Clothing Gender?

[DamnthePants]

Alternative Title: Shopping with out Boarders


First, don’t be scared. This is actually a very benign topic of discussion that came to me after a trip to the mall.

Here’s the Anecdote:

I am at the mall, looking to see if any of the stores have anything I might need for my sisters wedding in may, you know, shirts, undershirts shoes etc. I went to a wide selection of stores. I was in the J-C Penny, sad that they didn’t have any vests that looked good, so I decide to walk around and look at the shirts. While looking for shirts, I see out of the corner of my eye a stand of belts that I loved. They were huge.( I like big belts, wide that is, 3.5 inches and more) In all sorts of colors and styles. I thought they would make a great kilt belt. But then I look up at the price sign, the price wasn’t the problem, it was what was above it. “Belts for Her”.

Yes, I am aware that it is ‘in’ with women’s fashion to wear a wide belt around your waist and not use it to hold anything up, but a belt is still a belt. I found myself having an internal debate. On the one hand the belts looked cool and would really make a nice kilt belt. The other side was saying ‘But it’s a women’s belt”

To make a crazy internal monologue short: I decided ‘fudge that, the belt doesn’t know if its on a man or a woman"

It got me thinking though. Why are some things labeled as for women, and some for men. Yes I would say that some things are more feminine then others ( A plunging v-neck would sooooo not look good on me, mainly because I’m Scottish-Italian, and thus its like a forest just below my neck line.) But what really should be the boundary line. This goes both ways.

Do we really need clothing to be sectioned by gender? Cant we have all the shoes in one section, and all the pants in one section, and all the underwear in one section. I mean, if you’re a man and you don’t want to wear a stiletto heel, even if it was in the men’s section, you wouldn’t buy it if you didn’t want it? Why should I be deterred from buying something I want because its in the other genders assigned department?

To complete the story, I didn’t buy any of the belts, but not for fear of crossing over, but because I wanted to look online ( always cheaper and a wider selection there anyway)

[ForresterModern]

I have shopped in women's departments for several items, the one most recently being skinny belts, for use as an alternative to a standard sporran chain/strap. A lot of places have skinny womens belts but no skinny mens, and for some reason they make them longer in womens sometimes than in mens too.

Heck, once it is off the rack and around my body it stands alone---unless it is all sequins or pink or floral or with unicorns, etc...----and does not have a gender association except the one i assign it.

I say go for it.

j

[Tobus]

I do prefer for mens' and ladies' clothing to be staged separately at a store. If for no other reason, it would be maddening trying to find what you're looking for if you have to sort through the womens' clothes too.

I don't think you're implying that all clothing should be unisex (at least I didn't read it that way), so as long as you're still in favor of men wearing mens' clothing and women wearing womens' clothing, why not sell them in separate areas?

If it's just that you want to buy a woman's item for your own use and are bashful about buying it because it's labeled "hers", that's just something you should work your way through. You can always tell the cashier that it's for your wife or girlfriend. And once it's out of the store, nobody knows or cares what the sign said when you bought it.

[MrShoe]

As far as the belt issue goes....how much was it? I need a nice inexpensive kilt belt.
Can you tell I don't care if it is a mens or womans....

I search the womans clothing section of the thrift store at items as fabric. Meaning, is that pair of leather pants good enough to make a sporran? Would that tartan skits make a good tie or pocket stuff? skinny belts are and purse straps for sporran belts......but bras and panties are passed by for obvious reasons. But a slip could be a kilt liner.

As far as department stores with separate Men/Woman/Boy/Misses/Baby sections I'm for it. Having worked for a retail department store it makes helping customers (read that as upselling them) easier. "Sir that is a great shirt...and these ties right here are a great accent to the stripe...and the cuff link right here are a great match top the buckle on the shoes.....

Imagine it the other way......customer to clerk..."excuse me sir...is this rack just Skye skirts or are there any Skye kilts in 32 waist?"

Or......"Oh! excuse me miss I didn't realize this dressing room was taken, nice teddy by the way.

[mrtackytn]

The sporran belt that I adapted and use for day wear sporrans I found in the women's section at the local thrift store. It is brown/black reversible - and works great.
NO gender required !!

[CDNSushi]

The main problem with having items like pants and belts and nowadays even many T-shirts, and otherwise "unisex" clothing is that the size and cut are usually different.

It would be too confusing to have both men's and women's sizes on the same rack, and you can't necessarily expect people to just adapt to a unisex size based solely on measurement... Plus, every women's wide belt I've ever seen would be far too short to fit around my waist to look nice (even though I'm only about a 36").

