Dancing
In a couple of places, there have been threads / comments about dacning, getting dance partners, interactions between older males and "cute young things", etc. I'm going to comment here, and post likes elsewhere, so that I can get all my thoughts on this in one place.
1: Compliments.
A couple of people (purchasemonkey and corpsefairy come immediately to mind) have ( Read more... )
1: Compliments.
A couple of people (purchasemonkey and corpsefairy come immediately to mind) have ( Read more... )
Note, I said "their bodies". The clothing may be on display. For a costumer, that is, in fact, what we're doing, which is why compliments about the costume are not inappropriate. There are certainly outfits that are designed to make onlookers notice their bodies, but there are a great many more outfits that are designed to look good themselves and just be appropriate. I should not have to wear sweats or "dumpy clothes" to a vintage event, or even outside of my house, in order to avoid being treated as an object. For one thing, it's too damn hot here to wear sweats. For another, part of the atmosphere of something like a convention or a vintage dance event has to do with the costuming. In Victorian clothing especially, women are generally pretty well covered up and bent into shapes that are not their natural shape, so no, I am not dressing to get attention on my body, I'm dressing to get attention for the clothing. I don't ever really dress to get attention on my body. I either dress in what is the most comfortable (which happens to be tank tops because of the weather) or I dress in costumes that I want to showcase. If I could just drag around my costume closet behind me on life-like dummies all filled out to show the costume to its best advantage, I'd do that instead.
Y'know, you can't go wrong with something like "it's lovely to see you". As a "friendly suggestion", if you can't come up with more specific compliments that show a respectful knowledge of the person you're complimenting and you have to go with a generic, empty one, enjoyment of their presence without specifically mentioning their bodies is a lot safer.
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Umm, I suggested "occasion appropriate" clothes. FNW is a "wear whatever you want" kind of place. Gaskells and Peers are not, which is why I suggested wearing "dumpy" (i.e. clothes that hide your figure (and if you have a better word for that then "dumpy", please help me improve my vocabulary :-) )) clothes.
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The solution is not to dress "dumpy" (and last I checked, Victorian garb required quite a lot of covering up), the solution is for the men to listen when the women say "please stop doing that".
It's not really about what people wear or don't wear, it's about being courteous and respectful. There is a kind of aggressive male attention which makes all women feel uncomfortable. A man who does this, does so not to get results, but to feel powerful. If his intention was to make you feel good, obviously he would try to find out the best way to do that. Since you do not seem to care that many women are saying this method does not make us feel good, I can only assume your intentions are not, in fact, to make us feel good. A man who insists that a woman deserves certain treatment because of what she is wearing, is a man who wants his power trip to be excused.
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You know, you can "prove" anything once you get to make up the terms of the debate. The question has never been "what is appropriate once someone has made a request?" The question has always been "what is the basic appropriate behavior?"
What I have said to Robynne is that "if you go to a dance event wearing clothes that show off your body to good effect, you do not get to be offended when people notice your body."
Now, let's divide the men there into three groups:
1: Her friends
2: Her acquaintances (people who recognize her well enough to know her name, but don't know her well enough to qualify as friends).
3: People she doesn't know.
Over the course of an evening, Robynne will probably dance with men from all three groups.
Robynne has chosen to wear a dress that's good to dance in, and flatters her figure. In short, she looks good in this dress.
Guys in group 1 probably (should) know Robynne's quirks well enough to know that she doesn't like being complimented for her figure. They should say to her "nice dress".
Guys in group 3 can, depending upon the circumstances, while standing around chatting w/ Robynne (before the dance starts, during a break), compliment her on the dress.
At least some of the guys in group 2 are going to say "hey Robynne, you look great tonight."
It is my contention, which you seem to disagree with (although you've worked hard at avoiding actually addressing it), that by choosing to wear that dress, Robynne has forfeited her "right" to be upset by those men's behavior. Those men are not being jerks, they are not being rude, and your dislike of that behavior is an outlier, which makes it your problem, and not theirs.
Now, would you care to actually respond to what I've been rather consistently saying for the last two days, or would you prefer to continue your fight with the straw man you brought along?
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To sum up:
Women could be a little more gracious in accepting compliments.
Men could be a little more careful in offering a compliment that makes the woman involved feel treasured and appreciated rather than ogled and evaluated as a sex symbol.
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