◄[MALE GAZE: ᴛʜᴇ sᴀʀᴛᴏʀɪᴀʟ ɪs ᴘᴏʟɪᴛɪᴄᴀʟ]►

[Auburn]

I think there may also be a sort of selection bias occurring here since "fashion" demands a certain financial commitment in order to acquire pieces. Secondly "beautiful" women (the "very thin, very alluring women") are more likely to be photographed simply because it is what "we" as a society desire. This is something that has been discussed to death and doesn't seem likely to change any time soon. I am also not sure that the sexual nature of this, as well as the other thread, can be completely removed either, unless we were to simply post pictures of clothes hanging on clothes hangers. I think we would all agree that the thread is not simply about clothes, but rather about the interaction between garment and wearer.

On a different note, I'd like to say that although I enjoy the more discussion based atmosphere of this thread, I think it necessary to continue to post in the other thread if only to keep this thread from being an excercise in intellectual masturbation. If this thread represents the anti-mainstream, then I feel it is irresponsible not to confront the mainstream and expose people to new values and ideas.

 

[Wallcloud]



I think its because the sexualization and resultant oppressive conditions that come from what gender norms do to women are much more dire. Us dudes have it relatively easy and historically/still are a big part of the oppression. So no one cares about it as much.
However , I think that if you wan't to change how certain presentations are expected of women, then you need to do the same for men. If there is a requirement of masculinity from menswear then I do not think you can remove the insidious implication that those masculine traits must to some degree be more appropriate for men than women.

Perhaps I do not fully understand what is happening in this thread. If I am entirely off point feel free to ignore or educate me at your whim.

I do not understand why implying that the masculine traits found in mens clothing are inappropriate traits to be found in womens clothing is insidious or inappropriate. It seems to me that part of the beauty of womens clothing is the attempt to capture the femininity of the women. I feel that even subtly highlighting the sexuality of a woman can be done in a way that is flattering and not entirely vulgar.

If there is some next level crap I am missing here I wouldnt be surprised. I just wanted to add to the conversation.

 

[thewho13]



Perhaps I do not fully understand what is happening in this thread. If I am entirely off point feel free to ignore or educate me at your whim.
I do not understand why implying that the masculine traits found in mens clothing are inappropriate traits to be found in womens clothing is insidious or inappropriate. It seems to me that part of the beauty of womens clothing is the attempt to capture the femininity of the women. I feel that even subtly highlighting the sexuality of a woman can be done in a way that is flattering and not entirely vulgar.
If there is some next level crap I am missing here I wouldnt be surprised. I just wanted to add to the conversation.

I'm too drained to talk about this right now.

In an unrelated note, as much thought as this thread might inspire, the lack of women's voices (and in particular WOC's voices) along with the voices of all others who suffer in the crosshairs of patriarchy (e.g. trans*, queer racialized/ethnicized, disabled, et al bodies) is extremely glaring.

That being said, I don't believe this thread can't produce anything interesting or worthwhile. Besides, the onus isn't on AFL (or any others here, for that matter) to deconstruct patriarchy in a thread on a men's fashion forum. We can, at the very least, try to extend the practice of autocritique to more areas of our lives.

 

[KingJulien]

I thought this was just a place to post cool looks without constant interruption from J Crew lookbooks and Kim Kardashian's blog or whatever. The title's ironic, guys.

 

[A Fellow Linguist]



I thought this was just a place to post cool looks without constant interruption from J Crew lookbooks and Kim Kardashian's blog or whatever.  The title's ironic, guys.

In the conceptual forest everything is simultaneously ironic and unironic.

 

[Benesyed]



Perhaps I do not fully understand what is happening in this thread. If I am entirely off point feel free to ignore or educate me at your whim.
I do not understand why implying that the masculine traits found in mens clothing are inappropriate traits to be found in womens clothing is insidious or inappropriate. It seems to me that part of the beauty of womens clothing is the attempt to capture the femininity of the women. I feel that even subtly highlighting the sexuality of a woman can be done in a way that is flattering and not entirely vulgar.
If there is some next level crap I am missing here I wouldnt be surprised. I just wanted to add to the conversation.

