clothing

anon

when i lost my virginity with my now ex, i wasn’t ready. on the day, i met with my then boyfriend outside and decided to not wear a bra as i was wearing a big jumper and wanted to be comfortable. i think he took this as an indicator that i wanted to lose my virginity that day, despite me saying no multiple times until i gave up and said a reluctant yes. we were in a park and also had no condoms so there were lots of reasons as to why i didn’t want to have sex. i felt very uncomfortable the whole time especially considering he was very experienced and we were outside. the day after i went to get a morning after pill alone. i didn’t realise until a few months later, after i had broken up him how bad i felt about the situation. during this relationship, he also took videos of me giving him head without my consent, and coerced me into saying yes many times. i am now scared of being with anyone sexually as i don’t want my no’s to be ignored again.

Rhianna

My school dress is supposed to at your knee’s length but nobody really listens to that and we always get told off for having our dresses just above our knees. I always thought that the teachers got angry because they wanted us to look smart and uniform but one day one of my female teachers said that there are a lot of male teachers who find it very distracting when our dresses are short and by having our dresses short we are making it hard for them. The only teachers who ever comment on our dress length are female ones, I feel like the male teachers are professional enough that they don’t look down they always look at my face

Outfit Choices

I had just started a job as a sales coordinator at a hotel. I needed some business casual clothes, so my mom and dad went shopping with me. My dad approved of all the clothes, and he’s very conservative, so I figured I was good to go. Well, I wasn’t. A few months into the job we had a new female boss start, and she received a complaint from one of my male coworkers. She sat me down in my office with the door shut to talk about it. She told me that I needed to wear clothes that were more conservative because it was making men in the office uncomfortable. She referenced the skirts I wore, which were classic office pencil skirts at or in the middle of my knee…saying they were too short and tight. I lift weights and have naturally big thighs and butt, so everything looks tight and rides up. I pull the skirt down of course, because like yeah it’s weird having a bunched up skirt lol. She suggested some guidelines and places to shop, all of which I was already following (shop at the loft, knee length skirts, etc). She told me she doesn’t find anything wrong with what I wear, but “you know men, they’re gross. Boys will be boys.” This was the moment that my eyes opened. I had already made attempts to not gain attention or criticism from my coworkers because I knew my thighs were “triggering” (everything fits close to the body with muscular thighs). On top of it all, her boss…my dad… had approved of my outfits. I know better now that I can’t cater the way I look to others because it might make them “uncomfortable.” Reality is, if someone finds you attractive, they can say it makes them “uncomfortable” if they feel so inclined to. There was nothing wrong with what I wore, it was just a male coworker who was engaged… and felt like it was my fault for choosing clothing that made him attracted to me/uncomfortable.

anon

before an exam at school, a teacher came in to say that showing our shoulders and wearing shorter skirts (in the summer) is unfair to the male teachers at the school, that it is too distracting for the male students and that we were being inappropriate.

Alex

Last week I was heading to a friend’s house very late at night. It was about 3:30am and I was waiting for the subway, I live in NYC. Because it was very late the trains weren’t running often and I had to wait on the platform for several minutes. There was only one other person on the platform with me, a young man. We didn’t speak and when the train arrived we both got on. After I got on the train I realized it wasn’t making all the stops because it was late at night so I got off on the next stop and started looking at train schedules on my phone to find a different train. The man got off at that stop also. I was on the platform looking at my phone and he came up to me and started talking. He was friendly, asking me where I was going. I told him I was trying to find a train to queens and then I asked him where he was going, he said he was going downtown, and he admitted he got off at this stop just because he wanted to talk to me. I said that was very nice and he continued to talk to me for about 10 minutes, asking me where I was going, asking me if I wanted to buy weed from him, how old was I, asking me if I wanted to get a drink etc. and also insisting that I took his phone number. I said no thank you and tried to be polite. I finally realized that I needed to get on the other platform and said goodbye to him, he again tried to give me his number and I again said no and left. As I was walking across the station to get to the other platform another man approached me and asked if any trains were running. I said honestly I wasn’t sure, but I hoped they were because I was trying to get somewhere. Then this man started to follow me, he said “well I wanna go where you’re going, what train you gettin on”. I shrugged him off and said I’m trying to get to queens, then rushed toward my platform and he didn’t follow me, just shouted out that he hoped I have a good night. I said thank you and left. I finally got to my correct platform and got on a train that would take me close to where I was heading. Shortly after I sat on the train a man who was already on the train when I got on moved from his seat to come and sit next to me. He asked me what I was doing out so late, what stop I was going to, etc. I told him I was meeting a friend and he said “lucky friend, what can I do to be a friend like that”. He also tried to give me his phone number. I just tried to be polite but not encouraging and waited until my stop. When I got off he also wished me a good night. This wasn’t too out of the ordinary, I am used to things like this living in New York, but I was a little surprised that it happened with 3 men all in a row. When I finally got to my friend’s house he asked me how it was getting to queens from Manhattan, I told him it was fine, except the trains were delayed and I jokingly said something like “the boys are really out there tonight, three guys came up and were hitting on me”. And my friend said “I’m not surprised because of how you’re dressed.” This is the part that really got to me, I expected him to say something like well it is late at night, or guys on the subway always hit on women alone, but the fact that he mentioned how I was dressed really stuck with me. Especially because I wasn’t dressed in what I would deem sexually provocative. I was wearing black leggings, black boots, and a black tank top that was a little low cut but not exceptionally so. It was also about 100 degrees out in the middle of a heat wave. I wasn’t wearing heels or a dress, just leggings and a tank top. This whole experience really stuck out to me not because of the attention from random men on the subway but because my friend insinuated that that attention was because of what I was wearing. I usually dress very modest (layers, jackets, baggy clothes) because I am selfconscious about my body, this was one of the only days I was wearing a take top. I mean, I honestly don’t know how I could have been more “covered up” without boiling alive because it was extremely hot, I’ve seen men wear ripped tank tops and shorts when it is that hot and no one ever questions what they wear.

