Utilikilts always transcend gender.

But my thoughts on clothing are, I think, in line with yours: let everyone pick whatever they want to wear with no legal or institutional consequences and as few social ones as we can manage.

I wonder sometimes where the line is between fashion/taste and social regulation, though. Because it seems sometimes like dressing outside gender roles isn't forbidden but... gauche. Like wearing stripes with spots. I suppose it's a sign of progress that a man in a pink ruffly shirt or a girl in combat boots are merely committing fashion crimes rather than crimes against nature, but it's still not right.

Actually, come to think of it, the line is quite clear: if it applies to both genders, it's taste, and if it only applies to one and girls are welcome to wear pink ruffly shirts, it's sexism.

[Actually I'm not sure about *anybody* in a pink ruffly shirt, though, so I might not be the one to ask. On the other hand I'm just all about jeans and t-shirts on everybody. (I used to have the cutest little jeans, ancient and obviously handed down many times, with the little diaper-snap inseams. I put them on both my children with white cotton onesie tops when they were maybe one and a half years old and *they* looked great in them. :-) So anyway, that was one of the things that struck me about Courtney Martin's post. Before the late 1960s jeans over diapers wouldn't have been just gauche (as my partner sort of felt) for either boy or girl, but ok on an infant boy *wrong* on a girl! Thanks, Holly. --fl]

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You know, I've seen guys wearing dresses before - not that often, but aside from in a gay pride parade they usually weren't even trying to look feminine apart from the dress. And it doesn't look strange, at least not anymore. But then again, I get used to anything really easily.

[I see men in kilts around here (there's a big manufacturer in the area and they're popular with the new-urban crowd.) But I also see the occasional man in a sarong, kaftan, or even hippy-style skirts, and yeah, except for specific events they're generally not trying to do drag, they're just wearing what they're wearing. Thanks, Nightfall. --fl]

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"If you want to convince a young girl that feminism is a good thing, all of that was a pretty good education!"

I got pretty much the same education - there was a lot of stuff going on when we were kids that really illustrated what feminism was for, at least for those who were paying any sort of attention. I don't think pants were ever actually banned for girls where I was - certainly they were permissible in very cold weather, anyway - but there was a certain amount of Just Not Done associated with them.

Sunflower

[Agreed. For instance the fact that resistance to change on the girls-wear-skirts issue collapsed almost immediately *once it was finally challenged* in our school suggests a lot of that stuff was (and, I maintain) still is only half-heartedly maintained mostly out of sheer, dogged, blind, inertia. That doesn't mean there aren't zealous haters out there, because you bet there are! It *does* mean, though, that most opposition comes more from "fellow travellers" who, I strongly believe, can be peeled away from the zealots just like our old principal was. It's just a question of how best to reach them. Thanks, Sunflower. --fl]

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Strangely enough, I grew up in a very conservative Christian school where girls were required to wear skirts in the late 80s, early 90s. And yes, it was miserable in the winter. I almost never wear skirts now, like many other people who experienced not having the choice not to.

And in regards to men caring as much about women's appearances as the women themselves do, "not above a certain threshold" seems to be about right from my experience.
Other than my efforts to find tee-shirts *in women's sizes,* I don't do much to try to appear feminine. I don't wear makeup, I've given up on shaving my legs in the past year because I really hate doing it, I have very short, not-particularly-feminine hair, I always wear sensible shoes, etc. And, while my peers who *do* bother with all the visual imagery associated with the traditionally feminine certainly get more male attention than I do, I've found that by-and-large, men don't care that I choose not to do all of these things.
They don't seem to think of me as particularly attractive or "dateable," but I've never really been directly reprimanded for my appearance by a male. It's almost exclusively from women that I've gotten direct, verbal censure for my percieved lack of femininity. (Your Mileage May Vary, of course)
I can't say how many times other women have told me "Oh, you'd be so pretty if you would just..." to which I usually reply, "I'm not trying to be pretty!" Which usually gets me a "Why not?" or "But you should."
So in my own life, I've noticed that, yes, men do respond to visual signals of femininity but a lot of times, the ones working the hardest to perpetuate the whole crazy, expensive, time-consuming mess of feminine visual imagery as it stands now are women.

[Yeah, the problem with "you'd be so pretty" is that it can be true only if by "pretty" one means "having done extra work." Which reminds me that maybe 25 years ago my nature-girl/hippy partner completely baffled her circle of back-home relatives and former classmates by having "such incredible skin," "yes, and you look so *young!*" Then one of them decided, almost accusingly, "I know what it is, she's not wearing any makeup!" As if that was cheating. Thanks, Lynn. --fl]

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