Quote Originally Posted by ReineD View Post
I know you're just making a side point, but I'd like to comment because your point has been made many times in this forum.

It's important to remember that even though in past centuries rich men (not the peasants) wore brocade, ruffles, heels, feathers, wigs, etc, their dress style was masculine for their time and still very different from feminine styles. And men's motives for wearing wigs, ruffles, heels, etc were different than they are today.

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A man wearing a gown such as Madame Sophie's here would have been looked at with raised eyebrows. The comparison shouldn't be between female styles now and male styles then,[SIZE="4"] but how the styles differentiate male from female within the same time period.[/SIZE]
Hi Reine,
Well, I glad I've fallen in with like-minded folks. Your point is well-taken, but then how is that the dress of both genders today is drifting together? Women have been wearing pants now for perhaps 100 years, a little (I actually have photographs of women dressed as men from around 1900), more though since the 20's when Garbo and Dietrich began wearing them and made them fashionable. Garbo originally wore them in a movie, liked them and began to wear them regularly perhaps to express that "bi" personality we ofter hear about with regard to her sex life. She was very popular and was able to pull it off. Hepburn came much later. It is still ILLEGAL in Paris in 2011 for women to wear pants--the French government has turned a blind eye.
If we talk about differentiating styles, why do women insist on wearing pants with a zipper in front? There in nothing there that requires a zipper for an exit. Shouldn't the zipper be on the side, back or none? So if fact, the styles of pants today DO NOT differentiate males and females. SO why not creat dresses for men, which have no accomodation for breasts (CDs probably wouldn't wear them), just flat fronts with all the rest of the fashion intact? The new androgynous male model Pejic can be seen wearing such dresses. Why do women get to wear shorter--much shorter--shorts than men, and why do men who wear shorter shorts get labeled as "fags"? Shouldn't shorts just be shorts without sexual context?
Men wear toupees but wigs are taboo? It is OK for both sexes to have an "Afro" so where is the differentiation? The pointed comb?
Popular culture and entertainment make many things acceptable, so maybe we need more movies of drag queens, more festivals, more of everything that shows lifestyle diversity.
I recently saw Tootsie and I think it is a movie the general public can get behind in the dislike for men in dresses and what happens when two "men" get together. The Hoffman character wasn't a success (in his acting career or in his personal life) and I read the subtle message about homophobia and crossdressing to be a major part of the movie. That is of course, my personal interpretation.
:2c: