As I noted in Pocket Pouting, feminists accuse men of forcing women to buy clothes without pockets, or with insufficient pockets in size and/or number. This isn’t a new complaint, nor is it just Racked making the accusation. In September of 2014, Tanya Basu at The Atlantic published The Gender Politics of Pockets. Basu claims that women are demanding clothes with more and larger pockets, but the men who design women’s clothes have different priorities and refuse to meet this demand (emphasis mine):
So how can an industry that focuses on women—whether it be models or products created primarily for a female demographic—consistently dodge the very people it markets to? Camilla Olson, creative director of an eponymous high tech fashion firm, points to inherent sexism within the industry. Mid-range fashion is a male dominated business, driven not by form and function, but by design and how fabric best drapes the body.
“I honestly believe the fashion industry is not helping women advance,” Olson said…
This is laughable, because it is women and not men who are demanding clothes with form over function. As the case of Nasty Gal proves, if a designer is meeting a niche they can easily find their target market. Designers who refuse to design what women want to buy will be swiftly punished by the marketplace, just as designers who make the clothes women want will be equally rewarded.
Since designers are clearly responding to the demands of their market, the only other way to blame this on men is to assume men are bullying the women in their lives into forgoing the pockets they crave. But this is equally absurd given our feminist culture. Men aren’t bullying women out of wearing the functional clothing they want to wear. We don’t have husbands mocking their wives for having and using functional pockets, obsessed with the lump a useful and used pocket creates. Nor are husbands sneaking into their wives’ wardrobes and getting rid of clothing they deem having too large, and/or too many pockets. If men were doing this, it would be considered abuse according to the Duluth model.
No, the issue is that women judge their clothing by different standards than men do. This in and of itself isn’t a problem. It is in fact quite natural given the differences between men and women. The problem is when women fester in envy and resentment of men for not being like women. This unbridled resentment is the very foundation of feminism, and it is unquenchable.
One of the ways this festering envy and resentment manifests itself is through a desire to keep men from having what women can’t have. We see this expressed in a myriad of different ways, including with something as petty as pockets. In August Nicole Hong at the Wall Street Journal wrote about this petty obsession by many women in Nice Cargo Shorts! You’re Sleeping on the Sofa (archive). Hong opens with the pettiness of Ashleigh Hansen, who goes through her husband’s wardrobe and gets rid of items of clothing with pockets she doesn’t approve of.
Mr. Hansen’s wife, Ashleigh Hansen, said she sneaks her husband’s cargo shorts off to Goodwill when he’s not around. Mrs. Hansen, 30, no longer throws them out at home because her husband has found them in the trash and fished them out.
“I despise them,” she said. “There were so many good things about the ’90s. Cargo shorts were not one of them.”
As the title suggests, Hong’s article explains that Ashleigh Hanson is just one out of a wave of petty tyrant wives. Another is Jen Anderson, who objects to her husband wearing cargo shorts because the pockets cause the fabric to not drape over her husband’s body the way she wants it to (emphasis mine):
Through what Ms. Anderson described as “strong mocking,” she convinced him to return the shorts. She said she doesn’t like the idea of being seen in public with her husband when he’s wearing cargo shorts, which make him look like “a misshapen lump.”
Yet another envious petty tyrant in Hong’s article is Lyndsay Peters:
…Mr. Lommel, who often works from home, seizes opportunities when his wife is away at work to wear his cargo shorts.
“Every time I put them on, I am conscious of the fact that I am now being disobedient in my marriage,” he said.
Mr. Lommel’s wife, Lyndsay Peters, disputes the idea that he tries to wear cargo shorts only when she’s not around. “I wish that were the truth,” she said. “If he was only wearing them when I could not look at him, that would be perfect.”
