Women’s Clothing Is Sexist—But Not in the Way You Think

It’s a given that women are treated as sexual objects in the media and in everyday life. Look at any TV show or magazine. Look at the feminist memes floating around your Facebook feed.

But women’s clothing is highly sexist in itself. Yes, I mean the garments.

Not just because women’s clothing includes things that mens’ clothing doesn’t include. Not just because women’s summer staples are supposedly teeny shorts and tiny tops. Or because sandals are designed to show off our painted toenails and stilettos are designed to push our hips forward. Not just because we’re expected to color our hair to look younger and to make up our faces in conformist masks.

Sexism in women’s fashion runs much deeper and is much more fundamental than these usual suspects.

Men can easily buy high-quality, long-lasting, wardrobe-staple, style-heavy and fashion-defying clothing. The oxford-cloth dress shirts my dad stopped buying when he retired twenty years ago haven’t gone out of style. He can put one on and no one will guess that he didn’t buy it last week. The loafers and brogues he bought thirty years ago still look like new (weekly polishing), and he can buy exact duplicates today. His wool sport jackets from the sixties and seventies and eighties are in good shape and don’t look like fashion travesties. His ties are a little dated, to be sure. But he can wear his Liberty ties from the seventies and eighties. They’re vintage now.

That’s what happens when men buy well. They can wear their clothes for decades. Their clothes hold up and they don’t look dated. My dad didn’t have to buy in New York or London or Rome to get this result. He just went to the better-quality men’s store at the local mall.

Women’s fashion is designed to be, well, fashion. It’s designed to be highly decorative, of the moment, and then to be discarded and replaced with something else.

Can you wear a woman’s suit from the eighties without feeling (and looking, let's face it) absolutely ridiculous? Those blinding colors! Those shoulders! Can you wear a woman’s day dress from the early sixties—with its gloves and stockings and jacket and hat and matching purse and shoes—unless it’s for cosplay? Can you even wear those skinny jeans that seem to be the only type of jeans you can find? Really, you can wear them? Really? (Just because you can wear them doesn’t mean you should.)

Look at women’s watches—as I’ve been doing lately. They’re really jewelry. I dare you to find one that you can actually read (yes, my eyesight isn’t what it used to be) and that you can expect to last several years. Women’s watches are high on fashion—what material the band is made of, the style of the band, the color and material of the face—and short on utility. Men’s watches are high on visibility and durability. (Oh, and they’re high on extra bells and whistles, like stopwatch and time-zone calculation functions.)

Look at women’s shoes. Is there something like a women’s brogue, something long-lasting that you can wear for decades if you maintain it properly? No. A brogue is a popular women’s style right now, but they’re all of the moment, with heels and in right-now colors and made of short-lived, high-maintenance materials, like pale, lightweight suedes. Women’s “brogues” have grown far away from their sturdy walking-shoe roots—a history that men’s brogues still maintain.

And look at women’s shirts—I’ve been hunting for a really good woman’s button-down shirt. Can’t find one. Women’s button-downs for officewear are often made of linen and rayon and silk, so they have to be maintained carefully—and expensively—throughout their useful lives. Their colors and tiny style details change every year, so you can’t wear them for long without looking dated. And they’re often too short to stay tucked in. (I guess designers think that a woman working in an office doesn’t need to turn, bend, or even sit.) For casual wear, women’s button-downs are shown as outerwear accessories, worn belted over shells, fashionable alternatives to sweaters. Oh, and they’re made of linen and rayon and silk.

I recently bought a women’s shirt from Thomas Pink. I had high hopes walking into the store. But I learned that they only offer a couple of women’s styles. (The shop is famous for offering multiple fit options, letting them match every peccadillo of their male customers’ bodies.) I was promised that the collars wouldn’t curl, even though they don’t offer collar stays with their women’s shirts. (Of course un-stayed collars curl. It’s just a fact, like gravity.) I’d hoped to be able to choose among the several fabric weights that they offer men, but their womens’ styles only come in one weight—heavier than most women’s shirts, but lighter than their best mens’ shirting. The shirt is really good quality—for a woman’s shirt—but not the dream come true I’d hoped for.

