Challenge #01748-D287: War of the Sexes

Why do women's clothing never have pockets? -- Anon Guest

Everyone thinks it's the purse industry. Selling ladies all forms of impractical bags of varying sizes that, though they look pretty, are a pain to manage. Those that hang off the shoulder cause damage to the tendons. Those clutched in the hand are hard to keep track of. And those with large bags suffer the worst, because their significant others use them as pack horses.

That's only part of it.

The strangest parts of womens' wear never having pockets are thus: fear and control.

Control of women is as old as the concept of male primogeniture. Control the uterus by controlling the woman attached to it. There were varying methods. Lock her entire self up. Make her ashamed of herself. Have her working on fiddly things from dawn to dusk. Constrict her motions with tight clothing. Constrict her options with things that could kill her. Constrict her diet. Constrict her freedoms.

Women finally emerged into the twentieth century with roles so restrained that they are still fighting to be free of them. Rebellion was in the air the instant that it became possible for a woman to control her biology herself. But before that revolution, there was the attempted rebellion of the pockets.

War had given women access to mens' trousers. Jeans. Overalls. Slacks. And with those trousers came pockets. Pockets in which they could carry the things that usually went into their purses. The essentials. Keys. Money. Whatever objects of security they chose. They tasted the freedom men had and wanted to keep it.

And every design for womens' clothing with pockets was shut down. Because men were afraid.'

Their chief reason was, "You can never tell what she has in them." Such an objection never came for the purse, because it involved shuffling about through the contents to get anything. But a pocket? She could stick her hand in there and come out with knuckledusters with which to defend herself from any mans unwanted attentions. Or, for the advanced classes, a flick knife or a blade razor.

So skirts became feminine. And the purse was sold as essential. And pockets, by and large, vanished from the face of ladies' fashion.

But there were always a few rebels in every generation. Those who wore mens' trousers and cut their hair short. They tried to control them with words. Beatnik. Bulldyke. Slut. Whore.

The 1960's changed most things, but not the state of pockets. Women could choose to go where they wanted. Do what they wanted. Dress how they wanted. And when hundreds of murders happened in response, the first instinct was to blame the victim.

What did she expect? When she acted like that. When she dressed like that. When she hitchhiked like that. She was looking for trouble. She was probably a tease. She was probably a prostitute.

As the freedom escalated, so did the violence. Those in love with the bygone era of control wanted to cram that genie back inside the bottle. And they keep failing. They try, and they keep trying, to restrict the things that women can do. Control the contraceptives. Control the access to the grim alternatives. Control the wages. Control the positions of power.

What they don't realise. What they will never realise, is that women have been gaining freedom and note even with the most restrictive regimes suffocating their choices. Now that they have tasted freedom, they will continue to strive towards accomplishing it.

Most women know that men are afraid of them. They are mostly afraid of being treated how they themselves have treated women. They are afraid of losing their control.

The revolution is slow and wearying, and gains a little more ground, year after year.

And in one of those years, women will expect pockets.

[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / noche]

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