It’s midday, and you’re at a grocery store or someplace equally ordinary.
You see a woman in stiletto heels and a short skirt with long flowing glossy hair and lots of makeup and pouty lips. Beside her is a woman with no makeup in jeans and flip flops, her hair looking clean and brushed but not particularly styled. 
Regardless of which one you personally consider more attractive, do you find yourself inferring the first woman is sexually available to men at the moment? I do, much as I wish I didn’t – everything in her appearance has been coded over decades of fashion development to signal just that, and I can’t delete that information from my mind. Even if she’s looking that way for another reason – because she likes it, because she’s a model and it’s part of the job, because she wants to impress her girlfriend on their tenth anniversary – we’ve been taught that for a woman to look like that means she is offering herself sexually to men.
Now, same time same place, you see two men. One is dressed in a gorgeous suit and has a flattering haircut. The other is wearing a nice enough suit and his haircut is nothing special. Do you assume anything about their sexual availability to women? The first man certainly could be dressing to impress a woman sexually, but he could also be dressing to impress his banker so he’ll get a loan. His appearance signals that he’s out to impress someone, or just takes pride in his appearance generally, but it doesn’t signal that he’s trying to attract women sexually at this moment per se.
This is because, other than gayness, there’s nothing about men’s sexuality that scares society. Women’s sexuality has been terrifying humans since who-knows-when, so we keep our eyes peeled for signals that it’s broken loose and it’s on the move. The reverse logic is astounding – men use sex as a weapon far more often than women do – but since we blame absolutely everything men do wrong with their penises on women anyway, it makes sense.
Not only is this a telling dichotomy, it’s also an annoyance. Women who rarely wear skirts to an office often find that when they do, men who normally treat them like co-workers/buddies suddenly can’t stop talking about how great they look and how nice their legs are (even if, as in my case, one has stout, muscular calves). When do I get a chance to encourage the men around me to dress more like they’re hoping I’ll hit on them? When do I get a chance to assume that because a man is dressed up, he’s an easy mark for my advances, especially if I know how to dismantle his self-esteem like any successful pick-up artist?
But it gets worse: merely being in possession of naturally pouty lips or big breasts triggers the assumption in some people that you’re a woman who’s hyper-available to men sexually. Teenage girls with big breasts not uncommonly get hit on by older men who clearly imply that with a chest like that, a girl must be hypersexual (don’t get me started – I’m convinced only a sex criminal could honestly think that). Pouty lips get described as sexy in contexts from the boardroom to the grocery store, as if by merely showing up on the planet with full lips, a woman is inviting sexual commentary on her body twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
What’s your experience/observation of appearance stereotyping? How do race and other sets of stereotypes intersect with this stuff?
{ 49 comments… read them below or add one }
← Previous Comments
Oh dear lord, I forgot this place used html tags and not BBC code
Raeka(Quote) (Reply)
Plus, aren’t most of those photos posed shots? That’s … a tad different than everyday life. Brad Pitt doesn’t go around shirtless, standing like that, on a trip to Target or Kroger, FCOL. Or does he and the paparazzi miss it?
George Clooney’s was the only one that didn’t look like he was deliberately being instructed to stand a certain way (maybe Colin Farrell’s too), and I’d hardly say a few open buttons on a shirt signifies “I’m available for anyone to screw me.”
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
Nup, sorry – now you’re just begging the question. The point is that there are alternative ways that men dress to signal sexual availability to women, regardless of the fact that some people might interpret that to signal homosexuality (that says more about their own sexual orientation). I picked those actors precisely because they aren’t considered gay by the broader public.
Perhaps I can see it more clearly, because I operate in a different culture, one which proscribes dressing to signal sexual availability and has quite elaborate rules for both women and men on what that means (permitted male public dress is delineated as excluding tight-fighting clothes that accentuates the genitals, buttocks and thighs, and covering the entire body with loose, opaque clothing preferably with a headcover of some sort is recommended).
Thus, I am able to more clearly recognise the sexual-signalling dress in others’ cultures.
Umm Yasmin(Quote) (Reply)
Umm Yasmin, I get the distinct feeling you just want to derail the thread, because you’re just repeating the same crap without bothering to explain how our counterpoints fail to defeat it, which you can’t, because they do defeat it.
The point is that there are alternative ways that men dress to signal sexual availability to women, regardless of the fact that some people might interpret that to signal homosexuality (that says more about their own sexual orientation).
