'Gender-neutral' Fashion Rant
Jul. 13th, 2023 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellerA little rant, inspired by 'gender-neutral' fashion that's a lot less 'neutral' than the designers and their target group seem to think, and the misogyny in that.
As you probably already know by now, I'm very much into fashion. Also, I strongly support everyone's right to wear whatever makes them most comfortable. I'm hardly a fan of forcing people to conform to certain gender roles, which of course includes fashion styles associated with specific genders. And yet - offers like this t-shirt (which randomly showed up in my feed) send me into fits of rage.
What's wrong with that t-shirt? At first glance - nothing. It's maybe a bit pricey but that could be justified by good material and manufacturing... (I have not seen or touched this piece in real life, so I will give the benefit of the doubt and assume good quality.) Otherwise? It's a pretty normal-looking men's t-shirt. OH WAIT. See? There's the problem. It's sold specifically as gender-neutral. It's very obviously not. Maybe the design can be considered 'gender-neutral' in the sense that black t-shirts are generally considered acceptable for any gender, but... It's cut in a way that will fit comfortably only on a physically male body. (I'm talking only about physical body type here, because clearly, the fit of a t-shirt is independent of the wearer's personality and gender identity - and, of course, technically that means all fashion is gender-neutral, but that's clearly not what's meant here.) A potential customer with an average physically female body could buy that t-shirt, but would have to either wear a chest binder (which is not only a drastic physical requirement but also a gender requirement because, let's face it, not many cis women voluntarily wear chest binders unless it's for specific medical reasons) or buy the shirt in a size that means it's inevitably too large around the shoulders and probably also around the waist - which defies the whole point of designer fashion. (You can get badly-fitting baggy black t-shirts in the supermarket for a tenth of the price...)
The main reason this not just makes me not want to buy it (because, hey, I'm not into baggy t-shirts, but other people may like them, and that's fine) but actually infuriates me is... The marketing as 'gender-neutral', with the underlying basic assumption that the male body type (you know, broad shoulders, no boobs) is the norm, and the other type (you know, narrow shoulders, broad hips, the presence of boobs) a deviation from the norm that will either have to modify itself (in decidedly uncomfortable ways) or deal with ill-fitting clothes. Having boobs is a deviation from a baseline-neutral boob-less body shape? That's pure misogyny. (This is, by the way, also reflected in the - extremely toxic - 'woke' social pressure on non-women of a body type involving boobs to get rid of or at least hide said boobs in order to be recognized as 'properly' non-binary or trans. Body policing is not cool, no matter who does it.) And it's not only this particular t-shirt! I have yet to see a shirt marketed as 'gender-neutral' that a male-bodied person can only wear either with a padded bra or with accepting a really bad fit... And the absence of that means, yep, unfortunately I have to consider the whole field of 'gender-neutral fashion' misogynist as fuck.
Obviously, as a fashion nerd, I'm aware that there are clothes that really can be worn by different body types - like anything that is wrapped around the body (kimonos and similar come to mind: there are gender conventions but no technical reason for them), or that are individually adjusted by lacing - although that already comes with limitations. One of the guys I sometimes hang out with is also really into the reproduction of historical dresses (he's not trans, he just really likes pretty dresses), and he usually has to adjust the cut in drastic ways before he can wear anything like that, and not only because he's taller than most ladies. Body type can't simply be ignored. (Since this is going to be controversial, let me be very clear: saying a male-bodied person should not wear dresses is most likely transphobic. Saying a male-bodied person who wears dresses usually needs a different cut than a female-bodied person is merely realistic, because trying to negotiate with physical reality just won't work... Anyone who's ever sewn anything knows.)
The thing is... I don't think it's really possible to produce a truly unisex t-shirt. Human anatomy comes not just in size variations but essentially in two different baseline shapes (plus some very rare cases that are neither), and a t-shirt that fits well on the one shape will not fit well on the other. I think that's just a sad fact of life even 'woke' people will need to accept at some point. If you really want inclusive fashion, and the thing you're producing is not individually adjustable, you have to produce your design in two different baseline shapes, one of which allows the basic fact of boob existence. (Also, I really don't want to wear men's jeans, because even if the design is re-defined as 'neutral', my hips are not shaped like men's hips... The differentiation by sex - not gender! - is there for a reason. Really.) Otherwise, it's not inclusive at all, because hey, you've just excluded roughly 50% of humankind...
...and by the way, I'd really appreciate it if more designs would be available for different body types. (Trying to buy a nice dress that's not 'fetish wear' as a male-bodied person is really difficult, and it shouldn't be!) Except that doesn't seem to happen - because, apparently, it's much easier to convince female-socialized people to compromise by buying stuff that doesn't fit. That's, of course, a general societal issue: someone in a female body, even if their gender isn't female, would have learned early on that their own comfort and self-interest doesn't matter shit, and that, when in doubt, it's always the female-bodied people who have to compromise, but never the male-bodied ones. Seeing this attitude reproduced completely uncritically in an environment that claims to be standing for 'gender justice'... Well. I see the irony.
