Recently after a childbirth class, two sets of idealistic parents-to-be discussed their hopes for their unborn children's future: to grow up in a world of peace and equality.
One couple had a boy; the other, a girl. When the babies were a few weeks old, the couples got together again for dinner. The boy's parents presented their son in a bright blue and red football jersey, complete with pads on his shoulders, elbows, and knees. Just above the big numbers on his jersey, across his little chest in inch-high letters were the words "Macho Man." The other parents then brought out their daughter, who was wearing a pale pink outfit, frothed with eyelet lace ruffles. A tiny bow perched on her wispy dark hair.
"Darn!" whispered the girl's mother to herself. "The stereotyping has already begun - and we're the ones doing it".
Over the aeons, since our first ancestors roamed the earth, clothing has become more than a source of warmth and protection. The wearing of special garments has long been a way to display one's worth and prestige: He who had more wore the best of what was available. After class structures were established, the haves became cranky whenever a have-not turned up in the same turnout. Laws were passed to prevent the hoi polloi from dressing above their class. Luxury fabrics, rare furs, opulent trims, laces, and often, certain colors (like purple) were deemed off-limits, except to a self-appointed few.
Today, such laws are almost gone. But the have still maintain their distance by enveloping themselves in finery beyond the financial grasp of everyone else. For wealthy men, their fashion nirvana comes with a Savile Row suit. For their consorts, it's haute couture of astronomically priced designer labels.
UNFETTERED MOVEMENT - FOR MEN ONLY
Historically, men have worn sensible styles. Their clothes were comfortable, allowed unfettered movement, and looked good. Women, signaling their traditionally submissive status, went the other way. Their garments became cumbersome and restricted their ability to move freely. The extensive use of corsets, stays, or laced bodices over the past several hundred years even prevented them from breathing freely. Men have never bound their breasts - as the flappers did - or their feet, as millions of Chinese women were forced to; nor did they have to navigate in hoop skirts.
That's not to say the sexes haven't spent some time rummaging in each other's closets over the centuries. In royal portraits dating from the Renaissance, the heavy gold chains, ropes of pearls, and impossibly dignified ruffs worn by both men and women make it seem likely that the sexes were digging into the same prop box. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, men and women powdered their look-alike wigs and pasted identical beauty patches over their blemishes.
The rate of intersexual appropriations slowed in the nineteenth century as men's dress became staid and conservative. Women occasionally adopted the detailing of men's tailoring for jackets worn while pedaling one of the new bicycles. Yet these daring borrowers were still swathed in skirts and
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