I just said: it’s the CULTURE that interprets them as gay, and revolutionary individuals within it who dare interpret them as pandering to a female hetero gaze. You try to dismiss the point, but in so doing demonstrate not only that you don’t know what you’re talking about, but that you aren’t interested in learning from the discussion.
Thus, I am able to more clearly recognise the sexual-signalling dress in others’ cultures.
That is ridiculous. “Specious reasoning” would be a generous term for it. Your insistence that you understand American culture better than the Americans you’re talking to has become offensive.
I think you’re just too gosh darn smart for us, and should move on and get a blog of your own where you and your audience of one can revel in your superiority to the rest of the human race. You’re on moderation now, but I don’t expect you’ll be commenting anything I would consider putting through.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Now I’m curious, though –is there a mode of dress through which guys signal they are NOT sexually available? I mean, pretending for a moment that Yasmin is correct, then it would follow that there is also a mode of dress that signals sexual unavailability, or at least apathy.
But American culture sees men as ALWAYS open to/looking for sex, so even the grungiest look doesn’t really say anything about his sexual availability, does it…?
Raeka(Quote) (Reply)
Perhaps uniforms? They’re supposed to emphasize your job and function as opposed to yourself.
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
“Perhaps uniforms?”
But what woman doesn’t love a man in uniform.?!?!
But seriously….hmmm… yes, and no. I think it ties back to the idea that mens’ dress is generally regarded to be about how men related to other men, no matter what. If men are trying to look sexually available, it must be for men. Otherwise, mens’ dress is often about the power they hold over other men – or don’t. Even uniforms – dress whites signal something different than a security guard uniform. What uniforms signal regarding sexual availability seems to me to track more with the perception of women as wanting money/a provider rather than with what heterosexual women might find sexually attractive.
jennygadget(Quote) (Reply)
“–is there a mode of dress through which guys signal they are NOT sexually available?”
Is there a mode of dress that signals that women are not sexually available? Doesn’t American culture suggest that women exist to fulfill men’s sexual desires?
Palaverer(Quote) (Reply)
is there a mode of dress through which guys signal they are NOT sexually available
I would say priest and monk uniforms signal a lack of sexual availability to women.
As for women’s dress, I think if a woman dresses frumpy men assume she’s already taken or not interested in finding a man. But that doesn’t stop rapists from seeing women as sexually available, and I’m not sure the perceptions of rapists shouldn’t be taken into account. In some ways they violate social norms and don’t see the world like non-rapists do, but in other ways they reinforce social norms.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
The rule in America is actually quite simple: Real Men don’t objectify themselves for women, therefore any man who appears to be objectifying himself for women is obviously not a Real Man, which makes him Teh Gay.
I’m wondering if the issue isn’t so much that Real Men don’t objectify themselves so much as that expecting someone else to take the initiative is coded as feminine, while seizing the initiative is considered to be masculine. And if you accept that, then the only men who would be signalling to get someone to make a move on them would be the ones who are looking for someone more masculine than themselves (ie. another man).
Which leads to the interesting implication that you can objectify a male character for a female audience, as long as garnering that kind of attention isn’t the character’s own intention. It doesn’t seem to diminish a guy if he draws in the female gaze (of either the viewers or other characters) as long as he’s not waiting around for them to come to him.
Ikkin(Quote) (Reply)
Ikkin, that makes sense. I’m thinking of movies: as long as the guy runs around doing guy stuff with guys, if women find him drool-worthy, only their jealous boyfriends care. But take a movie that hits all the right guy notes yet somehow conveys that the character might be consciously courting attention from women, and He Must Be Gay.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I’m not sure that “consciously courting attention” is enough to set off that alarm, either. It’s just that most of the examples I can think of where that wouldn’t be considered unmasculine involve the guy being overly pushy about it and hence obnoxious and narcissistic (with the most triumphant example being Johnny Bravo from that Cartoon Network show).
Ikkin(Quote) (Reply)
So true. I want my colleagues to treat me like a fellow engineer. Why would I want anything else?
chanson(Quote) (Reply)
Raeka @35: Not exactly a matter of sexual availability, but I have seen someone argue that teenage boys’ huge loose garments in dull colors are a way of hiding from the Male Gaze.
