The Outer Limits

The whole point of clothing is acceptance. People wear what they wear because they have to wear something. Sometimes, your work requires you to dress in a certain fashion. Anyone who goes beyond the bare minimum is craving physical acceptance. Men and women. If you are a man, and business casual is your work requirement and you show up in a suit, you're showing off. Women, if skirt or slacks are your bottoms requirement and you wear the shortest skirt you can find, you're showing off.

Why do we show off? To gain the respect and admiration of our peers of course. As men, we like to look good because we want women to be attracted to us, and we want other men to think women will be attracted to us. That's the exact same reason women dress the way they do, to feel like people think they are attractive. But unlike women, men trying to acknowledge that fact are some how equated to eye-raping monsters.

emilywarrenart.deviantart.com

Pictured: Me commuting to work

I don't think anyone should be subject to unwanted attention. The thought that women who dress a certain way ask to be raped is such a uncaring, misogynistic view point. I don't understand how any sane person can think that is a reason for someone to physically assault another human being. Women are raped because there are evil men in the world, not because Bebe uses rulers they stole from 5 year olds to measure their hems. I also have a problem with leering as well. You see someone you think looks good, take a look, then move on. Looking harder wont make her clothes fall off or shrink (despite our best wishes). Everyone should be able to dress how they want when they want (to a certain degree) but you kind of have to face the facts: if your boobs are bouncing around precariously, most people are going to look. But you can't tell me you didn't know you were showing off all of the goodies before you left the house.

I very often see women while commuting to work, pulling and tugging on short skirts and readjusting their loose tops, looking around embarrassed and uncomfortable. I don't think that their clothes decided to randomly engage in battle with physics after they decided to go outside. They knew good and well that their clothes did not fit properly before they stepped away from whatever funhouse mirror they bought in a yard sale.  Women should be able to comfortably wear what they want without worrying about people trying to glare at their partially exposed nether regions, but that's just it: if you yourself are uncomfortable with what you're wearing, maybe wearing it wasn't the best idea.

"I may need to rethink the honey suit."

And that's where my confusion comes in. Not the women who are being leered or harassed for trying to get through the day wearing what they want to wear, but the women who "reluctantly" adhere to the social norm of trying to look attractive but going beyond their own limit of comfort. If you wore heels to work, yet you spend 90% of your day at work not wearing those heels, why in god's name did you wear them? If your skirt is so short that you have to tug it down every time you press a key on your keyboard, perhaps you should invest in a longer skirt, or an extra hand so you don't have to stop typing your TPS reports.

Yeah, I'm going to need that by 3:00 PM

My girlfriend routinely goes through the exercise of finding the right mix of cute and uncomfortable when going through her shoes. WHY? I go to the shoe store and find a pair of shoes and try them on. "Hmm. These shoes look really nice. But I cannot feel my left testicle so I'm going to pass." Not for women. You know the saying "if the shoe fits, wear it"? Apparently not. So my reward for her finding those extra cute pairs of shoes is spending 2 hours with a woman whom already has earned my adoring gaze looking slightly more attractive followed by 3 weeks of rubbing her feet in the aftermath. I'm probably still providing foot rubs from damage done during her Senior prom.

Ladies, is it really worth the discomfort to only look slightly more attractive? There are various ways to make yourself look more attractive and you don't have to be physically or mentally uncomfortable to do so.

Trust me. Most of us can't even tell the difference.