Except that it is limiting for women (and men) who are attracted to other things. Also, that way of thinking easily extends itself to other realms of outside fashion. Very few people just think in terms of gender bias or gender norms for clothing, they become a way in which other social stereotypes can be reinforced. A woman in a dress is more easily reconciled with images of domestication than an image of a woman in skinhead attire.

The point is not that women can't embrace these more accepted fashion approaches, the point is that that is already embraced. It is not an issue of vulgarity but trying to pin down women into the feminine when women can also approach beauty from other aesthetics. So if what you mean to say is women's clothing can embrace traditional concepts of the feminine and be beautiful, then yes I agree. If you are saying that that is the best/only way to really emphasize beauty for women, then I disagree and think that thinking in that manner is harmful.

The way that I think masculinity in mens clothing not being challenged strengthens that sort of thinking is because it says that at the end of the day when women appropriate menswear it is "girls playing with menswear" and that it is still property of men and best left to us.

 

[Benesyed]



I thought this was just a place to post cool looks without constant interruption from J Crew lookbooks and Kim Kardashian's blog or whatever.  The title's ironic, guys.

I'm just giving my intellectual underpinning for wanting to post/looking at posts in this thread

 

[kinesthesia]

i didn't want to pile on a week ago when i first saw this thread. recent comments have made this more relevant.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

More than just an idealized representation of "woman," this sublime object serves as a regulatory and hierarchical mechanism; beneath the weight of this regulating gaze, most women (and men, too) respond by attempting to negotiate their cultural, ideological, physical (affected) assets with the idealized figure so that they may be folded into the order of Affirmed Style—which is to say that they are conditioned to desire a dominant, differentiating, discriminatory sartorial cover-up.

What this thread offers is a space for the **** that is, according to the regulatory mainstream standards, weird and threatening (to its order).

i'd rehash your argument as "femininity is a creation of some establishment and people move towards it."

so we implicitly have producers and consumers, A and B. Firstly you take it as a sort of lemma that ideas flow unidirectionally and that they flow from A to B. there is no reason to take either of these relationships as being more true then their alternatives. B can control A, totally free market republican wet dream style. and if we discard unidirectional, A and B just interact with each other; after all A and B are not discrete points but collections of independent actors interacting. in addition, why can't there be a shift moment to moment between states? it's not that this idea is false, just that there's nothing in the statement that makes it more true then it's obvious alternatives.

as a counter argument for why gender rolls exist. there's been a lot of work by evolutionary psychologists and sociologists on explaining facets of culture through the mechanisms of our genes. it's possible that there are advantages, from the viewpoint of a gene and it's propagation, to having things like gender rolls. if this is truer then the other explanations then ultimately the dominance of a single grouping of ideas with respect to "femininity" is just an artifact from the process of evolution. a bubble in the glass.

now it's tempting to take this argument as a sort of threat to the current social order which thewho is advocating for. (yes thewho is the establishment here) i have been loosely informed that our current moral systems, social order or what ever the **** you want to call it, still hold up under this sort of assault. i don't really care for moral/philosophical arguments so i'm not at all familiar with, nor do i care to familiarize myself, with them.

 

[YOLO EMSHI]

Can we just get some ******* photos in here please?

All this talk about gender rolls is getting stale

 

[noob in 89]

What the **** is a gender roll...is it something that males graze on?




: : :

 

[hendrix]



i didn't want to pile on a week ago when i first saw this thread. recent comments have made this more relevant.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

as a counter argument for why gender rolls exist. there's been a lot of work by evolutionary psychologists and sociologists on explaining facets of culture through the mechanisms of our genes. it's possible that there are advantages, from the viewpoint of a gene and it's propagation, to having things like gender rolls. if this is truer then the other explanations then ultimately the dominance of a single grouping of ideas with respect to "femininity" is just an artifact from the process of evolution. a bubble in the glass.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Not necessarily an artifact yet:
a) There's no reason to suggest that gender roles don't still advantage in gene propagation.
b) Even if it were an artifact, i) we may have inbred genetic preference to promote this propagation ii) society as we know it today could be promoting its propagation.