That is, this culture encourages men to believe that the entire world exists for their pleasure, and to think of themselves as able to just grab for whoever they want sexually. So teenage girls are encouraged to dress in tight/skimpy/bright clothes to attract the (assumed, default) male gaze; straight boys dress to hide their figures from that same gaze.
When I read it, I thought that this argument connected neatly with the way movies showing men in skintight or colorful clothing are described as ‘homoerotic’ or those characters are assumed to be gay. It’s always about appealing to men, not women.
Kathmandu(Quote) (Reply)
Thank you, Jennifer.
I was sensing an attempted justification of hijab in the wind, and was preparing to loose a few arrows to puncture that particular balloon.
Back to the original post, though, I don’t particularly infer that a woman dressed in the way you describe is signalling that she is sexually available to men – I often dress like that (not the stilettos – these days I’d break my neck if I tried walking in them) and I have less than zero desire to be sexually available to men.
Nor do I dress for the scrutiny of other women. I dress for myself (and my partner) — “what I’m comfortable in,” as well as “what I think looks good on me,” as well as “what I’m expected to wear.”
It seems to me that, *where their life circumstances allow it,* women, like men, dress in clothes that are functional (appropriate to the role they are playing at that specific point in time) and comfortable (psychologically as well as physically). Most of us — again just like men — also like wearing clothes that make us feel good about ourselves. The proportion of consideration we give to each of these three factors will vary from individual to individual and occasion to occasion — and sometimes on both axes (and several others) simultaneously.
I teach — in front of my students, I wear skirts, blouses and (when necessary) jackets. The materials will vary from summer to winter, but my skirts are usually below-the-knee. Yes, this is what I am expected to wear, but I also find such garb comfortable — and I like the way I look in it. By the same token, walking in the park in winter would see me in jeans,ushanka fur cap and a big thick coat— functional, comfy and good-looking for that situation.
I also wear heels and make-up on occasion — because I *like* wearing heels and make-up (though, as I said earlier, I’m not always able to wear heels nowadays).
What about *getting* attention from men, rather than soliciting it? I guess I’m lucky enough to have removed that particular spectre almost entirely from my life — I teach in a girls’ school, live with my (female) partner and have almost no contact with straight men (my father is the only straight male I regularly have anything to do with). On the rare occasions when I do venture into ’mixed company,’ I tend towards cautious but self confident — my motto is the old feminist chant of “However we dress, wherever we go/’Yes’ means ‘yes’ and ‘no’ means ‘no’!” but I still keep my eyes and ears firmly open…
Sally(Quote) (Reply)
I addressed this in the first paragraph:
“Even if she’s looking that way for another reason – because she likes it, because she’s a model and it’s part of the job, because she wants to impress her girlfriend on their tenth anniversary – we’ve been taught that for a woman to look like that means she is offering herself sexually to men.”
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
ohcoya,
“what dat look like [Miz Daisy]??”
LMAO!!
Sadly, that one also reminds me of the time I was 10 or 12, wearing my favorite dress and waiting to go to Sunday school, when my Dad told me I looked like a prostitute. I think perhaps I had only gotten taller and the dress was a few inches above my knees instead of at them. And I had nothing like the figure you have.
Nowadays, i get the same kind of treatment in jeans and a T-shirt,if I’m wearing makeup. My body is terrific, but wtf, that has to do with everybody else, I don’t know. I agree with whoever said woman=sex. Even when I look like trash I get leered at.
Kayle(Quote) (Reply)
That’s a interesting point about men; I don’t infer anything about sexuality from the way they are dressed, but I’m sure I do when it comes to other women, much as I try not to :-/ It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, especially since I’ve been running into idiots who take this way of thinking to “dressed a certain way = asking for it”, which is infuriating, and not to mention frightening.
Dani(Quote) (Reply)
When a woman dresses “sexy” — the stilettos, short skirt, etc. — then society (i.e. the male gaze that passes for “everyone’s” mainstream gaze) assumes she’s sexually available to anyone.
When a man dresses “sexy” — the tight pants, unbuttoned shirt, or even a sexy-looking power suit — then society assumes he’s on the prowl.
It’s that straightforward. Women dressing sexy = available. Men dressing sexy = on the prowl. That’s why they’re not comparable. There’s also an element of projected aggression/danger to a man’s sexy dressing that doesn’t exist when a woman dresses sexy. She’s prey; he’s a hunter. If you go down to the basics that’s the difference in perception.
Lara(Quote) (Reply)
← Previous Comments
{ 1 trackback }