Pockets

Stress does slightly odd thing to my viewing habits, and the state of the world feels particularly stressful right now. Usually, my go-to for mindless viewing when I want to turn my brain off is to watch House Hunters. While that is great for short term stress, an endless diet of it is more than a little hard to handle. For some reason, Project Runway is what my brain wanted, so I have been watching that at odd down times. It's kind of perfect in a way: It has very little to do with our current reality, there is absolutely nothing of earth-shattering importance happening, and frankly, it's hard to take it too seriously. Plus, every so often there is a really interesting piece of clothing to look at. 

But to be perfectly honest, there are a couple of disturbing things about it as well. The models are all teens or early 20's young women and for the most part they are far too thin and look almost pre-pubescent. When you combine this with some really noticeable misogynism, well... it's not really a good look. One also has to wonder about the relationship between the sexualization of women who have the body shape of young girls and child abuse and child pornography. Though these are the thoughts that go through my head, these topics are entirely what I want to talk about right now. Instead, I want to talk about...

Pockets.

Every single girl and woman I know complains about the lack of pockets in women's and girl's clothing. Or, if the clothing does have pockets, often they are so tiny as to be completely unusable. It's a thing. I'm sure every woman reading here right now is nodding her head in agreement. How difficult is it to add decent pockets? It's hardly rocket science. This is probably why I was so shocked while I was watching whatever episode of Project Runway today.

One of the designers had added pockets to her pants design. Since the challenge was to rethink a postal service uniform, pockets would seem to make sense, I thought. I would want pockets. Yet, the male judge, who is evidently a well-known fashion designer didn't like them. He said, "I don't know a single woman who wants pockets." He went on to say he was only aware of women cutting off the pockets on clothing because they didn't want the extra bulk. I might have audibly gasped at this statement because it was so out of touch with reality. And if he is hanging out with models, then these women who are cutting off the extra bulk of pockets are already a size 00 or something, which makes it double ludicrous. What I wanted to ask him, after I stopped sputtering about his error, was why do men get a pass? Men have loads of pockets sewn into their trousers and jeans, so do they not care about extra bulk? The answer is no, they don't, because the amount of fabric used in the making of pockets is negligible. Of course, there is also the other reason that men, for the most part, are not held to idiotic ideals that are virtually unattainable except through the luck of genetics and 600 calorie a day diet.

All of this happened on the heels of coming across an article about the history of women's pockets. It contained little tidbits of trivia such as women's pockets were outlawed during the French Revolution so women couldn't carry and spread revolutionary materials. Later suffragette suits were popular as they had at least six pockets. During the World Wars, when women were seen as important to keeping the country running, their trousers had large pockets. But then, with the return of peacetime, women went... and their pockets... went back to being purely decorative. 

Since my own personal crusade during the current coup seems to be to urge everyone to stop buying stuff unless they really need it, why don't we add when you do buy stuff, buy it carefully. Or learn to make it yourself. And go ahead and buy or make the biggest pockets you can because pockets and power seem to go together.