This is a sorta vestigial unnatural selection - there's probably little advantage for a man to be big and strong and good hunters today, but women still find muscular men attractive.

so we implicitly have producers and consumers, A and B. Firstly you take it as a sort of lemma that ideas flow unidirectionally and that they flow from A to B. there is no reason to take either of these relationships as being more true then their alternatives. B can control A, totally free market republican wet dream style. and if we discard unidirectional, A and B just interact with each other; after all A and B are not discrete points but collections of independent actors interacting. in addition, why can't there be a shift moment to moment between states? it's not that this idea is false, just that there's nothing in the statement that makes it more true then it's obvious alternatives.

I'm not sure that I'm following you here. Are you saying that the standard that people are gravitating towards is changing as well?

It seems to me like that would be true.

 

[MS007]



On a different note, I'd like to say that although I enjoy the more discussion based atmosphere of this thread, I think it necessary to continue to post in the other thread if only to keep this thread from being an excercise in intellectual masturbation. If this thread represents the anti-mainstream, then I feel it is irresponsible not to confront the mainstream and expose people to new values and ideas.

The whole reason this thread exists is that some SF regulars wanted to have an exclusive place to post their taste in womans clothing. Its nothing more and nothing less.
The misleading title and the feminist attitude is only to justify this. If I hadn t called them out you would not find one piece of discussion itt.

 

[Zeemon]

cyber steeze

 

[KingJulien]

i didn't want to pile on a week ago when i first saw this thread. recent comments have made this more relevant.
i'd rehash your argument as "femininity is a creation of some establishment and people move towards it."
so we implicitly have producers and consumers, A and B. Firstly you take it as a sort of lemma that ideas flow unidirectionally and that they flow from A to B. there is no reason to take either of these relationships as being more true then their alternatives. B can control A, totally free market republican wet dream style. and if we discard unidirectional, A and B just interact with each other; after all A and B are not discrete points but collections of independent actors interacting. in addition, why can't there be a shift moment to moment between states? it's not that this idea is false, just that there's nothing in the statement that makes it more true then it's obvious alternatives.
as a counter argument for why gender rolls exist. there's been a lot of work by evolutionary psychologists and sociologists on explaining facets of culture through the mechanisms of our genes. it's possible that there are advantages, from the viewpoint of a gene and it's propagation, to having things like gender rolls. if this is truer then the other explanations then ultimately the dominance of a single grouping of ideas with respect to "femininity" is just an artifact from the process of evolution. a bubble in the glass.
now it's tempting to take this argument as a sort of threat to the current social order which thewho is advocating for. (yes thewho is the establishment here) i have been loosely informed that our current moral systems, social order or what ever the **** you want to call it, still hold up under this sort of assault. i don't really care for moral/philosophical arguments so i'm not at all familiar with, nor do i care to familiarize myself, with them.

I have a degree in biological anthropology so I feel I should clear something up here: a lot (many would say most) of the ways that humans behave and the things humans do can be described in terms of genetics and evolutionary advantage. Not all of these things are good, and in fact the list includes ****, domestic abuse, infanticide, and whole slew of other behaviors, including reinforcing gender roles. There's been a small handful of matriarchal societies, and I forget the paper but it's essentially accepted among the anthropological community that they're statistically insignificant.

To the point, it's occasionally advantageous for the propagation of a female's genes for her to murder her child (see Stephen Pinker's paper on it), but that doesn't mean we should accept that in society, and it's the same for gender roles. Evolutionary biology can be used as an explanation for a lot of things, but rarely, if ever, as a justification.

 

[Benesyed]

I really liked this