What I want to discuss in this post is implicit sexism - not something that comes from an individual standing up and saying "you don't get X because you are a woman" or "women don't deserve Y" or "get back in the kitchen" (which some normal, otherwise intelligent people STILL don't view as sexism), just something that hovers almost below your consciousness. Something that makes up the background radiation.
By the talented David Willis from his comic Shortpacked.
I have a problem with pockets. Specifically the lack of reasonably useful pockets on women's clothing; none of my dresses and only one of my skirts have pockets, none of my shirts have pockets, and all of my pants have pockets but none of those pockets are big enough to even fit my cell phone. There is a dearth of functional pockets in women's clothing and while my own small selection of clothes is only anecdotal evidence, if you ask most of the women in your life I think you'll find that they seem to be missing pockets too.
I've been a bit of a grind about this subject for about a month now. I'm starting to get eye-rolls from some of the people in my life when the subject of pockets comes up. The most common response I get it that "no one is stopping you from buying clothes with pockets," which is something that I've also seen in response to other women who have written about this pocket problem. That is just not true - there is an entire industry (fashion) and a standard business dress code that is keeping me from buying clothes with pockets.
If I wear men's pants they fit at my hips but not at my waist and there is a painful wad of excess fabric between my legs; if I wear men's shirts I either end up with too much fabric around the waist that gets in the way or no room for my breasts; and if I wear men's clothing at all to work I am in violation dress code - what looks neat and professional on my male coworkers looks sloppy and wrong on me because it doesn't fit my body shape. If I try to find women's clothing with a similar number of useable pockets as men's clothing has I get nothing, clothing for children, or winter-wear as my only options. My problem here is not with the concept of gendered clothing but rather with the concept of over-gendered clothing, the idea that clothing for women not only has to be cut to fit women, but must also be identifiably female and meant to showcase the female body with no functionality to distract from the display.
Let me back up a bit. The thing that first REALLY brought the issue of pockets to my attention was a dog jacket. The two that I found were identically sized and constructed, obviously the boy/girl versions of the same jacket, except that one was pink and purple with a floral pattern and the other was gray and green with a pattern of stars and bones. The latter had a pocket. I stood in the aisle and fumed for a second, then took a minute to make sure that I wasn't being completely (only partially) crazy. The same manufacturer had gendered versions (but no neutral versions) of every jacket and sweater on the rack. I wasn't seeing the male gendered jacket and ignoring an out of stock female gendered jacket. The boy jacket and girl jacket were identical except for the color and the inclusion of a pocket on the male version of the clothing. For dogs.
Dogs don't need pockets. They don't have thumbs, they don't carry keys, they don't need someplace to stash a cell phone.
Humans, however, DO need pockets. And the fact that I was able to find a jacket made for male dogs that had a functional pocket when I am unable to find a cardigan for female humans with a pocket literally felt dehumanizing, and THIS is where I have a problem with the concept of over-gendering clothing.
Women's clothes are missing pockets and I wanted to find out why. There are a variety of explanation (women are silly and carry a huge amount of frivolous junk, men wanted to increase women's dependence, female privacy wasn't valued or was considered dangerous in the good old pre-Victorian days), but the modern rationale on minimal pockets comes down to one insulting excuse: to include pockets in women's clothing would ruin the line or the hang of the garment.
Here are the two major issues that I have with that STUPID FUCKING ARGUMENT that I've heard so much of in the last few weeks:
The first problem is that just because I was born a woman, with breasts and hips that do not fit in men's clothing, does not mean that I am an object on display to be looked at. The lines of a sculpture can be ruined, the lines of a painting can be ruined, the lines of a photograph can be ruined; these things are art, and while they may be nice, they are not functional. You never hear anyone bitching about the ruined lines in shipping containers or 747s or forks or pencils or fucking dog jackets because they aren't meant to be pretty, they're meant to be functional; clearly, if the lines of a garment are what we're worried about, we're worried about how that garment makes the person wearing it look. Christian Dior (one of the men responsible for reshaping women's fashions in the latter half of the twentieth century) once said "Men have pockets to keep things in, women for decoration," which sounds an awful lot like "men are meant to work hard, women are meant to look good."