Yet while the Wall Street Journal tells us how offended wives are that their husbands wear clothes with large usable pockets, The Atlantic is convinced that it is women who crave big useful pockets, and men who object to the aesthetics of them. According to Basu at the Atlantic, modern women crave pockets big enough to carry all of their technical gadgets:
Our skinny jeans have pockets, but there is no way an object bigger than a standard issue ID card fits in the front, and everyone knows that slipping a phone in your back pocket is an invitation for a treacherous dive into a toilet, or a backflip resulting in heartbreaking shatters…
“More women are expecting and demanding pockets,” Olson said of trends in the industry. “I was hearing more about pockets on the runway in recent shows. Pockets are becoming more interesting, but they aren’t the size to carry around an iPhone, much less an iPhone [6] Plus.”
…most designers don’t consider pockets as part of the functionality of women’s clothes just yet—they’re still looking at purses as the way for women to carry their smartphones and other technological devices.
Drake Baer at NY Mag may have stumbled onto a piece of clothing that is ready made to hold all of the technology Basu tells us women desperately want to hold in pockets. Baer explains in Anthropologists Analyze the Cargo Short Boom that the desire to carry technical gadgets is what drives their popularity.
The practicality and preparedness that made cargo pockets a military staple inform their popular persistence, she says. Having lots of pockets to put things in and thereby not having to lug around a bag is incredibly convenient.
…don some cargo shorts, throw a charger in the side pocket. And some earbuds, too. Go crazy, there’s plenty of room.
Unfortunately, while Basu explains that women are interested in function over form, and demand clothing with multiple large pockets to carry all of their tech gear, there is one type of clothing she tells us women don’t want:
Cargo pants, however, have been unanimously dissed by the fashion savvy as the solution of choice for the smartphone dilemma women face.
Baer even quotes from Basu’s Atlantic piece, noting that while cargo shorts/pants are the epitome of what Basu says women want, women clearly don’t want them.
This isn’t about women really wanting functional pockets to carry their technology, it is about women resenting the fact that men are perfectly comfortable with functional pockets, even at the expense of how the fabric drapes. Baer inadvertently captures this reality with his closing sentence:
If only, by some working of fashion karma, the excess pockets of men’s non-fashion shorts could migrate to women’s fashion.
Pingback: Pocket Envy | Aus-Alt-Right
Funny, when a men dresses like a slob, they complain. But if he’s a well coiffed metrosexual the ladies complain that he isn’t manly. Damned if you do and damned if yo don’t.
The idea that husbands police their wives wardrobes searching for errant pockets is absurd, and shows just how out-of-touch these broads are. Granted, I’m WELL to the “intuit” side of the “intuit – sensor dichotomy,” but I almost never have any idea what my wife is wearing unless she’s right in front of me.
Women notice crap like that, but husbands are men, and men aren’t women. A few years ago my wife had her hair cut and colored. About a week later the pastor and his wife dropped by and the pastor’s wife immediately mentioned how she liked what my wife had done with her hair.
I had no idea she had changed anything about her hair.
So, yeah… pockets? Like I would care… or even notice.
Mr. Hansen’s wife, Ashleigh Hansen, said… “There were so many good things about the ’90s.”
There were exactly three good things about the 90s –
1. – Alternative music (up til about 1995 or so)
2. – Star Trek: The Next Generation*
3. – They ended.
_______________
* The better episodes, anyway. Especially the subgenre of “Something Goes Horribly Wrong With The Holodeck And Crazy Stuff Happens!”
From The Atlantic’s Author Bio :
Tanya Basu, a former editorial fellow with The Atlantic, is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn who writes about how we interact with each other.
Gee, how original for a ‘feminist’. Steve Sailer and Stacey McCain vindicated again…
1. – Alternative music (up til about 1995 or so)
2. – Star Trek: The Next Generation*
There was a distinct downshift in American culture around 1994 or so. ST : TNG ended, just as the OJ Simpson circus began and modern left-wing memes got switched on…
I think that after the Cold War ended, the freedom and peace removed the checks against mediocrity that existed until then, and by 1994, Hollywood and Democrats decided they could start their campaign with impunity.
