Susan Palwick wrote:
>Okay, I'm going back into Devil's Advocate mode: why can't a strong,
>liberated woman wear tight clothing and high heels if she wants to? And
>some lesbians *like* being femme, y'know?
>
> But the outside
>of the package has no correlation with the number of gray cells inside.
>Right?
We -ell, maybe, maybe not. For myself, I think a lot of it comes
down to practicality - most of the womens' clothing that is perceived in
this culture as 'sexy' is clothing that is highly impracticable for
actually living or working in, if not actually restrictive (hobble skirts,
anybody?). Weird, huh? And what does that say about our culture's images
of female beauty?
High heels just don't cut it for the active lifestyle - and. yes,
it's possible to work in them and even to run (god knows, in my benighted
youth I used to work ten plus hour shifts in heels and then walk the three
miles home), but they're an inherently unstable and precarious base to
operate from. Likewise, clothes that are too tight can make it difficult to
move, long loose flowing clothes get caught in or dragged through things,
short skirts aren't a lot of good for warmth and require a lot of careful
manuevering in order to avoid accidental overexposure, corsets and girdles
are frankly constrictive, etc, etcetera ad nauseum. Now, if you're dressing
for an event or a life where you don't have to worry much about moving or
safety or practicality, that's all peachy keen. But on a daily basis, I
like to keep my options open and I want pockets in my clothes and I want to
be comfortable. And I don't have a lot of sympathy for women who complain
that their feet hurt after a day at work in heels - well, excuse me, but
DUH! There's a pretty simple solution - don't wear the damned things.
So, besides all the cultural baggage that goes with the image we
choose to present to the world, there's this inherent impracticality issue
as well. A person could have any number of finely tuned gray cells inside
that pretty, tightly wrapped, and wobbly package, but that's certainly not
what they're choosing to present. And, on some deep nasty little level of
myself, I find it difficult to respect people who make that choice on a
daily basis - at the very least I'm going to make some gross assumptions
about their lack of common sense if they're wearing a clothes that don't
fit the weather, or the job they're trying to do.
Despite all this, I do agree wholeheartedly with Janice's statement:
>But I certainly don't think that someone's appearance
>grants or revokes permission for immoral behavior on the part of others.
>The "she was asking for it" argument is reprehensible and all too common.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:18 PDT