The second problem that I have with this argument is that it operates under the assumption that men are clever enough not to overfill their pockets but women aren't. This belief is fairly pervasive and is built on what seems to be deliberate misunderstanding of pocket distribution and more unfortunate side-effects of fashion (and occasionally biology). Men don't tend to overfill their pockets because they HAVE pockets - a pair of men's jeans always has a minimum of four and sometimes as many as eight distinct pockets, most of which are large enough to contain an adult human hand. Women's jeans sometimes have as many as five pockets, and usually no fewer than three, but rarely are these pockets large enough to securely hold a small cell phone. A men's blazer or coat always has at least two large pockets, and sometimes as many as four. A women's blazer frequently has no pockets, and I've never found one that has more than two. This is all the more frustrating because men have less to carry day-to-day than women do. Men, at a minimum, are expected to carry their wallet, cell phone, and keys. Women carry their wallets (which are almost all significantly larger than men's wallets), cell phones, and keys but may also have to carry tampons or pads, birth control pills, and many also carry makeup (which in some cases they have to, at least if they want to be considered competent). Even if you strip away the tampons, birth control, and makeup and give a woman a man's wallet, you still have the same baseline level of stuff with significantly less pocket space.
In fact, here are a few quick comparisons using my clothing and my husband's clothing along with a very typical women's wallet:
1st row: Women's slacks rear pocket versus men's slacks rear pocket (front pockets not featured
because the women's slacks had no front pockets).
2nd row: Women's fleece front pocket versus men's fleece front pocket (photo in the men's pocket
features wallet outside of the pocket because it was completely hidden by the pocket).
3rd row: Women's jeans rear pocket versus men's jeans rear pocket.
4th row: Women's jeans front pocket versus men's jeans front pocket (photo in the men's pocket
features wallet outside of the pocket because it was completely hidden by the pocket).
5th row: Women's coat pocket versus men's coat pocket.
And just for shits and giggles, here's a comparison between the women's wallet that I used to carry and the men's wallet that I now carry (and have gotten a few derisive "butch" comments about):
So now we have a real-world, visual demonstration that women are expected to carry more (or at least larger) stuff in less space - unless they use a purse.
That is, of course, the other argument as to why women don't need pockets; they carry purses, so why should they have lots of bulky pockets cluttering up the lovely lines of their clothes?
Well, other than that purses are easily stolen and lost, prevent you from having your hands free when walking, make it easy to lose and hard to find small items, take up space, are expensive, can be trip hazards, and can actually injure their owners, I guess that purses are perfect and should be carried by everyone.
And that's why I really started paying attention to pockets - my doctor told me that carrying a purse was contributing to the back pain I've been living with for three years now, and that I shouldn't carry a purse at all if I could help it.
So what can you do if you want to get by without a purse? Men's clothing is only an option so much of the time, and women's clothing is woefully underpocketed - what are your options?
Well, the first thing to do is to get angry, and the second thing to do is take action. I've decided that pockets are my New Year's resolution. I'm refusing to buy women's clothing that doesn't have a comparable number of pockets to similar men's clothing, and I'm refusing to buy or carry purses. In the US it's hard to underestimate the power of the consumer - if enough women are willing to pay for pockets and are willing to punish the manufactures who exclude pockets from their designs by not giving them your hard-earned money, eventually we can make a change.
If you'd like more pockets in your wardrobe, Scottvest is a clothier that sells wonderfully pocketed clothes for women and men proving that pockets don't have to "ruin the line" of a garment. If you'd like to make a change in fashion, stop paying money to retailers who reinforce gender stereotypes and start paying only for what you want.
(*As hard as it is to find women's clothing that isn't made exclusively to objectify women, it's a million times harder to find clothing that steps outside the gender binary - support Trans* Positive retailers and support gender diversity wherever you find it.*)
Cheers,
- Alli
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