I must point out that underneath a burqa, women can have a huge number of pockets. That is yet another reason women are strongly attracted to radical Islam…
I thought that only Children and Old Men (why they, the old men, do it I don’t know, but they do) wear shorts; so I had to use Google Images to understand.
The pockets give the impression that one is involved in some physical and perhaps skillful trade yet I doubt that any true artisan would wear such metrosexual looking stuff. I had a pair of trousers with all sorts of strange pockets especially near my feet, but they were of no real benefit as all I ever carry are keys and cash/card.
Women once again showing envy of men and yet women who wear such clothing surely instantly though only for the duration lower their SMV.
Cultural Marxism is going to wreck America the way ordinary Marxism destroyed the Soviet Union.
What crazy, neurotic, bitches.
Basu claims that women are demanding clothes with more and larger pockets, but the men who design women’s clothes have different priorities and refuse to meet this demand (emphasis mine):
This woman is a moronette, plain and simple. A woman of anything above freezer-temperature IQ would know better and have more self-respect than to make such an idiotic statement for public attribution.
Hong opens with the pettiness of Ashleigh Hansen, who goes through her husband’s wardrobe and gets rid of items of clothing with pockets she doesn’t approve of.
I’m gonna give Mr. Hansen the benefit of the doubt here and assume that he hasn’t yet been made aware of what the disrespectful bitch he’s married to is doing to his clothes, which is the only reason why he hasn’t yet kicked her ass out the door and to the curb and changed the locks on his front door.
“I thought that only Children and Old Men (why they, the old men, do it I don’t know, but they do) wear shorts; so I had to use Google Images to understand.”
You must be European :-). I work for a large multinational firm, in R&D. In the summer, most of my make coworkers wear shorts and T-shirts to the office.
“What crazy, neurotic, bitches.”
And they wonder where did all the good men go.
Problem solved ladies. Everyone has pockets, fashion competition reduced to zero, men wear the same outfit. I can’t get a photo alone to post, but the one at this link shows the concept. You’re welcome.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/8605793/China-prepares-to-celebrate-90-years-of-the-Chinese-Communist-Party.html?image=12
feeriker,
which is the only reason why he hasn’t yet kicked her ass out the door and to the curb and changed the locks on his front door.
Or maybe he does not want to be financially ruined, villified, and separated from his kids.
That may happen at a later date anyway, but we must remember that even the most terrorized man cannot just ‘kick the wife out’…
Basu claims that women are demanding clothes with more and larger pockets,
I would love for yet another ‘feminist’ fashion designer to pursue this imaginary market and go bankrupt with inventory that cannot be sold….
I got into the habit of wearing pants with multiple pockets in the military. My BDU and DCU trou had cargo pockets, and my ACUs also had pockets just over the boots (perfect for the flip phone I carried back then), as well as a bunch of pockets on the blouse. They even have pockets for pens on the left sleeve, which I always found annoying since I’m left-handed.
Once I got out and became a DRC (Dirty Rotten Contractor), I kept wearing pants with cargo pockets for two reasons: 1) they’re handy, and 2) when I’m dealing with soldiers I’m wearing the same basic style they are (except mine are solid khaki rather than camouflage). I also maintain my military haircut and stay well within military height-weight standards. A lot of DRCs don’t, but it’s a matter of image for me: when I was a soldier I mentally downgraded any guy who looked like a fatty or a hippy.
In short, I wear cargo pants and cargo shorts because they suit my needs. Imagine that. One wonders why the chicks busy complaining about patriarchal pockets can’t just get dressed and move out. If they weren’t so obsessed with competing with each other for male attention they’d stop worrying about fashion anyway.
…even the most terrorized man cannot just ‘kick the wife out’…
Every man reaches a breaking point.
Pingback: Pocket Envy | Reaction Times
Plenty of lesbians wear Carhartt cargo pants.
