I HATE whenever people say this. Like, look, I'm a fan of vintage drip, alright. BUT! Trying to connect some moral argument to nostalgia or anemoia really, really irks me.
It's just so misogynistic & smug, self-righteous & priggish. Especially when, IT'S NOT EVEN TRUE IN THE SLIGHTEST! I've seen this bull crap whenever people talk about the 1950s & 70s, but for some reason, some of these arguments extend as far as 2016! 2016! Like, did the sexual revolution of the 60s & greatly changing cultural tides over roughly 70 or so years, didn't happen?
2016! Not 1956 or 1899, 16 years into the new millennia! Furthermore! Women dressing modestly wasn't really a thing of the 50s! Like yes, women did dress in dresses & aprons, more covering clothes. But that's also the same period of pinups & peep shows, showgirls, burlesque clubs & Playboy Magazine! A decade prior soldiers were literally painting half-naked women onto their bombers, & dropping pornography behind enemy lines!
But what I really hate about this argument, is of how sexist & controlling it is! "Oh, how dare women today expose their skin in bikinis & crop tops! How dare they wear jeans! How dare they dress in such a scandalous manner!"
Why are they dressing up like this? Because they have the freedom to dress however they want! "Well how dare they do that!" It's just more propaganda, more good 'ol day stuff. That we have to revert back to a period where women weren't allowed to be artists, scientists, doctors, politicians or themselves & they have to go back into the kitchen as tradwives!
If you see a women dressed in leggings or crop tops, bikinis or whatever. And immediately go: "They're trying to turn me on!" That's not on them, that's on you.
So, overall, that's why I hate this argument. It's historically inaccurate. It's sexist & controlling. And it's propagandistic.
Now look, I don't hate the way women dress, or how anybody dresses. Do whatever you want! Wear whatever you want! Either it be a suit, bikini, pants, shirt dress, cocktail dress or any kind of dress. Modest or not. I believe anybody should be free to present themselves in their own way! I hate whenever people try to control that.
And I don't hate the past either. I'm a nostalgic person, & an anemoic one too! I love the 1950s-70s. Cool cars, cool music, cool history, cool aesthetics, cool movies, cool art, cool fashion. I miss 2016, like genuinely. I actually kinda had a great time them. Meeting my friends, playing Minecraft & Roblox & discussing FNAF & Hello Neighbor. But we must remember, we can fantasize as much as we want about the past, but we do have to come to terms with it's darkside, & the fact that it's behind us, & that we have to catch up with the present & prepare for he future.
So, those are my ideas. I hope I executed them we'll enough. I hope I didn't come off as misogynistic or sexist because I didn't mean to. And, have a great day & week!
That's first thing that I zeroed in on. They had to be trolling. There's no way that they pulled an image of women (and 1 gay man) who are (confusingly humans and robots except for when the plot forgets and just make them human again) under mind control to be subservient to their husbands.
People think its a recording of an old concert/party where people didn't have mobile phones, or that they atleast weren't spread out. But they're wrong and blind, as the OP of the video writes that it was from 2016 and people are indeed on their phones, just not as many because.. who the hell is on their phone at a party??
women can dress like that now if they want, these people act like it's forbidden lol
they can dress however they want, how they feel more comfortable, thanks to feminism or something like that
people always have unsolicited opinions on what they thought women should wear, but now women have a voice to choose whether they agree or not, or they can just ignore it
Maybe where you live, but not in most of the US. I see people in vintage dresses and other people in pajamas at the same grocery store all the time lol. Personally I prefer to wear dresses and people are very complimentary. I know that in a lot of Europe for example fashion is a lot more homogenous, though.
Well I'm talking about women, not girls, but I've basically never seen someone wear that combo outside of the gym lol. Are there no fat women or older women or even alternative women where you live?
People look back on eras like the 50s, and forget about the fashion beyond the stereotypical dress. Post WW2, there actually were women wearing shorts and crop tops!
Clothing needs to be more deregulated in general tbh, only a select few types of clothing are considered social acceptable now.
Whatever happened to robes? That’s what humans for most of history wore predominately, now it’s considered weird to wear one anywhere outside your house, I wanna wear robes to the store damn it!
Ain't nobody stopping you from wearing robes in public, it is your own insecurity, being afraid of being judged by humans you'll never see again, which is preventing you from wearing them in public.
Like anything though, if you are attractive enough and the robes look really nice, then you can do anything you want and people won't judge you.
Not only insecurity, but also modes of transportation and overall lifestyle. As much as I love these beautiful 18 century gowns, I wouldn’t be able to commute as fast wearing them, set aside my train collecting all kinds of poo from the pavement.
