Girls vs. Boys: Fashion Edition

    This past week, I was introduced to Deborah Tannen’s “There Is No Unmarked Woman”, a short essay that provides a closer look at the judgement women are subjected to in society. She describes the ways women are stripped from their societal freedom because of the decisions she makes. 

    When discussing Tannen’s story, Ms. Valentino asked a few questions for us to answer in our notebooks. The one that stood out to me was: What styles do other people at Troy High have? As I was answering this question, I started to scan the classroom to see if I could find any patterns amongst my classmates’ styles. I observed that most, if not all, boys in the class had the same laid-back, casual style, which consisted of: sweatpants, sweatshirts, plain t-shirts, and tennis shoes. In contrast, the girls had a range of styles, varying from a preppy style, with cute cardigans and skirts, to a trendy style, with a cool bomber jacket and jeans. As I subconsciously analyzed each person’s outfits, I realized the “standard” outfit for a boy was as previously described but there was no “standard” outfit for a girl. 

    Society never created a standard that girls have to follow causing their choice of clothing to be an open door for judgement. Whatever outfit a girl wears, assumptions about her character will be made before she even gets to say introduce herself. This phenomenon posed complicated questions; why are humans programmed to judge someone based on their outer appearance? And why is it worse for women?

Comments

  1. LilyJanuary 29, 2022 at 9:07 PM

    From the evolutionary perspective, I think judging based on appearance could stem from more attractive people being more healthy. This doesn't explain why it is different for boys and girls, however. An alternate explanation could be that in the past, women were background characters, their sole purpose to be good wives. Now, this perspective is still applied to them, resulting in women being more judged then men due to men always having freedoms that women didn't.

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  2. Isabel BucklesJanuary 30, 2022 at 12:36 PM

    I totally agree that there is much more variation in women’s fashion. I think that this is probably because women put a lot more thought into their outfits because like Tannen commented on, what women wear marks them. So everyday women have to wear something that best fits the way they want to be perceived, something many men don’t have to deal with to the same degree as women do.

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