There was a recent post to HN about words men typically know that women don't and words women typically know that men don't. The words in the survey that women know that men do not know are mostly related to style or fashion.
This is the latest installment in a series of often unfortunate events making it clear to me that women talk about clothes apparently a whole lot more than men and as a consequence we (women) also talk about our bodies. In my experience, this ends up being kind of a cultural difference between men and women that can go weird and bad places and be problematic for a woman.
Clothes was a big, big thing in my family of origin. My mother learned to sew in order to make sure her kids were dressed appropriately in spite of budgetary constraints and I was in my forties before I understood that her ideas of what constitute appropriate attire were super duper conservative and likely where some of that comes from.
I did not grow up in a religious family but the expectations about clothes were so conservative that people sometimes ask me stuff like "Were they fundamentalist Christians or something?" when I talk about my childhood.
No, my parents were not fundamentalists. They were just kind of old and old fashioned, so, for example, they just felt "Girls are supposed to wear skirts and dresses." and I didn't own a pair of pants until I was seven and I didn't own a pair of jeans until I was twelve.
Many years ago, I was participating in a mixed gender forum and some guy needed help with his wardrobe. He needed a better outfit for a job interview or something like that.
In the course of participating in that discussion, I talked about what colors of clothes worked for my future ex and I talked about his eye color and hair color in order to give the guy some info that might be useful -- like "These colors work for him because of his coloring and may not work for you if that's not how YOU look."
At the time, I was getting divorced and the ex happens to be blond with blue eyes. The reaction to that info was that all the guys who had the hots for me and were blond began acting like they were in like Flynn and the brunets reacted like kicked puppies who thought I had just announced "You -- yes, YOU -- have no hope of EVER getting with me!"
Which just seemed to me like, wow, you folks got some serious mental health issues here to interpret those remarks in that way. (Humorously, someone said to me once "Why not draw the opposite conclusion: She is DIVORCING a blond man. She HATES blonds and will NOT want a man who in any way reminds her of HIM!")
Over the years starting well before that, I had helped other men go shopping or whatever and me talking about clothes and fashion and colors and yadda had never, ever been interpreted as some kind of commentary on sexual preferences or some nonsense. So that was just really, really weird to me that people would take those remarks and run them through some weird assed internal filter and draw conclusions about their odds of getting with me.
More recently, I mentioned that incident on some other overwhelmingly male forum and someone said something about how weird it was to them that I would talk with people about my husband's hair color and like I brought those weird assed reactions on myself or some nonsense.
I'm older and slightly less of a nitwit than I USED to be so I didn't get into it with him. I knew that explaining would sound defensive and like I was justifying it and it would amount to digging my grave deeper.
But if you are a gal and you want to hang in predominantly male spaces for some reason, it may be useful information to realize that men don't talk about clothes as much as women do and they may find it amazingly weird if you talk about pertinent details like hair color and eye color as a factor in how to pick a flattering outfit. And their reactions to that may be bizarrely sexualized, like the ONLY possible reason you might talk about your body would be in hopes of throwing it at one of them.
So if you are a gal trying to get taken seriously, you might want to "do as I say and not as I do." Putting out the above sorts of information may cause at least SOME men to interpret that like you are trying to send some kind of coded sexual signal.
Which I don't get. At all.
AND I would like to start a clothing line -- SOMEDAY, but not today -- so I am going to continue to talk about clothes and color and yadda. Though I may be more selective about where and how I do that than I used to be.
This is the latest installment in a series of often unfortunate events making it clear to me that women talk about clothes apparently a whole lot more than men and as a consequence we (women) also talk about our bodies. In my experience, this ends up being kind of a cultural difference between men and women that can go weird and bad places and be problematic for a woman.
Clothes was a big, big thing in my family of origin. My mother learned to sew in order to make sure her kids were dressed appropriately in spite of budgetary constraints and I was in my forties before I understood that her ideas of what constitute appropriate attire were super duper conservative and likely where some of that comes from.
I did not grow up in a religious family but the expectations about clothes were so conservative that people sometimes ask me stuff like "Were they fundamentalist Christians or something?" when I talk about my childhood.
No, my parents were not fundamentalists. They were just kind of old and old fashioned, so, for example, they just felt "Girls are supposed to wear skirts and dresses." and I didn't own a pair of pants until I was seven and I didn't own a pair of jeans until I was twelve.
Many years ago, I was participating in a mixed gender forum and some guy needed help with his wardrobe. He needed a better outfit for a job interview or something like that.
In the course of participating in that discussion, I talked about what colors of clothes worked for my future ex and I talked about his eye color and hair color in order to give the guy some info that might be useful -- like "These colors work for him because of his coloring and may not work for you if that's not how YOU look."
At the time, I was getting divorced and the ex happens to be blond with blue eyes. The reaction to that info was that all the guys who had the hots for me and were blond began acting like they were in like Flynn and the brunets reacted like kicked puppies who thought I had just announced "You -- yes, YOU -- have no hope of EVER getting with me!"
Which just seemed to me like, wow, you folks got some serious mental health issues here to interpret those remarks in that way. (Humorously, someone said to me once "Why not draw the opposite conclusion: She is DIVORCING a blond man. She HATES blonds and will NOT want a man who in any way reminds her of HIM!")
Over the years starting well before that, I had helped other men go shopping or whatever and me talking about clothes and fashion and colors and yadda had never, ever been interpreted as some kind of commentary on sexual preferences or some nonsense. So that was just really, really weird to me that people would take those remarks and run them through some weird assed internal filter and draw conclusions about their odds of getting with me.
More recently, I mentioned that incident on some other overwhelmingly male forum and someone said something about how weird it was to them that I would talk with people about my husband's hair color and like I brought those weird assed reactions on myself or some nonsense.
I'm older and slightly less of a nitwit than I USED to be so I didn't get into it with him. I knew that explaining would sound defensive and like I was justifying it and it would amount to digging my grave deeper.
But if you are a gal and you want to hang in predominantly male spaces for some reason, it may be useful information to realize that men don't talk about clothes as much as women do and they may find it amazingly weird if you talk about pertinent details like hair color and eye color as a factor in how to pick a flattering outfit. And their reactions to that may be bizarrely sexualized, like the ONLY possible reason you might talk about your body would be in hopes of throwing it at one of them.
So if you are a gal trying to get taken seriously, you might want to "do as I say and not as I do." Putting out the above sorts of information may cause at least SOME men to interpret that like you are trying to send some kind of coded sexual signal.
Which I don't get. At all.
AND I would like to start a clothing line -- SOMEDAY, but not today -- so I am going to continue to talk about clothes and color and yadda. Though I may be more selective about where and how I do that than I used to be.