Why are society's restrictions on men's appearance never mentioned?

[Cattleprod]

I've seen and participated in a number of discussions over the past year or so, on mumsnet and real life, which have focussed on stereotypical expectations of womens and girls appearance based on gender. The overwhelming sea of pink in girls clothes shops, shaving/waxing various body parts, 'princess' type slogans, cosmetic surgery, length of skirts, high heels, styles of underwear, that sort of thing.

The point always comes up that it is unfair that so much value and judgement is placed on a woman's physical appearance, and of course it is terrible that anybody should be judged on physical or aesthetic aspects that they haven't chosen themselves, or have had forced on them by situation or society.

But it got me thinking, that although a lot of the unwritten expectations related to appearance, and the perhaps more sinister ones (eg. she was wearing a short skirt so was asking to be molested) relate to women, far more of the overt expectations, those that invite comment and even punishment, that I have come across have been applied to men and boys.

From the rule at my school that a boy's hair must not reach his collar, to the expectation in many offices that a man must wear a suit and tie, have short hair and be clean shaven, to my little boy being laughed at when I put a plain clip in his hair to keep it out of his eyes. Men just aren't as free to look different from 'the norm'. Any man that ventures out in a skirt, or lipstick, high heels, a pashmina etc. is likely to be met with incredulous stares and unpleasant comments, and in extreme cases, violence. Yet these are things that we as women can wear freely, safe in the knowledge that we can also choose to wear traditional mens clothing largely without derogotary comments (as Sandi Toksvig and many other women often do).

So, aside from obviously wanting to stamp out appearance-based prejudice that still exists as mentioned above, does there not seem to be the space or inclination for us as women to celebrate the fact that we do generally have more freedom than men to dress as we wish? I know there are boundaries set by religion, occupation, local society etc., but it is always the negative aspects of the spectrum of female appearance choices that are discussed, never the positive.

I am only putting a negative spin on being female if you beleive 'being female' is defined by clothing and appearance . Strangely I don't. Some men do. The patriarchy does. Hence why men don't think it behoves me to worry about it.

"plus there was a report in the telegraph recently ( last week ? ) about how feminism is holding back working class men "

Ohh the telegraph. Must be true then

I have 3 children, only 2 of them have penises. I want all three of them to get a decent crack of the whip. If it means the boys have to work harder to do as well as the girl so be it.

The 'faffing' was related to clothes and looks specifically. Nothing to do with childrearing. I thought that much was quite clear from my post.

That article was tosh. Feminisn is not holding back men, it is putting women back to where they should be. If the men actually need to work as hard as women to be on a par with them then that is only fair.

article here

there have been a 1000 similar reports - the more cynical will say that the men in power 'gave' women feminism ( after the demise of our heavy industry and the birth of the consumer society women were more suited for the new job market - retail etc, coincidence maybe? no )

Also, we're not actually any happier than we were 50 years ago, in fact we're less happy. The 'very happies' have fallen from 52% in 1957 to 36% in 2005 - I dread to think what the 'happiness' figures are now...The rates of depression have also soared since the end of the war with women being particularly affected - The statistics support that.

thread here

Carmina, women have always worked. Most farmers are women. Most food is produced by women. The world is built on the labour of women. To make out that women work because of shopping is utterly sexist and ridiculous.

I was pointing out how employment trends changed in the UK post industrialism, (the rise in service industries particularly suited females) - I'm not interested in how many female pig farmers there are in Uganda. And sure, women in the UK have always worked, but not at the levels they do now and very few worked if they had pre-schoolers.

I'm sorry Stewie, that sounded so unlikely that you drove me to look it up. In 1900, women made up about a third of the UK paid workforce; a large proportion of that was domestic servants. In a lot of jobs, married women simply weren't accepted until World War 2. That even applied to teaching.

As for farming, there are a lot of of African and (in some places) Asian women working subsistence farms, and maybe they make up "most of the world's farmers". But in the western world, farming has always been mostly men's work even if now it doesn't take many people to do it. In parts of America, there are these huge enormously productive farms, where lonely men can't find wives--the women all move away as there's nothing for them to do.