Every man reaches a breaking point.
So he will accept losing 80% of his present and future assets and earnings, plus being vilified and forcibly separated from his children?
That is the cost of exiting, for a man.
That is the cost of exiting, for a man.
Worth it.
They’ve stumbled upon the number conspiracy of The Evil Patriarchy™. First we take their pockets, next we take women’s suffrage. Now that they’ve figured it out, we’re gonna have to come up with a new evil scheme. Did anyone notice that one of the tyrant wives did not take her husbands last name? I did not find that shocking.
…Mr. Lommel, who often works from home, seizes opportunities when his wife is away at work to wear his cargo shorts….
Herein lies the problem. When you allow the bully to think they are in control, they get even more emboldened to continue their bullying. The man ought to have sat his wife down and made her understand that he likes wearing those cargo shorts, and he does not want any more criticism of his fashion choice as far as those shorts are concerned.
Imagine if it’s the man endlessly criticizing his wife’s appearance…..
Quite frankly it’s about time we stopped the suffraging of women, how oppressive and cruel!
I always wear cargo shorts. I live in Southern California and it’s hot out here. This November we’re having a heat wave. It’s in the 80s near the beach. A few of these past days, it hit the 90s in some parts of L.A. Men in shorts are the norm in Southern California.
I can’t imagine how outraged I’d be if any woman were to secretly throw out my clothes.
Even MSLSD is bashing Hillary wearing the chairman Mao pantsuit.
http://politistick.com/liberal-msnbc-panel-hilariously-blasts-hillarys-mao-like-wardrobe/
That is the cost of exiting, for a man.
Worth it.
Exactly. After a certain point, living on the street penniless is preferable to living in a house with an insufferable bitch.
Herein lies the problem. When you allow the bully to think they are in control, they get even more emboldened to continue their bullying. The man ought to have sat his wife down and made her understand that he likes wearing those cargo shorts, and he does not want any more criticism of his fashion choice as far as those shorts are concerned.
I refuse to believe that these guys did not know before marrying them that these women were psychotic control freaks. It’s just too obvious and powerful of a personality trait to hide. Genuinely horrifying, the thought of so many men knowingly going into a marriage with such creatures. How terminally blue pill/castrato can a man be?
Really important to note that the men making fashion that women consider attractive are largely gays with a good “queer eye for the straight gal” – obviously they despise cargo shorts and would rather see a woman looking faaaabulooous rather than functional, even if it causes her feet or waistline some discomfort.
Like so many political battles that are vaguely framed as Good Lib vs evilcon, this is actually internecine warfare between two Left constituencies, so the media LARPs the more expendable, smaller one – gays – as Evil Patriarchy to keep the peace.
There’s really no need to defend the fashion industry here.
Even the MSM used to acknowledge this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/08/fashion/thursdaystyles/in-fashion-who-really-gets-ahead.html
[Pro 21:9 NKJV] 9 Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, Than in a house shared with a contentious woman.
@Fiddlesticks
Who is defending the industry? This post (and the previous one) is explaining that feminist discontentment is not something that can be solved by giving feminists what they say they want (in this case large pockets), because it is at its core about envy of men.
From OP:
“Mr. Hansen’s wife, Ashleigh Hansen, said she sneaks her husband’s cargo shorts off to Goodwill when he’s not around. Mrs. Hansen, 30, no longer throws them out at home because her husband has found them in the trash and fished them out.
“I despise him,” she said. “There were so many good things about the ’90s. Mr. Hansen was not one of them.”
Fixed the second section.
…
Frank K @ November 13, 2016 at 4:21 pm:
“Funny, when a men dresses like a slob, they complain. But if he’s a well coiffed metrosexual the ladies complain that he isn’t manly.”
I’ve never seen a woman complain about a metrosexual man. Friendzone him, yes, but it’s a good route to (platonic) female attention. Unless he’s a closet predator or druggie of some kind and then he’s in her like Flynn.
