Fearless Friday on a Sunday

[wordsrmylife]

Today's Washington Post carried a fascinating article parsing the tuxedo, as worn by Constance McMillen, the 18-year-old whose desire to a) wear a tuxedo to the prom and b) take another girl to the prom caused her school in Fulton, Mississippi to cancel the prom.

McMillen, who was bullied by her fellow students, took her cause to the ACLU,

Comments

Re: Speaking of inequalities in clothing

[wordsrmylife]

I'd never noticed that about men's sweaters, but I certainly had noticed the difference in coats. I tend to buy men's winter jackets as well, but more to get the necessary length in the arms (cold wrists are nowhere).

[patty1943]

I never thought of that about the sizes. I have to get petites and they are always too long in both leg and crotch. It is very annoying. Wish I knew how to alter clothing.

[wordsrmylife]

Hemming for length is easy enough (my mother used to do alterations), but altering the crotch is trickier.

I hadn't thought about sizing until I was doing shopping for my husband a year or so ago. Going through a stack of slacks that went from 30x32 to 36x32 (I think the waist is always first) was an eye-opener.

[philia_fan]

I have to buy men's shoes because shoe makers have this idea of How A Woman's Foot Is Shaped, which mine isn't.

When Wildcat was little, I used to get depressed by the gender-specific clothing in stores. All princess pink for the girls, all extremely drab browns and navy blues for the boys, preferably with sports team logos on them. Very odd that this is more extreme now than when I was a kid, and girls wore navy blue and dark green and boys could wear bright shirts.

Uh...wait, what was the question? (Sorry, just babbling)

[wordsrmylife]

I had to buy men's shoes, but they only fit for length, not for width (I had narrow feet through my 20s).

I think you're right and the color differences have gotten more extreme than when we were kids, when the colors you mention were okay and both genders could wear reds.

It drove me nuts before BD was born, because we didn't know boy/girl, so I wanted neutral colors. There wasn't a whole lot of yellow and green out there for babies. Later, when she wanted to spend so much time in the sandbox, it was also difficult to convince one set of grandparents that pastels were not the way to go. "But she's a girl." Yeah, and she likes to play in the dirt, so I'm letting her.

[philia_fan]

People actually yelled at me for dressing my daughter in blue. Because apparently it was my responsibility to see that they guesses her gender correctly.