"She looks like a hooker..."

I had a wonderful time tonight. I cannot tell you all how refreshing it was to sit in a room with people that think about the same things that I do. Being out of school and in the "real world" where, like Kate said, "I'm one of the smarter people in society", it can get hard. So, thank you all for coming tonight.

Anyway, as I was continuing to think about all of the many topics that we covered tonight, I realized that though we went into great depth about sexuality, and how we express it through our dress, I did not say all that I wanted to say. Our conversation dealt primarily with dressing and the fine line between dressing sexy in an empowering individualistic way, and dressing for the purpose of the male gaze.

It got me thinking about why were conversing about that topic in the first place. Obviously, it is a severe problem in our culture. Rape, teen pregnancies, sexual assault, and sexual harassment, are only some of the severe gendered issues that are prominent in our culture that inadvertently correlate--whether we like it or not--with the issue of women's dress. But I think that it is easy to take this topic of women’s dress, and take it out of the context of society and see it as mainly a women's issue.

But I ask you: why are we only talking about the way that women dress--sexy or not sexy. Empowered or not empowered--all the while, the topic of men's dress not mentioned at all. Why aren’t we talking about the sexiness of the male half of our culture? Do they dress sexy to feel empowered? Last I heard, that was not so much the case. So how is that equal? Isn't that the goal in the end? Equality?

Currently, there is no caveat on men's dress. The only comparison that I can think of is the male style that has been labeled as "metro-sexual." Let's just try and use this manner of dress as the male equivalence of "sexy". Clearly the males that dress in this manner are doing so to look attractive, but even so, if a man dresses "sexy" at the work place, he will most likely never be questioned. He can wear whatever he wants. The manner of his dress will most likely never be brought up to him by a superior.

Is it possible that the patriarchal society was once again taken for granted as "normal" in our conversation? Did we forget that the reason that particular clothes may be categorized as "hooker dress,” is because of the objectification of women in the first place--which is also caused by male dominance?

Styles of clothing have been and will be forever changing. What was once thought of as scandalous in previous centuries might not be seen as such now. Pictured above, the every-day dress of the Minoan culture, located in the Crete and Aegean area during 1700 BC depended on the exposure of the breasts. All other parts of the women’s dress was fitted, and quite remarkably similar to Victorian skirts from our culture's history. The breasts were celebrated and thought of as beautiful. Though I know nothing about the treatment of the women within that culture, I know that it was acceptable behavior to expose and flaunt their breasts without being deemed as the town prostitutes. In fact, the majority of women who dressed in this manner were of the more wealthy families.

Skin is just skin, so it is our society that determines what is appropriate and not. At this point in time, the women's breasts are deemed "inappropriate" to reveal, while men walk around topless all of the time. Personally, I find that unfair. Just as unfair is the fact that if I happened to wear a shirt that was more low-cut and showed the very tops of my breasts (a bit of cleavage) I would get comments behind my back that go along the lines of, "She looks like a hooker..."

Women are judged by the way that they dress, and like the female rape victim that is criticized for wearing "scandalous" clothing at the time of the crime (she was asking for it, right?), she is somehow held responsible for the emotion and behavior that her clothing supposedly causes. According to this mentality, men have absolutely no control over themselves when it comes to scandalously clad women. They simply cannot help themselves.

Unfortunately, this is the justification for the violent actions that men take against women. Already, there is the male dominance that pervades in our society, and this is just another way that it happens. A woman dressed scandalously just gives society a justification for the crime against her. A socially accepted “reason,” as sick as that sounds. Like the strand of hair that peeks out of a Muslim woman’s scarf in Iran that causes her to be sexually harassed, it only gives a justification to do so. Let’s be honest here. Hair does not excite men to the extent where the only thing that they can do is rape the woman to whom the hair belongs. Similarly, I doubt that a little cleavage is enough to excite a man enough to lose all sense of thought and cause him to use sexual violence against her.

It is all about the symbol of the cleavage, and the justification our society creates for the behavior that surrounds it. “Sexy” and “empowered” are two words that don’t always describe the outcome, when talking about a woman’s outfit. Hopefully with a continuance of education on the gender issues of our society, that will change. Until then, I will be wary of supporting the Cosmo-mentality of thinking that these two words always go together.