ll even put up with lace to an extent. I don’t like bows. Many women don’t like bows and to tack them on almost every style is obnoxious no matter what brand the bra or underwear is!

Little bows infantilize grown women. “Oh, she’s so cute,” is all well and good when you’re a toddler. Not when you’re an adult. Stop. Just stop. You can make pretty and functional lingerie without putting little bows all over it. Especially if lingerie is supposed to help with the lines of your outfit. You don’t want little lumps!

The fashion industry is a juggernaut. It’s a juggernaut that runs on slim margins and on heavy market research. Women need to speak up. Stop letting celebrities and comedians do the talking for you and let the fashion industry know that we’re serious about not being patronized, infantilized and stereotyped because they want to save a few pennies a garment.

If I had a million dollars, I’d start Moto (my label, check my portfolio) with the intent on trying to capitalize on most of these things. (Sorry, not a lingerie or children’s designer. But you know, that’s what other people are for. Teamwork.) But you know, if I had more than a million dollars I’d be working on a AAA level MMO targeted for girls that also involved fashion.

So, you know, that wish list is kind of big here.

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