d_aulnoy | (no subject)

(no subject)

Dear Oscar Worst and Best Dressed List Makers:

I know I'm not your target audience: I never watch the show and have the sneaking suspicion that the entire fashion industry is really just a practical joke with the world's longest set-up.

Nevertheless.

What the hell is up with putting men on the best-dressed list for wearing - wait for it! - tuxes? I mean, talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations. What's next, congratulations for donning skivvies?

InsincereAirKisses!

d_aulnoy

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In some ways, you're on the opposite side of this from those who criticize reporters for reporting on what female politicians wear but not male ones.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..." and the makers of that list sure seem to be in that number.

Yep - it's part and parcel of the same thing. Men get praise or a pass for fulfilling the bare minimum, and women get savaged regardless of whether they're wearing a sensible pantsuit or a froofy ballgown. Ah, double-standards ... in their own sick way, I guess they *are* consistent in their applications .....

Well, it's not exactly the same thing. Standards are like grading on a curve; they're set according to the range of what's possible. The praise women get when they dress up and look great is real; the praise men get is faint praise, more or less a pat on the head, because women are capable of looking that great when they dress up, and men aren't. And because men aren't capable of serious competition that way, it's not expected of them.

I'm sure there are a lot of men and a lot of women whose temperaments clash with this. Men (me among them) who would sometimes like to be able to look that great; women who wish they could just throw on a suit and be done with it. I just figure, no matter what state of affairs there is, there will be people dissatisfied with it.

And I wouldn't pay much attention to the criticisms some women level at women who don't care as much as they do about appearances and dressing up. (It's just about always women doing this, and providing a market for reporters reporting about it.) Men know how women's appearances make them feel, and we need no more; by and large we give no weight either way to women's opinions about the appearance of other women.

I'm not sure I agree on this ... or rather, I think you've pegged it correctly, but to me, that's part of the problem. I'd much rather live in a world where the members of both genders who enjoyed peacocking it up could indulge to their hearts content, and the rest of us could occasionally take a day off, without one gender shoring up the entire ridiculous system ... but I realize that there's less than a snowball's chance of this happening within my lifetime.

Sigh.

No, I don't think human nature is very mutable.

I suppose it's all a matter of what you give up and what you get. Even if that did occur, people would still be accusing other people, implicitly or explicitly, of violating the accuser's standards of how a person should be.

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