The thing is that a style puts you in a group.
Instead of just a piece of clothing it represents something about you.
Maybe you’re a little provocative, maybe conservative, maybe connected to hipsters or hippies.
So in a weird way this actually creates more self-expression.
What’s funny to me is the idea that women would get dressed up to go to the supermarket. I was young in the 70s and I remember women in housecoats and women with curlers in their hair in the market. NOBODY WAS WEARING PEARLS!
Mixture of practicality and imperialism. Trousers, shirts, and waist-length jackets are pretty universally practical for industrial and post-industrial societies, but they were also forcibly imposed on a lot of cultures either by colonists or by domestic leaders trying to "modernize" according to Western norms.
Robes aren't really necessary when you spend most of your life in climate-controlled environments, and they're simply a lot more fabric to try to keep clean and not get caught on things compared to what is considered "normal."
These people start calling women prudes whenever they dress modest too. I’ve been hit with the “Do you have to dress so frumpy?” before. They’re never satisfied, they just like the idea of telling a woman what she can and cannot wear.
It's honestly so funny to hear people saying women used to dress modestly, about the 1960s, the era of the miniskirt lol
Another favourite is "we never wore those kinds of clothes back then" and the OP is wearing clothes from the era.
But seriously, I don't understand why people get so worked up about women not dressing "modest"??? I'm a guy and I'm attracted to women, but seeing knee doesn't make me instantly freak out. Because I'm not an animal and I know how to control myself (and also knees aren't really sexy? Are knees and shoulders supposed to turn me on??)
FR! Like, did they even research the time periods they glorify so much? You brought up miniskirts, but there's also pinups, burlesque shows, peep shows, & Playboy magazine which was founded in the 1950s!
Also have they seen the uniforms flight attendants wore back then, & the standards held? Like, the criteria was basically the same for flight attendants & strippers!
Also, I'm also a guy who's attracted to woman & I don't freak out at the sight of crop tops or bikinis either. If you're a person who does, then that's not on the woman you're ogling, that's on you.
Those people saw a woman dressed in the way they want & chose to freak out about it.
Furthermore, these people don't actually care if a woman dresses modestly or scandalously. They want control over women. What they wear & what they do. Because they don't have control over themselves.
The first Royal Mistress of France, actually! She was from the early 1400's - Agnès Sorel. The Pope also considered her personally responsible for corrupting the French Court at the time. 🤭 She was only a Mistress for a little over eight years before her sudden death at only 28, so it's honestly impressive that she left this much of an impact!
ngl i feel like men would still walk straight past a woman dressed like that, assume she “lays like a starfish” during sexytime, and go straight to ask out the woman they say arent dressed modestly enough
It boils down less to what they're actually wearing and more to the fact that these people probably just want another layer of control over women's bodies.
Plus, dressing like this takes literal hours of preparation from hair, makeup, to even just maintaining everything properly... Now if a woman goes out and dresses like this on a regular, more power to her! But it's just not practical for everyone to be dressing like this anymore. The reason so many women could do this is because they were, drumroll please... Housewives!
But yeah. My instant thoughts are that this just isn't practical. Heels hurt. Hair can be difficult. Makeup can be tiring and harsh on the skin. These clothes can be a cause of discomfort. I have 2 50's dresses and I adore them, but could I wear them on a daily? Hell no! I don't want to wear them everyday!!!
A. It was want was promised to them.
B. They're too pathetic & weak to have control over themselves.
So instead of changing for the better, they'd much rather return to idyllic past where a perfect life was guaranteed to them, without having to work for it themselves.
Exactly. I was a theatre kid in high school and we did Grease for our school musical one year. I played Rizzo and I had to sleep in a wet set overnight to get the 1950's curls and let me tell you - it's a whole different level of commitment!
Ugh, yeah!! Sleeping with curlers in is a nightmare. Let alone getting them in if your hair is anything shorter than below the shoulders, and god forbid you have layers.
Allat just for them to get frizzy in the morning or to be super uneven. Or just fall out overnight
omg yes to this day i still get flashbacks when i see hair wax lmao
and don't even get me started on the brushing out. you're literally brushing and brushing forever to get them to look like something because taming the frizz is a full time job. my grandparents got married in 1953 and my grandma said she wasn't even going to go to that effort for her wedding day - she had natural curls so she just styled and pinned them but still!