I want to be able to find clothes and accessories that don’t discriminate against my gender.

That are made well and built to last. Using high-quality materials. That fit me well. That won’t look dated in two years—five years, ten years, twenty years—from now. That are high-value.

That have style, not fashion, as Coco Chanel distinguished.

I guess I’ll have to wait until my next life, when I come back as a man.

Secret Weapons—Secret to Me, Until Now

So many secret weapons in a woman’s arsenal. Little day-savers... that I’ve never heard about until starting CapsuleStyle.

I've found two in the last two days.

• Bodyglide Original Anti-Chafe Balm (1.5 ounce) Thanks to “From Couch to 5k,” a six-week course that I've just signed up for at Greater Boston Running Company in Lexington, MA, I just got this yesterday and can't wait to try it. As a curvy girl, I've had a problem with, ahem, chafing since I was ten. Going to the beach? Wearing shorts or a skirt sans pantyhose? Hooray, a day ending in raw, stinging thighs.
• Hollywood Fashion Tape—Lets you stick garments to themselves, each other, or yourself. Its Amazon.com entry claims that it’s “specially formulated adhesive is gentle on skin, hypoallergenic, and leaves no residue on your garments.”

I'm trying both, but if they work, I wonder how I've lived without these two secret weapons. The answer: uncomfortably.

Building from the Ground Up—Camisoles

Planning my capsule wardrobe from the ground up, I decided to ditch my six elderly cotton tank tops (in a variety of useless colors) that I wore as camisoles and buy—duh, duh, DUH!—actual camisoles.

I went to Target and found just the thing. Gilligan O’Malley Seamless Cami. I tried one on. It has a body-hugging fit so it won’t bunch up in my shirt. It pulls down to my thighs, so I’ll still be covered if I—gasp—bend over. The neckline covers my bra (one style, black and beige) completely. And at $18.00 each, the price is right. Win! I got two, in black and beige.

And then I wore one. It rolled right up above my waist the second I started moving. I couldn't make it stay down. Now this may be because I’m f.a.t. Maybe these are designed for skinny teenagers, not for middle-aged me. After all, Target’s price points are family-friendly, and most of their lingerie is teenwear. But you’d think that something that looks and acts an awful lot like shapewear should be made for middle-aged me, instead of skinny teenagers. Or maybe I bought the wrong size, maybe I’m an XL (stop judging me, women’s sizing) instead of an L. (Though the endlessly-out-of-stock Target only had S, M, and L.)

So I decided to buy better. Since I’m examine and re-developing an entire wardrobe, buying better makes sense. Off to Nordstrom, land of cheerful, helpful experts. One of the lingerie associates gave me three camis to try: Yummie Tummy Girlfriend Skinny Tank, DKNY Fusion Shaping Camisole, and Shimera Seamless Tank. (CapsuleStyle at Pinterest.)

I would never think of using piquet in a camisole, but Yummie Tummy’s Girlfriend Skinny Tank did. It’s reversible, with a vee-neck on one side and a scoop-neck on the other. I didn’t see a difference in the necklines when I tried it on, though. The vee-neck wound up looking like the scoop, except with a tiny seam right down the middle. The sales associate said that it would help keep you warm. This would have been a good selling point for me ten or more years ago, but not at my flashy time of life. And I worried that the piquet would get friendly with my shirt and make the tank bunch up.

I was immediately put off by the spaghetti straps on the Donna Karan Fusion Shaping Camisole. That’s just me—the neckline on tops with non-adjustable spaghetti straps tends to fall somewhere around my waist. Though the straps on this cami are adjustable. But make no mistake, Fusion is serious shapewear. I had to struggle to get into it and jump up and down to get out of it. (I almost panicked and called for help while trying to take it off.) It feels very tight once you’ve got it on, but not uncomfortable-tight. Though I do wonder if you’d feel claustrophobic after wearing it all day. It has a cute sweetheart neckline on the hanger, but it turned into a plain old vee-neck once I got it on. It’s short enough to make me nervous about ride-up, coming to the top of my bikini undies.

