this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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The Oscars are coming up. I wish that at least once, one single woman there would wear the same fucking outfit (OH MY GOOOD!!) as last year. No, we must make the dress, wear the dress, and burn the dress IN THE FIRY DEPTHS OF HELL NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN.
Side note: Why is it ok for men to wear the same suit for 20 years?
That's a great question. As a man, I generally get annoyed by requirements/expectations for dressing a certain way or whatever, and a lot of times I just ignore the expectation because I don't care. I wonder if enough women acted like that if it would shift the expectation. An arbitrary social standard can only last if people enforce it and perpetuate it, and if enough people ignore it it'll start to die.
Less social pressure on me makes it easier to ignore expectations, but I think the point still stands
So the issue isn't the unrealistic and detrimental social pressures put on women surrounding clothing and appearance. The issue is that those goddammit women are all falling for it! If they just acted more like a man who has far less social fall out for failing to meet expectations then double standards would just disappear...
Edit: The strong victim blaming energy in some of these comments is pretty disgusting
It can be both things
It's not just men enforcing the social expectation.
Yes it's way more difficult for women since the social fallout is way bigger for them, that's the point of coordinating. Take unions for example, the fallout for an individual worker no longer putting up with bad pay/work environment/etc is they get fired. The fallout from most/all/at least the critical workers no longer putting up with a bad workplace is many of their demands are met and change occurs.
I think there's a similar analogy here, I for one am heavily in favor of women no longer putting up with the bs and I don't pressure people to wear arbitrary stuff. I usually try to encourage the people in my life to do whatever they want as long as they're not hurting anyone. But for an issue like this, what else do you want me to do? Frankly it's not the most pressing problem in the world
I'm not asking you to fix it, I'm saying I personally find your vocally victim blaming rhetoric disgusting.
I'm not blaming the victims, I'm attempting to understand what's going on so that something can actually be done to fix it. Also, don't forget that the oppressed can become oppressors, and repeat the trauma they've experienced onto others. But it's not only victims who are to blame, obviously.
In my mind, there are a few paths forward which are not mutually exclusive. On the one hand, telling people to not enforce the lame social expectation is a good thing to do. But it only goes so far, often the people who are enforcing stupid expectations are stubborn and have other traits that prevent them from doing the right thing even if you point it out to them. So another course of action is for the oppressed to work together (and/or work with less-oppressed folks) to disrupt the oppression, take back their power, and force the oppressors to change their ways, if not their views. Being a victim does not always make you powerless, although it does reduce your power and can make you feel even more disempowered than you are. So the next step is to find strategies that overcome and/or work around those limitations.
edit: to put it a bit more concisely: there are people perpetuating the problem and people affected by the problem. It's not victim blaming to recognize that some of the people affected by a problem are also perpetuating it. Otherwise recognizing toxic masculinity would be victim blaming too, since men are negatively impacted by it and some of those same men perpetuate it
I mean suit styles do change over time.
But the whole idea of wearing something once is just gross. The waste is disgusting.
Because men defined the fashion industry. What women wear is what a small group of powerful men decided women should wear. And men don't just want women to be beautiful and sexy - they want women to work hard at it, and to spend a lot of time and effort and money on it. They want beauty and fashion to be difficult to attain, easy to fail at, and never taken for granted. Because they don't just want beautiful sexy women, they want those beautiful sexy women to compete for their attention, and to fear failing at it, so the entire fashion industry is set up to make women compete with one another for the male gaze.
A suit, on the other hand, signifies conservatism, tradition, power, and respectability. Men show their alliance with, and respect for, the power structures they're part of, by wearing the uniform of power. The modern men's suit descends directly from the court dress of the French monarchy. The fact it barely changes is part of the message.
coupled with the pockets paradox - when women represent 51% of the population, I cannot fathom how it continues to go on. All they'd need to do is show their concerted unity ONCE to wake up the fashion world and get it's head pulled out of it's collective ass.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker recycled dresses for the Oscars. Let's all be like them.