…
Opus @ November 13, 2016 at 6:13 pm:
“The pockets give the impression that one is involved in some physical and perhaps skillful trade yet I doubt that any true artisan would wear such metrosexual looking stuff.”
The fashion industry artisans are the definition of metrosexual. Even in more Christian times they were, as they put it, “avant-garde”. Such moral weakness probably comes from being a heavily female-oriented industry.
Why, why did they give women the vote?
Exactly. After a certain point, living on the street penniless is preferable to living in a house with an insufferable bitch.
Then avoiding marriage altogether is by far the best decision of all. Avoid the shrike AND keep your earnings..
Whenever a man feels bad that he does not have a family, just spend time with a family you know. In most cases, he will leave feeling grateful to have avoided the trap.
“Mid-range fashion is a male dominated business…”
Even if that is true, the vastly overwhelming majority of those males are homosexual. This is not a case of husbands secretly controlling the fashion industry to steal their wives’ pockets. Husbands don’t have the balls to do that anymore. Even in the article, the man admits he is being “disobedient” in his marriage by wearing cargo shorts.
A heterosexual man did not come up with yoga pants. That was most likely a homosexual man, or perhaps a woman. If a heterosexual husband was designing clothes for his wife, he’d likely design her a pair of cargo pants to carry all that crap she usually throws in her purse. He would not design her something “form-fitting” or to show off her natural shape, because most wives are huge manatees these days and even their husbands don’t want to see that.
If women want their pockets back, they need to take it up with the homosexuals in the fashion industry who are designing the stuff, not their husbands. And while they are at it, they should probably say something about those same homosexuals stop using waif-thin anorexic girls that look like 10 year old boys as models for women’s clothes.
@Dalrock
Who is defending the industry?
I’m referring to this paragraph:
Since designers are clearly responding to the demands of their market, the only other way to blame this on men is to assume men are bullying the women in their lives into forgoing the pockets they crave. But this is equally absurd given our feminist culture.
It’s OK to point out that the largely gay men in fashion lead the way in directing hot young women’s rotating fads. It doesn’t detract from your thesis and actually makes it more fun because of the blue vs blue angle. In the last 15 years designers have pushed girls into extreme low rider jeans, high waisted butt shorts, sideboob, and other stuff on semi-regular rotation.
If a heterosexual husband was designing clothes for his wife, he’d likely design her a pair of cargo pants to carry all that crap she usually throws in her purse.
And make her look more like the Michelin Man than she already probably does? Nah.
Most heterosexual men would probably design dresses for their wives, or pants that at least have a different (i.e., much more feminine) look and feel from what men wear. I doubt the average heterosexual male wants to dress his wife in Men’s Clothing Lite.
As for purses, if the women in my life have been any example, the ideal purse would be expandable/contractable, reversible, and equipped with a series of covers of various designs that can be changed at will. That way a women would only ever need ONE purse that could be used for any and every occasion (my ex-wife was the Imelda Marcos of handbags).
The ideal purse would work like a Tardis – more room inside than space taken outside.
Go Long on whoever invents the Bag of Holding.
Male homos design women’s clothes and women (who choose what to buy and what to wear) favor those designs over more practical ones. And while fashion design is dominated by male homos, the fashion press is dominated by female rad-fems… who also favor those designs.
Yet somehow “Muh Patriarchy” is at fault.
/sigh.
Where are the “True Feminists” (TM) when you need them? (You know, the ones who say that women are NOT just large children, but are adults capable of making their own decisions.)
But what am I thinking? “Equality” only applies when it adds to women’s privileges, not when it confers responsibilities… even responsibilities for their own choices.
As a relevant aside, the average American woman weighs as much as an average American man weighed in 1960. Source. Men have gotten fat, too, but not by as much. Let’s face it, there’s really no way to make a fat chick look acceptable in anything other than a very dark room.
