why we judge women
who is beige underwear really for?
One of the reasons that I love our community, is that is allows us to go deeper on issues that can’t be contained within social media’s character limits, and dating under patriarchy, is one of those hot topics.
I firmly believe that it’s a miracle when two people of the opposite sex can mate for life. I’ve always been in awe of people who have the guts to get married, given that half of these arrangements will end up in divorce. Second marriages are even worse, with a 60% rate of dissolution. Getting hitched is basically a coin toss, especially in the United States, a country that is very good at creating bad marriages, with one of the highest rates of divorce in the world. Marriage is just as likely to fail as it is to succeed, and yet single people still get hounded with barmy questions like hOw aRe yOu sTILL sINGLe!?!
The elusiveness of lasting intimate relationships, is probably why anytime I open my mouth about it, many of you have very strong feelings. And I get it, as someone who has let more than one situationship ruin my life, its rough out there. If you’re dating, you’re exposing yourself to grieving people you never dated and sometimes, never even met. Dating is such a trip, and that’s why I will remind any person who is actively doing it, just how brave they are to walk around with an open heart.
People who actively date need all the help and support they can get, and that’s why I loved our episode of Man Enough with therapist couple, John Kim and Vanessa Bennett. We discussed how to build more resilient relationships between men and women, and all the clips from the show caused quite a stir, particularly this one about beige underwear.
I had admittedly, never thought about beige underwear, but after John Kim brought it up in our episode, I felt like I could write an entire dissertation about it. He brought it up in the context of a post that he made, and that he later regretted, and ultimately deleted, where he told women to stop wearing beige underwear. He said that it wasn’t his place to tell a woman what she should or should not wear. But even with his admission of guilt, I had to jump in and explain why women wear beige underwear in the first place, which is to disguise underwear lines with certain clothes that are lighter or made of see-through material. “It’s for you,” I explained. “Everything we do is for you,” his partner Vanessa added. Those few words ignited a lot of responses from women who profoundly disagreed with the idea that women make any decisions about their appearance in function of men. Some of you commented that you don’t dress for the opposite sex, and that everything you choose to wear, is for yourself. Others disagreed arguing that they don’t just hide underwear lines for men, they hide them for everybody. All of those points are valid, and besides, I’m not in the business of arguing with anyone’s feelings! I happen to believe that as social creatures, there is almost nothing that we only do only for ourselves, and that free will is largely an illusion, but hey that’s me.
What I do feel like I need to raise about #BeigeUnderwearGate, is the palpable underlining (no pun intended) disapproval reserved for any woman wanting to be alluring to men, when attracting potential mates is our most universal drive as human beings. Women deserve great sex with great partners, and seduction, whatever that looks like for her, can be a fun and essential part of a woman getting the pleasure she’s entitled to. The idea that it’s somehow unfeminist for a woman to want to be attractive to the sex that she is attracted to, gets us into dangerous territory. It’s an old trope that harms women, especially Black women, when we start monitoring the validity of women’s decisions about their own bodies. How does it liberate women to judge them for wanting to be desirable? And why does the gender of the object of her affection, change the way we perceive her anyways? If we had been talking about a queer women dressing up for another woman, it wouldn’t have caused a blip. Why is the same woman doing the very same thing for a man, somehow put her in the feminist penalty box? A woman should have a right to dress up for anyone she likes, regardless of the gender of the person she is doing it for. Isn’t that real freedom?
At the same time, I understand the impulse to criticize because I’ve done it too. The visceral reaction we have to women doing anything for a man comes from living in a world that conditions women to do too much for men. The male gaze has permeated art, film, tv, advertisements and pretty much every other consumable product that exists. Women grow up perceiving themselves through the lens of what men want them to be, and I know that at the fresh age of 35, I’m still struggling to unlearn a lot of it.
That being said, women shaming themselves for wanting to charm or connect with men they’re interested in, won’t help repair the damage of patriarchy, in fact, it only magnifies it. As adrienne maree brown has poignantly written, pleasure should not be a side-effect of our activism, it should be at the center of it. Women have been shamed for their sexuality since the beginning of time, so let’s not do it in the name of feminism. It sets us back by limiting our sexual potential, and cuts us off from ourselves and what we enjoy and love about our bodies. Just because we have been asking if men even like women, it doesn’t mean we should make it cringe for women to actually like men. Heterosexuality doesn’t have to be a curse.
I’ve been guilty of judging other women, and frankly myself for long enough, and I hope you join me in reflecting on whether that judgement is serving you. Some helpful writing prompts might be to think about what you find yourself judging the most in others. I’ve always found that those I am the quickest to have contempt for, are the people who display behaviors or traits that I don’t like about myself.
What can your judgement of other women, teach you about yourself?
For most animals, it's the male that must "dress up" and show off. I've often wondered why this isn't always true with humans.
I have to argue a long time dissertation of mine: most men dress to project an image to potential mates, women dress to project an image to women. For the sake of ease and experience, I’ll say most straight men I know learn to dress in the context of impressing women. Our sisters and mothers and female friends take us to the store and teach us how clothing projects an image to women as a prime part of the dating experience. Until then, we were completely happy with our t-Rex T-shirt’s that our mothers bought us. Women have a much more in tune knowledge about what image their clothing projects. From a young age, girls are discerning about their sparkle shirts or yellow boots or pink bows, but they wear them for themselves first.
Most women then start adjusting how they dress in relation to other women. Some women dress to be morally superior to their peers, while others dress to be socially superior. Some women dress to blend with their female peers, while others dress to be counter to the prevailing female trends. The most notable exception to this is women who have undergone trauma, who I see often have a strong focus on avoiding any sexual gaze. Excluding this, it seems most women base the decisions on their clothing to set a position among their female peers, and then leverage this position (rather than their clothing) to find a sexual partner.
A prime point is luxury brands. Living in NYC, I can’t name a single male friend who knows what a pair of Louboutins are. Yet among women, they’re an iconic status symbol. My female friends treasure their Louboutins for every penny they’re worth, while every guy they encounter wouldn’t be able to separate them from a pair of Target stilettos
This leaves us with a vital point: while men control institutions of power, women dictate cultural trends. Men will drift towards finding the women most valued by other women as the highest value mate, while women will find the men most valued by other women as the highest value mate.
Think about cultures in which large ear loops or extremely elongated necks or tiny feet are valued. These things were adopted by women and transferred between generations of women. Men were then basically told based on their wealth and position what foot size or neck size they could expect to marry. I don’t think at any point, any of those men were thinking “wow, I am so physically attracted to this super long neck.” It was more of a “my ability to marry this woman will show the people around me how much I have accomplished.” But at the core of it, the institution of women cultivating value in these things is what made men value them.
To that end, if women want to change cultural trends and moors, it’s pretty much completely on them. The patriarchy responds only to the output of the values women dictate. Collaborate to elevate women based on their intellect and strength and creativity rather than their clothing and beauty. Pass it on to your daughters, and in 3 generations, you’ll have completely changed the value of women.