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Evolution of Female and Male Clothing…….
A bit of a “nerdie” issue I suppose, but it’s a cold, wet day here and I got to thinking…….. or else I have too much time on my hands ! :
Back in the “cave man” days, both sexes wore animal skins – apparently probably no differentiation between skins worn between male and female.
So, how did clothing “evolve” into such such diametrically opposed styles for Males and Females as seen today ? Like, where in history and why, did females adopt or evolve skirts and dresses to wear and males shorts and trousers ? Why ?
Has it something to do with lifestyle (hunting/sporting Vs home makeing, child bearing/rearing, etc), different roles in sex, the passive Vs aggressive thingy, different body shapes, just for the hell of it, is it an inate desire for some sort of separation between the sexes, a way of society pidgeon holeing people into one of the 2 sexes, or …….why ?????
And why carnt that be changed – are we humans really so stereotyped ?
Just a thought, a ramble really……..
Christine
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4 Replies
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I have often wondered this too Christine and have done a bit of reading at our local Uni library into some of the Academic research [ mainly from socieologists, they don’t seem to have such professinal bias as psychologists do!].
One of the big factors for modern people seems to be the “Sumptuary” laws of the Elizabethan era when it became law to wear, eat , behave etc in a way stipulated by the ruling classes. Social rank determined how you could behave in England, but things must have been determined much earlier in human history[ or herstory!]. Picking someones gender out quickly is hardwired in all creatures [ we’d not find mates otherwise] and you can pick the gender of a person walking from a great distance [try it for yourself] . The gender messages are so ingrained in us that most people, I find are ignorant of the fact, it’s only when you need to see ie. when you want to appear other than your own gender , that you notice . Eg females in general have a wider gap between the eye and the brow than males. When they pluck the brow and widen the gap it “supersizes ” the gender message. Lipstick is also a gender message, notice how the common shades are red or pink tones? The redder , the more sexy it appears. This is said to be a message we adopted to overcome the wearing of clothes that cover the genital areas of women and no longer advertise their sexual receptiveness as most primates do when in” season “. The cleavage too is a marker for the bottom, the primate way for copulation. It’s all to do with sex and procreation!. Many examples in nature exist to confirm this.
Many will find this disturbing but as primates, we still have the primate brain when it comes to natural behaviours. This is surely the animal side of us that we need to control to live as a social species.
I think that this explains why many men have such violent reactions to a man in a frock or to effemanacy in general, the visual clues say female, their orgaism says so but the brain sees the error and they become confused and then angry[ as many people do when confused]
Most of our clothing designs are markers for gender messages, even when they go against the ” norm” eg. wide shoulders in womens jackets, they deliberately flout the convention. do a bit of research, ask a GG friend who does not wear makeup why she does not do so. I have found that the answer is often basically that they don’t wish to give the messages that women who do wear makeup , are happy to give. I think that we can’t escape the drive, you do or you don’t but the message that we convey or not convey, stays constant. The words of their answer might not be so obvious but you will find that the spirit is such.
Sorry to go on but I think this stuff is fascinating and is the basis of the phenomena behind most crossdressing as well as gender typical behaviour
We do have the freedom now to present ourselves as we wish, it is our own fear that prevents us. -
Quote:And why carnt that be changed – are we humans really so stereotyped ?
I like the fact that women wear dresses and men wear trousers.
After all – I’d just be a “dresser” if genders were mixed up into a formless blob.
I like being a “crossdresser”.
I like being different.I do not want to integrate into a happy, accepting society.
I do not want to be stealth – or to pass as ‘normal’.There are 7 billion people on this planet. Being unusual is a gift…
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Its actually strange because the human is the exception to the rule. Males dress conservatively and women brightly. Exactly the opposite of nature. Is it that women dress to show off their lines and are attracting a mate. I don’t know. All I do know is that I enjoy dressing as a women.
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One explanation is that the differences in clothing arose due to the different tasks and activities of the sexes. For instance one explanation of the ‘wrap to the other side’ styling that distinguishes male and female is that holding and feeding a baby with the left arm to the right breast frees the right hand for work, and hence tops were designed to allow the female to ‘slip the baby’ under the tunic fold.
Other explanations discuss the increasing differentiation of sex roles and the role of misogyny in the process, especially with some of the more ‘feminising’ fashions – tight skirts, high heels and other restrictive fashions, intended to make the female appear ‘helpless’.
There is an interesting theory too that the extremes of differentiation of male and female fashion go through cycles related to the status of man vs women in society and the enforcement of gender roles. For instance the current fashions termed ‘extremely feminine, or ladylike’ are constructed to clearly differentiate the sexes. ie frills and bows and breast and hip enhancing shapes for the girls and strong shoulder shapes for the men.The last makes it a little difficult for the cross dresser since fashion becomes much more a challenge to the male shape than say the 80’s did, with broad shoulder lines and more emphasis on adornement.
A very interesting (but indeed very transphobic) view is here:
which has extracts of a feminist book titled Misogyny of Beauty. Beware, she follows the view of a very transphobic book called The Transsexual Empire’.
I don’t agree with her politics but she raises quite a few interesing points on the role of fashion. Closer to home an Australian feminist Beatrice Faust has written how she hadn’t realised her own erotic fixation upon tight girdles and high heels until she abandoned that style of clothing for more ‘natural and comfortable’ clothing.