Mne

Can I bring up the pockets on women’s jeans? Oh my god. You can’t put anything in there! Men’s pockets can fit their keys, their phone, and their wallet. Maybe it’s because clothing industries design the jeans to be fashionable, not workable. This is sexism. It’s overnormalised, like so many other things.

Melissa

I’m a bookworm, and anyone who knows me knows this fact, but this Hanukkah I was very disappointed with my presents. I got clothes and money from my relatives. My male cousin who is nowhere near as much of a reader? Almost all his presents were books. Gee, thanks relatives, I really wanted CLOTHES that you all picked out, meaning stuff I never wear. Seriously, all you had to do is ask my mom what I like, you’re relatives. Or just give me the goddamn money, if you really don’t understand my tastes. I would have loved to get those books 🙁

Orlando

I am a dance teacher and choreographer. My job is physical. A key part of my pedagogy is working to support and empower students to move freely and without judgement of their own or others’ bodies. The principal of one of the schools where I teach called me into her office and told me another staff member had made a complaint about me because I wear shorts. She told me to get a long, wrap-around skirt and to wear it over my shorts whenever I leave the dance studio. She said my shorts are “not fair on the boys”. The male P.E teachers wear shorts every day. No one has complained about them. No one asks them to wear wrap-around skirts.

Gail

Where to begin? As a child when I was molested? Or when my mother tried making me have a pink Sweet Sixteen birthday party? Or when my father expected me to help chop wood and wash windows but wouldn’t take me to play golf? Or my first job where one of the managers “tried it on” with me. No, maybe when the job expected me to wear a short skirt. And the next job. And the next. Nearly every job has paid me less than the guys I worked with. I nearly always worked at places geared for guys – in printing and in house painting. My ex-husband expected me help him on the job (carpentry) but also have dinner ready, the house cleaned and the child attended to. One of the worst places for sexism has been our public school system, where they just assumed that I wasn’t working and could show up at any point in a day for school events, as the mother of one. I attended all school functions. Her father none. And I was furious once when my daughter was told, in Sunday School, that she and all the girls would play the sheep in a play, while the boys played lions. I never dressed her in skirts and she could pick any color she wanted. But I guess the worst case of sexism for me personally came from my uncle, a physicist who worked for NASA once, when I asked him about being an astronaut and he ignored me. So I thought about becoming a stewardess (attendant) on a plane instead. But I was too short. Later on I thought about joining the Navy (in the 1970’s) but their dress code for women then included girdles, bras, nylons, heels and skirts. I didn’t wear any of that. No, I’m not gay or trans. I just find that dressing like that is silly. The kind of things I like to do doesn’t work with clothes like that. I think the sexism inherent in our clothing is something that keeps putting us women “in our place”. Thank goodness we can own property and vote now!

Meagan

Just heard Laura on NPR with Leonard Lopate… Which everyday sexism do I want to share? There are so many. I went to the emergency room for mental health reasons and was put into a psych ward where I was told to put a hospital gown over my clothes because there were men in there. I went in and ONLY the women had gowns over their clothes. Men were wearing their normal everyday clothing. On top of that, a woman who was obviously very disturbed was menstruating on herself and no nurses helped her. Why did I have to put a gown on and feel that I was the one who was the problem (and shamed for dressing inappropriately- apparently that’s leggings and a long sweater) when it was the men in the ward who were the problem. Maybe if a man was deemed a danger to women he should not be with the “general population” in the first place. Nope, the easiest way is always to change women it seems.