TeiTetua, farming work has traditionally been women's work in the Western world. Within the UK, land has often been owned by men, but when defining how much labour it would take to make profit from a piece of land, historically the hours were frequently calculated in terms of women's labour, because they were the people who actually worked the land. Women do not always show up in the paid work force because much land in the UK was subsistence farmed, with rent paid in produce.

Britain was at war for much of the relatively recent past, and much of the male population were not even present to farm land for much of the time. Even if not at war, men often had more opportunities to emigrate, either on a permanent or temporary basis.

People like to write the contribution of women out of working class history, because socialists find it harder to get people fired up about past injustices if the past injustices were done to a bunch of women.

A lot of poorer women wouldn't have been classed as "employees" though - they would have worked by taking in washing/ironing, selling food produce (eggs, milk, butter, cheese, homebrew) - anything to make ends meet.

I know that my great-grandmother's (pretty impoverished) community did a lot of semi-formal bartering. Some took in washing, some did childcare, some sewing, midwifery, etc. There was a go-to woman for almost everything. The men did some stuff too, but I get the impression that it was still the women who did the co-ordination. Money rarely changed hands but it was a really sophisticated operation. Reminds me to get it all written down next time I see my Mum. When I think about it, it lasted in some form until the mid-60s when they knocked the houses down and scattered everyone onto new council estates, so my Nanna and her pals carried it on before they moved, although she always worked outside the home as did most of her contemporaries.

Working from home is different - mothers were/are still there for any children they may have - women 'going out' to work is a fairly new concept historically speaking - 1000's of children were not being cared for in private nurseries back in 1950.
I'm not sure you could call a child being left in a nursery for unto 10 hours a day ( whilst the mother works and still does most of the house work ) progress - that's my only problem with feminism.

So the woman who took her children out to the fields with her perhaps with her youngest strapped to her back wasn't working?
I would say she was working twice as hard.

I'm pretty sure feminsim isn't calling for mothers to work and still do most of the house work.

"1000's of children were not being cared for in private nurseries back in 1950."

No, but they were very often being cared for by grandparents or older siblings, or other relatives/neighbours/family friends, or being left to look after themselves when considered old enough. Both of my grandmothers went out to work, it was perfectly normal for poorer/working class women and often absolutely essential, if their husband was on a low wage or had little job security, as was often the case.

That's not a feminist ideology I'm familiar with, cb.

On the subject of women working, you might find it interesting to read Ken Follett's World Without End, which is set in the 14C. Whatever you might think of him as a writer, he certainly researched his historical novels very thoroughly. The only female characters who don't do a "job" as such are noblewomen or gentlewomen.

Her children were with her - that's the key. it would appear that some feminists are selfish in their life style choices and are not thinking of the next generation.

We don't know what the long term effects are for children being looked after in nurseries by strangers - because as I said, it's a fairly new concept.

Xposts sorry - that was to Bronze

carmina, women in England have worked outside the home for centuries.

As to the happiness thing, I always wonder if that's not because we expect more? You often hear depressed people say they 'should' be happy - I don't know that asking people about their state of happiness is a simple indicator of how good their lives are. It might also indicate how they value themselves.

Oh, and children have been brought up by people other than their parents for centuries too. Honestly they have. Not just aristocratic children but gentry and even lots of artisans. It's the nuclear family that's relatively new.

Those "strangers" in the nurseries quickly become part of the child's extended family, cb. The only difference is that whereas in the olden days, the child's carers would often be biological relations (in the case of poorer women - wealthy women employed nannies, nurses, governesses etc.) nowadays it is common that they are not.
But a child will still build a stimulating and loving relationship with their carer/s (assuming they are decent - and most are) and will learn different things from them than their parents, but often very useful things.

And I don't think needing to earn money outside the home because of family economics is a feminist lifestyle choice as such. Often it is out of financial necessity, including the longer term aim of hanging on that particular job/career to guarantee earning potential/pensionable earnings for the future.

What about the fathers? Most fathers work. Are they not thinking of the next generation? They are also the ones leaving their children in nurseries. They are perfectly capable of looking after their own children surely?

Or maybe men have always treated women unfairly and expected them to do both a days work and all the childcare.