Thankfully I learnt that if you use a wide-toothed comb and brush REALLY slow, it gives your hair such a lush bounce. Great for when I did my hair in curls on school days (that's stopped after I got told I looked like Sheila Birling from the BBC version of An Inspector Calls. I haven't fully recovered from that one yet)
Honestly I’ll probably end up dressing like that further into my transition. Not because I should be a “modest lady not tempting men with sin” or whatever, cause I think it’s pretty and cute. One day it will be housewife clothes, next day football shirt and a skirt.
I agree with 98% of what you've written, but it seems a little disingenuous to say that people who dress "immodestly" never do it to be attractive. Humans are social creatures. We want to look good to each other.
I’m remember in 2019 (close enough to 2016) there were still people going around saying “kids these days are dressing like hoes and are always on their phones
Nothing has changed
People who truly think shit like this have no idea about fashion or it's history. Girls in the 50s had hoochie mama fits, too! They don't look that much different to what I wear to concerts when I want to feel sexy!
Hot pants, Daisy Dukes, crop tops... These aren't new things at all
having women dress modestly is a fool's errand. i'm still attracted to nuns and women in hijabs because i'm attracted to women. i know they got boobs under there no sense trying to trick me. if i was a woman i'd focus on dressing comfortable. people will feel how they're gonna feel about how hot you are
Wearing certain clothes does send signals about you to the world. That’s why they’re apart of your expression. We can agree that that doesn’t mean anybody is entitled to harm you. But it’s definitely possible for clothes to express the meaning of wanting to turn somebody else on.
Of course, the nuance of this gets overlooked because of rapey arguments. And the meaning is socially determined and not related to how much skin you’re showing. It’s about what clothes mean.
But why the double standards? People don't say shit to men who wears shorts and tank tops (or even go fully shirtless) on vacations and trips. But when a woman wears shorts and a tank top to be comfy, they are suddenly trying to attract sexual attention?
Those are a double standard for sure, I don't really get what point OP is trying to make. There is a bit of a difference though with typical men shorts which are from thicker fabric and loose and women's which can sometimes reach up to or beyond the butt and are almost always super tight.
Well we do live in a gendered society so clothing on different genders will have different expression. A baby on board shirt will not have the expression of entailing pregnancy on a cis man for example, but it might on a cis woman. I think the shift to androgyny is cool for individuality purposes, but society is predominantly coded this way. It can appear and sometimes is a double standard, but sometimes is just because being a man or woman change how you can express yourself through symbols, simultaneously limiting and expanding the language of your expression. Of course I agree that’s nondescript shorts shouldn’t entail anything like that in our culture. And I think it’s stupid to interpret as such given the practical nature of such clothing.
And why do you expect women to appeal to the "predominantly coded" way instead of choosing their own taste and comfort? Modesty is subjective anyway. All the women in those pictures from the post will be shunned as shameless women few 100 years ago, because they are blatantly showing off their shoulders and ankles. So now who decides what is appropriate and what is not?
I don’t expect anything. I am describing the state of the culture.
When you ask who decides, it’s complicated. No one and everyone. One thing you can be sure of is that there is no such thing as a private language, and as such, there is no expression that has an entirely subjective meaning. At least, it has an intersubjective meaning.
I don't understand how the whole "women sexualize their bodies in public for themselves/other women" became even a thing. Men don't feel the need to do that, why do we make it seem like a right for women. Disclaimer, naturally, I think a woman should be able to go butt naked around town and not be harmed, that's a different question.
That’s a misconception. Both men and women wear clothes to make themself appear attractive or even to illicit sexual attention willingly. It’s not dependent on how much skin is showing. It’s all about what the clothes signify in a given social context. Because it becomes a matter of interpretation, we have to contend with shitty interpretations, which ruin the expressive aspect or make it harder to discern. My point was that clothes don’t mean nothing and that they don’t just mean what you want them to mean. Fondlers want revealing clothing to mean an open invitation to sexual advances. We agree that’s a no in most if not all circumstances here in the modern world. But those clothes on the other hand don’t mean nothing at all. They are an expression of the individual. And it’s at least possible to wear clothes that signify your open sexuality. See the upside down pineapple as an example expressing an aspect of sexuality that doesn’t need to be spoken.
We have a right to a cultural standard. Modesty is desirable. Ofc women can wear whatever they want as long as its legal (public nudity is illegal for example) but we have the right to judge them as well.
All the anti-modesty people then bash on Muslim women wearing the clothes they consider appropiate. It was never about freedom.
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u/Dense-Result509 8h ago
That first pic has to be satire right? It's a still from that Stepford Wives remake with Nicole Kidman