Style: Gender Inequality

When looking around oneself in any given high-street or shopping arcade, or even online, in magazines and on the ever-present billboards, one can’t escape noticing that men are getting rather a raw-deal, fashion wise. And we do, actually. Where women have a wide array of clothes to choose from when it comes to style, feel and intent, men can basically opt for about three or four choices, and that’s it. This has not always been the case, of course, men used to be as ranging in their attire as women, but, having been dubbed in some interminable past as the more robust and steadfast of the sexes, we have now been corralled in a very narrow realm of acceptability.
A swift comparison:

Women -Men
The little black dress -Suit (Black)
A little red dress -Suit (Black or Charcoal)
“his” shirt and jeans -Your own shirt and jeans
This wonderful silk blouse with
a simply DIVINE pencil skirt and my
new dark leather boots -Your own (nice) shirt and jeans
Efficient pant-suit in charcoal -Suit (Black or Navy)
Skirt and jacket -Suit (Black)
Cocktail-dress -Suit
Evening-gown -Suit (Maybe tails)
Wedding dress -Suit (Maybe tails or morning)
Granny pants -Boxer or brief
Thong -Boxer or brief
Baby doll -Boxer or brief
Garter belt, stockings, bodice -Boxer or brief (but nice ones)

See a pattern developing here? As a rule, women can walk into a shop and basically buy the same outfit umpteen times in slightly different colors and materials and have a number of different outfits for any mood or occasion, where men walk into a store, buy basically one outfit, and thus have one outfit. But he’ll have five copies of that one outfit.

I believe that this is the reason why men and women cannot shop together. Quite simply it is amazing for any man bred in the last half of this century to see why it is so difficult to pick the “right” items of clothing, mostly because whenever he went shopping there were only a few basic things to choose from. So he gets impatient, she gets annoyed, and it’ll be a cold night in bed tonight...
Two things need to be mentioned here;
1) New appreciation of men’s fashion and grooming has made sure that the availability of different items for the well dressed man (or the badly dressed one, as the case may be) has gone up quite a bit. Thus, the classical bored-with-shopping man will gradually die out a little, and is to an extent a stereotype that many modern men will not identify with at all.
2) Even though the above is an exaggeration it is not a terribly big one, men do have less choice and options as far as clothing is concerned as women. To a certain extent, the difference is academic, as there is still far more than enough to choose from for us, off course, but just less than there is for them. Also, categorizing for men is a dangerous thing to draw conclusions from, as one suit is not another and different cuts and materials have wildly different effects. That said, the same applies for women’s clothing, and the difference remains.

Obviously, the shape of the human body has shifted a little in the last 10000 years or so, but unless one subscribes too literally to Plato, the general number of appendages and suchlike hasn’t changed in any but the more unfortunate cases. Thus, women having the choice of pants and skirts, and men only having pants, limiting our respective options by about half.

Is this mean? No, not really. Is it by times unfair? Yes, absolutely. Is it avoidable? No, not unless the man-skirt gains a little more acceptance, and apart from certain subcultures I am not really seeing that happen anytime soon.

But men do have their options.
I prefer to think of clothing as a sort of blank canvas. Everybody wears clothing and everybody dos it differently, and an individual choice of material, style and color can make a lot form a very basic set. One can think of clothing as a uniform with the option to customize, and nothing shows off individualities as well as a uniform.
There is a tendency among writers to tackle “classic” subjects. The Ghost story, the Vampire story, the Romantic Comedy. Because these are almost archetypical styles, and roughly follow a set of rules and lines within the story, it is a very familiar place to be for the reader. But writers use these typical subjects to show of their own styles and turns, and the devil as well as the divine is really in the details here. And so could, and should, clothing be used.

Boyfriend, lovely man as he is, has a certain personal style in his clothing. He likes cufflinks over buttons, prefers a well cut suit over a flashy one, and has an apparent lifelong desire to own a few well tailored bankers’ shirts. The one with the colored body but white collars and cuffs. A commendable desire, I say, not only because I think he looks good in a suit, but also because a well-cut, classical suit with a well chosen shirt really is a point where it is almost impossible to go wrong.
That said, I do think he is a little too conservative in his attire, and most of our shopping expeditions can be scripted as a good half hour of me badgering him to get out of the mold a little bit, until he gets angry, and we get something about 10% away from his initial idea and onto my preferred result. As a rule, a pleasant exercise in clashing taste with an almost 100% success rate in general goodlookingness of Boyfriend.
As can be seen from the above, I have a completely different idea about formal wear, and have a tendency to be a little less traditional. I go for the bolder ties, contrasting colors and patterns, and have a tendency to be a little more ostentatiously dressed. I think it looks good, and I have been told thus enough times to have a confirmed opinion here.

What I am trying to say here is that we are both wearing a suit, might even both be wearing a suit of the same cut and color, but the way it’s been worn, and what it’s been worn with, can differ dramatically. A bright shirt or tie is a marked difference from a demure one, and different shoes or belts can do a lot as well.
Providing one remains reasonable, but with a personal flourish, it is very easy to adapt the uniform of a suit to an expression of individuality.

But it is, regretfully, easy to go wrong here as well. As a rule, patterns should either match all over, or clash all over. So a striped suit with a striped shirt and a striped tie is ok, if a little staid, but a striped-striped-dotted look will make you look like the tie you wanted to wear was eaten by the dog. Then again, striped-dotted-tartan is a choice, and with the right colors can look very well put together.