@Frank K
I have never worn anything to work other than a pin-stripe suit no matter the weather and which does not come in a version with short trousers: certainly not European – I love the way Americans lump all Europeans together (if this is Tuesday it must be Belgium) and then have the nerve to include the Great Britain, never mind its constituent countries as part of that off-shore continent., What part of the word Brexit (spelt Leave) is it that is not understood. I have no idea what Europeans might do other than I know that the Spanish take an afternoon Siesta and their police officers (of which there are two sorts) happily drink whilst on duty – and of course their language is incomprehensible to those of us who grew up speaking The Queen’s English, your Mother tongue – and that is just one European nation of some forty-five million souls one of whom happens to be currently the world’s richest man. Spain of course apart from the Balearic islands and Ceuta and Melija on the North African shore (with their walls – hey what a great Idea for keeping out illegals) -but not of course the Gibraltar which is a British Overseas Territory – also compromise seven islands off the west coast of the continent of Africa – and this is also in Europe and its Union as also is the six Dutch possessions in the Caribbean – but not where I am.
You at least with are saved that Tower of Babel and bad-taste which is the Eurovision Song Contest where even Israel gets to compete and even win – as it did most recently with its bearded transvestite.
As a relevant aside, the average American woman weighs as much as an average American man weighed in 1960. Source. Men have gotten fat, too, but not by as much. Let’s face it, there’s really no way to make a fat chick look acceptable in anything other than a very dark room.
You know, of course, that obese women are Deh Patriarchy’s fault (you’ll have to ask a feminist exactly how), as is the fact that those evil men haven’t yet figured out how to make fat chicks look ptesentable in anything other than Yankee Stadium’s infield tarp.
“Let’s face it, there’s really no way to make a fat chick look acceptable in anything other than a very dark room.”
😀 This gets my vote for the thread-winner.
I should have made it clearer: I have never seen a man at work wearing shorts, nor a man wearing shorts outside of work; should you be relocated to England and even if you think the weather is sufficiently clement, please, to avoid strange looks and stifled laughter, do not do it. Knobbly knees contests were the joke of Holiday Camps (only men were to be entered) which said camps largely fell into disuse with the arrival of the Jet-airliner and cheap booze-filled fortnights to Spain (aka the Costa del Crime).
Brickies are of course allowed to go shirtless, but going shirtless even as one reveals ones impressive abs and pecs instantly identifies one as unskilled labour.
Opus,
Earlier this year I hiked the Hadrian’s Trail that stretches between Tynemouth and Bowness-on-Solway, and I don’t recall seeing anyone in shorts, but then again it was early spring and still too cold for such attire. I flew into and out of Edinburgh, which is, of course, even farther north, so everyone was fairly bundled there. But it’s not always chilly on your archipelago, which begs a question: wouldn’t cargo shorts in the UK simply identify one as being an American?
You can’t fix stupid.
Pingback: MS: Pockets and Sundry | Morning Sprinkles and Evening Gunfire
Pingback: Dress like a lady, and you can wear pockets. | Things I Wish I'd Known Sooner
Hey Dalrock. Sorry – I’m female! And I really do not give a flip about pockets or men’s fashion or lack of it. I’m just came here to tell you that after 38 years of marriage my dear-but-sometimes-exasperating hubby and I finally managed to solve the TOILET SEAT problem. I am sharing just in case it might be a solution for anybody else (this took us til last month to figure out!)…. We leave it ready for the Other Person. So I arrive and it is down (oh Hallelujah!) and I flush and leave it UP. That way nobody has to touch the seat until after the business is done. (He never understood why it bothered me, and now it doesn’t matter – I am very happy to leave the seat “welcoming” for HIM.) BTW – I came to your site because a dear son-in-law sent us all a copy of your Magic in the Girdle post. Very odd. Think it means more, also. You might want to check out Jordan Peterson’s Bible posts on You-Tube. All best wishes.
Pingback: Meet the sexist tools of everyday carry. | Dalrock