In addition, jeans, pants, slacks, T-shirts are often cut differently then men's equivalents, in great part due to the simple fact that the ladies are curvier than we are. On the surface a good idea, but in the end I don't think it would be very practical.

Personally, I don't like buying/wearing items from the women's rack at the store, not because I care or it bothers me, but I find (quite often) that the quality of many items is seriously lacking (especially belts -- since they are not meant to hold anything up and are there only as a fashion item). Many of the unisex (but women's wear) items I've ever worn don't stand up to anything in terms of durability. Not that I'm exactly Paul Bunyan the lumberjack here or anything, but that has been my experience. I'm sure mileage will vary.

[Bee]

The store I work at, if I see a man walking around the women's floor I figure he's looking for something for his lass.
And cashiers don't care why you are buying a certain item, if you talk about your kilting, that would be one customer who starts a good conversation!

If women can buy men's items, men should be able to shop around in the women's section without
feeling like they're crossing over into unchartered territory.

[wildrover]

Well...belts, yeah, and maybe some socks...but until we have boobs and hips, our clothes are simply cut different, unless you've gone fully metro and are buying in to the feminine cut jeans for men...and I speak here specifically of the several-hundred-dollar jeans found in some department stores, which are literally cut like women's jeans, flared at the hip, narrow at the knee and flared at the ankle...they don't look right on men because our bodies aren't built that way.

Personally, I think kilt hem height and sock height follow a similar gender pattern...men and women show, hide, and accentuate different parts of their respective anatomy.

Alternative Title: Shopping with out Boarders

Well, I ride a Burton, and I admit collectively we can be a pain in the ***...

I thought they would make a great kilt belt. But then I look up at the price sign, the price wasn’t the problem, it was what was above it. “Belts for Her”.

You're not the only one . I've seen a few of those belts on women, and thought "huh...that'd make a good kilt belt, if I cut it there, added a loop here, stuck the right buckle there..." and then I realize that what I'm looking at is usually the belt itself, and that the buckle may or may not really be a good kilt belt buckle. We do have the option to quickly and easily change our buckles, if we want...at least, the belts I've had pass through my hands all had that ability. I have seen a few women's belts that might do the job, buckle and all, but it's rare...at least to my eye.

Now, sporran straps...that's another matter .

( A plunging v-neck would sooooo not look good on me, mainly because I’m Scottish-Italian, and thus its like a forest just below my neck line.)

Well, you could always go to Tijuana and get the best of both worlds, but then it's entirely possible, as the old joke goes, that you'd never bother leaving the house on Saturday night .

Do we really need clothing to be sectioned by gender? Cant we have all the shoes in one section, and all the pants in one section, and all the underwear in one section.

Yes we do and no we can't. I've been in a shop that was sort of a second-hand or second-run store for Italian goods...the proprietor would take trips to Italy, buy stuff at auction from suppliers which were liquidating for one reason or another, usually suppliers for the major fashion houses. Because this was a small store, and the auction lots were very mixed, I spent an hour digging through women's shoes to find the mate to a man's shoe I happened to like.

I'm sure no department store would have a bunch of stuff sitting in random boxes, but it'd still be a pain to browse through a hundred pairs of women's shoes to find one pair of men's shoes. Last time I went to a department store with my girlfriend, "Men's Shoes" was in a broom closet, and "Women's Shoes" needed its own galactic quadrant.

If it's just that you want to buy a woman's item for your own use and are bashful about buying it because it's labeled "hers", that's just something you should work your way through. You can always tell the cashier that it's for your wife or girlfriend. And once it's out of the store, nobody knows or cares what the sign said when you bought it.

I buy stuff for my g/f all the time. Nobody has ever assumed it's for me...granted I'd never fit in it anyway, and it's not like I'm asking for a fitting room, but the assumption is simply that I'm not a crossdresser, so you may as well pick up that belt and christen it a sporran strap.

Just don't get the matching stiletto heels, and we won't roll your socks up and sew all your pleats shut.

[ABG0819]

I understand your theory but I have one problem with it. I do not want to see thong underwear mixed in with the boxer shorts. I know some guys are into that and all but...Just mark me up as old fashioned. BTW: I have no problem whatsoever with women who wear them. Just a thought and MHO. Thank you for your time and concideration in this matter.

Graham

[CDNSushi]

I understand your theory but I have one problem with it. I do not want to see thong underwear mixed in with the boxer shorts.

Don't know about where you shop, but where I shop the thongs are already mixed in with the boxer shorts... (Yes, there are thongs for men. Just ask Calvin Klein) But of course anyone is free to avert their gaze and move on to the next rack that has their preferred type of undergarment.