As you probably already know by now, I'm very much into fashion. Also, I strongly support everyone's right to wear whatever makes them most comfortable. I'm hardly a fan of forcing people to conform to certain gender roles, which of course includes fashion styles associated with specific genders. And yet - offers like this t-shirt (which randomly showed up in my feed) send me into fits of rage.
What's wrong with that t-shirt? At first glance - nothing. It's maybe a bit pricey but that could be justified by good material and manufacturing... (I have not seen or touched this piece in real life, so I will give the benefit of the doubt and assume good quality.) Otherwise? It's a pretty normal-looking men's t-shirt. OH WAIT. See? There's the problem. It's sold specifically as gender-neutral. It's very obviously not. Maybe the design can be considered 'gender-neutral' in the sense that black t-shirts are generally considered acceptable for any gender, but... It's cut in a way that will fit comfortably only on a physically male body. (I'm talking only about physical body type here, because clearly, the fit of a t-shirt is independent of the wearer's personality and gender identity - and, of course, technically that means all fashion is gender-neutral, but that's clearly not what's meant here.) A potential customer with an average physically female body could buy that t-shirt, but would have to either wear a chest binder (which is not only a drastic physical requirement but also a gender requirement because, let's face it, not many cis women voluntarily wear chest binders unless it's for specific medical reasons) or buy the shirt in a size that means it's inevitably too large around the shoulders and probably also around the waist - which defies the whole point of designer fashion. (You can get badly-fitting baggy black t-shirts in the supermarket for a tenth of the price...)
The main reason this not just makes me not want to buy it (because, hey, I'm not into baggy t-shirts, but other people may like them, and that's fine) but actually infuriates me is... The marketing as 'gender-neutral', with the underlying basic assumption that the male body type (you know, broad shoulders, no boobs) is the norm, and the other type (you know, narrow shoulders, broad hips, the presence of boobs) a deviation from the norm that will either have to modify itself (in decidedly uncomfortable ways) or deal with ill-fitting clothes. Having boobs is a deviation from a baseline-neutral boob-less body shape? That's pure misogyny. (This is, by the way, also reflected in the - extremely toxic - 'woke' social pressure on non-women of a body type involving boobs to get rid of or at least hide said boobs in order to be recognized as 'properly' non-binary or trans. Body policing is not cool, no matter who does it.) And it's not only this particular t-shirt! I have yet to see a shirt marketed as 'gender-neutral' that a male-bodied person can only wear either with a padded bra or with accepting a really bad fit... And the absence of that means, yep, unfortunately I have to consider the whole field of 'gender-neutral fashion' misogynist as fuck.
Obviously, as a fashion nerd, I'm aware that there are clothes that really can be worn by different body types - like anything that is wrapped around the body (kimonos and similar come to mind: there are gender conventions but no technical reason for them), or that are individually adjusted by lacing - although that already comes with limitations. One of the guys I sometimes hang out with is also really into the reproduction of historical dresses (he's not trans, he just really likes pretty dresses), and he usually has to adjust the cut in drastic ways before he can wear anything like that, and not only because he's taller than most ladies. Body type can't simply be ignored. (Since this is going to be controversial, let me be very clear: saying a male-bodied person should not wear dresses is most likely transphobic. Saying a male-bodied person who wears dresses usually needs a different cut than a female-bodied person is merely realistic, because trying to negotiate with physical reality just won't work... Anyone who's ever sewn anything knows.)
The thing is... I don't think it's really possible to produce a truly unisex t-shirt. Human anatomy comes not just in size variations but essentially in two different baseline shapes (plus some very rare cases that are neither), and a t-shirt that fits well on the one shape will not fit well on the other. I think that's just a sad fact of life even 'woke' people will need to accept at some point. If you really want inclusive fashion, and the thing you're producing is not individually adjustable, you have to produce your design in two different baseline shapes, one of which allows the basic fact of boob existence. (Also, I really don't want to wear men's jeans, because even if the design is re-defined as 'neutral', my hips are not shaped like men's hips... The differentiation by sex - not gender! - is there for a reason. Really.) Otherwise, it's not inclusive at all, because hey, you've just excluded roughly 50% of humankind...
...and by the way, I'd really appreciate it if more designs would be available for different body types. (Trying to buy a nice dress that's not 'fetish wear' as a male-bodied person is really difficult, and it shouldn't be!) Except that doesn't seem to happen - because, apparently, it's much easier to convince female-socialized people to compromise by buying stuff that doesn't fit. That's, of course, a general societal issue: someone in a female body, even if their gender isn't female, would have learned early on that their own comfort and self-interest doesn't matter shit, and that, when in doubt, it's always the female-bodied people who have to compromise, but never the male-bodied ones. Seeing this attitude reproduced completely uncritically in an environment that claims to be standing for 'gender justice'... Well. I see the irony.