The Shimera Seamless Tank is a camisole rather than shapewear. It’s fitted and clingy, but not tight. It pulls down to mid-thigh, so it shouldn’t ride up (fingers crossed). It comes in lots of colors, and the price is right (yes, that’s my mantra) at $26.00 each, or $48.00 for two. They were all out of my size, so I ordered one to try, in “beige frappe.” In three to eight business days, I’ll be field-testing the Shimera.

Building my capsule wardrobe one piece at a time.

Fashion Is for You, Not for Someone Else

What is fashion, anyway?

Merriam Webster online offers three definitions. The first is “the make or form of something.” The second is “a distinctive or peculiar and often habitual manner or way of doing something (he will, after his sour fashion, tell you - Shakespeare)”; or “a mode of action or operation (orderly fashion).”

The third definition finally gets around to clothing:

• “the prevailing style (as in dress) during a particular time, or a garment in such a style, or
  
• social standing or prominence especially as signaled by dress or conduct (men and women of fashion).”
  

Let’s unpack that a little. The prevailing style in dress during a particular time. Look back at your family photos. You can tell what decade it is by what people are wearing, right? The shellacked bouffant, the miniskirt, and go-go boots? Yeah, baby, it’s the sixties. Crazy curly hair, bellbottoms, and collars wide enough to take flight? The seventies. Hyper-fluffy hair, bright colors, and severe or puffy (your choice) shoulders? The eighties. The Rachel, long floral skirts, and chunky heels? The nineties. Uggs, palazzo pants, and tanks showing your belly? The double-os.

But once you… reach a certain age… you’ve bought enough clothing to realize that it’s just stuff to cover you up so you can go out in public. Or to help you fit a role: you wouldn’t wear your Hello Kitty pj’s to your job at the doctor’s office, now would you? (I hope not.)

And you’re finally smart enough to realize that fashion is just someone from New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, wherever, telling you how to look, what to do with yourself. It’s icky to let someone else tell you how you should look in order to be pleasing to them. (Trust me, I know.) And you’ll never meet those fashion gurus anyway, so screw ’em.

So why bend to the whims of fashion when it’s something that’s here today and gone tomorrow?

Why not have clothes that you like, that suit you, and that you can be happy wearing every day? I don’t see why not.

So let’s lay down the first guidelines for CapsuleStyle:

• Your clothes will make you feel and look good. (Yes, I put “feel” before “look” on purpose.)
  
• Your clothes will fit you. They’ll suit your body, your coloration, and your lifestyle.
  
• You’ll look into your closet and smile every morning because you know that you can grab things that actually go together.
  

Sounds like a fashion win to me!

Mission: Women's Classic Style with a Capsule Wardrobe

So many women’s fashion blogs. But a search for “capsule wardrobe”on Technorati turns up nothing.

Well, it turns up three hits—one on packing effectively for travel and two dead links to an “inspired capsule” blog. Searches on "women's classic style” fashion, “women clothing classic,” and “women's fashion traditional” similarly turn up zilch.

Though entering “fashion classic style" brings up, among a bunch of not-on-point blogs about women's current fashion, A Suitable Wardrobe, a blog about “Classic Clothing and Accessories for Well Dressed Men.”

Sigh. What’s a girl to do?

I want to look good, and I want to do it without every morning turning into a “what can I wear today” scavenger hunt/panic attack. Putting outfits together doesn't come naturally to me, which is why I want a capsule wardrobe. And I'm totally juiced by Project 333, which helps you develop four seasonal wardrobes of 33 items each. (Did I mention that I'm totally envious of men's ability to be well dressed with just a few well-chosen items, a la A Suitable Wardrobe?)

So this blog will document my quest to develop my own capsule wardrobe. Just so you know, I’m middle-aged, overweight, white, cisfemale, and live in the Boston area. I favor a classic style, but I think the exercise of learning to develop a capsule wardrobe will be universally applicable.