"We want to create an equal shopping experience for everyone, however you express yourself. All of our bottoms have either a flat front design or a pouch front design, and all of our tops are essentially unisex. Whether you’re extra small or 5X, it’s always the same price, and every style is available equally across prints and colors....”
Says E Leifer, answering the question "What’s the difference between gender-equal and gender-neutral clothing?" in "His, Hers, Everyone’s: Gender-Equal Underwear Goes (Slightly More) Mainstream/For years underwear has been strictly gendered. The co-founders of Play Out Apparel are reimagining it for all gender identities" (NYT).
Another question is: "Is gender-equal clothing the future for all apparel brands?" Answer:
Yes. The larger cultural conversation is just starting to meet us where we’re at, which is great, because it’s hard to fight alone.... So I don’t see equality being attainable in fashion or beyond without the demolition of the gender binary. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to be nonbinary. Everybody can be as femme or as masc as they want. Younger generations already get that. They don’t want to be told how to shop or how to express themselves. They want to be marketed to in a completely different way. And to me, that speaks to progress."
ADDED: Here's the top-rated comment over there: "So now instead of identifying as male (M) or female (F), we will identify as flat front (FF) or pouch front (PF)." Somehow this makes me think of Star-Bellied Sneetches.
AND: It’s a bit like “You can have your cake and eat it too”: You can have your gender binary and demolish it too.
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39 comments:
Have we hit Peak Woke Stupidity yet, or are we merely approaching it?
"Whether you’re extra small or 5X, it’s always the same price, and every style is available equally across prints and colors...."
The style/size thing makes sense...let people choose. But if you're not charging more for 5X versus Extra Small then you're a terrible business person. Of course, if you're smart, you'll charge the same for all sizes based on the size of the 5X, so the Extra Small people end up paying more. Equity!
I keep seeing articles come up on the side talking about how women miss real men. I see this topic repeating- asking where have the real men gone. Not with regularity- because our mainstreamers will not have it. But enough that even my wife commented on it the other day (not sure if she was bemoaning her living situation or wondering why there were not more like me- or maybe there are other choices?). Anyway...
With that in mind, why are so many who get their voices amplified, insistent that we all be the same? We're not. Not a one of us, and certainly not men and women. My God- there's been thousands of years of discussion on the differences and this generation thinks the answer is to ignore that there are differences. Brilliant.
I recently listened to a podcast with Bari Weiss interviewing Carole Hooven, author of T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us." It was extremely interesting to listen to this actual scientist discuss gender differences biologically, genetically. BTW- Carole Hooven is a doctor (teaches evolutionary biology at Harvard), but does not insist on being called DR. Carole Hooven, unlike our Assistant President.
And I also recently watched an extremely entertaining inverview with Tucker Carlson and Anthony Pellicano, who, if you don't remember, was THE fixer for politicians, celebrities, police, businesspeople- for years. Think: 'Ray Donovan' in the flesh. He spent 17 years in prison for not talking, not giving up information- and when he came out his question was: What happened to all the men? Where'd the men go in this country? (great hour-long interview shown on Tucker Carlson Today).
I'm not sure if that's a good comment, but you know where I'm coming from on any of this gender horseshit and the non-stop insistence by some that we are all the same. Nothing could be more anti-science than that thinking.
The amusing aspect is that the people who will wear this product are the same ones who make fun of Mormons for wearing "magic underwear."
Why not go straight to Mao jackets for everyone?
“because it’s hard to fight alone“ using some political gimmick to sell clothes has never worked… as far as I recall. Maybe it’s never been tried. Good luck with that.
I visited the Play Out Apparel website. I found "flat front" and "pouch front" underpants, but no "fly front". One might suspect an anti-urinal agenda. After all, "equity" requires that each restroom serves the same number of people at intermission.
isn't the middle aged and oldster male uniform of tennis shoes, shorts and a floppy T-shirt already "genderless"?
That clothing is hideous. Cheaply made, awful colors, awful designs, just... ugly.
This is fundamentally a war on aesthetics. It's an attempt to destroy all beauty because the act of defining what is beautiful has social, cultural, and political implications. And it will fail, because it conflicts with human nature.
As a woman closer to middle age then not, this seems like a win for me. Let the pretty young 20-somethings dress like non-binary blobs. I’ll keep dressing like a woman, and enjoy it.
(Something about youth being wasted on the young.)
Underwear and clothing for people with low self-esteem
I won't pay for the NY Times (rather spend that on a good bottle of wine) but I did go to the Play Out Apparel site.
Yeah. No.
I think I hear Paul Fussell spinning.
OTOH, you might prefer something from Gearhomies. ("gearhomies history collection")
I don't vouch for quality or peeceeness, but the selection is good.
If Mr. Man-bun desires an ugly cap-sleeve frilly-collared ghastly colored clown blouse... Fine with me. I'm not going to wear it.
btw - if the collective left are going to push non-binary, then I refuse to be classified by my race or skin color.
These are hideous clothes..... I second Mr. Wibble's observation about being a war on aesthetics.
The only place I've ever longed for gender-neutral clothing is for little kids. It would be nice to have winter coats, sneakers, etc. that can be worn by all the kids growing up in a family. I noticed that this company doesn't sell kid's clothes, but I probably wouldn't buy them even if they did. The clothes look like they'd smell of weed or patchouli.
Signed, Salty Girl
In the latee Middle Ages men's trousers somethings included the codpiece, around the crotch area (which we find illustrated in paintings by Bruegel and other artists). I doubt that could have a unisex equivalent?
Mikey NTH said...
Why not go straight to Mao jackets for everyone?
8/11/21, 9:24 AM
Along with their Che T-Shirts!!!
Thw bar always moves upward for peak woke stupidity. There is no upper limit.
Such a strange culture now: gender blind is good, colorblind is bad.
What is the over/under for when this company files for bankruptcy?
Mine is 2 years with a huge loss to the investors.
Jack
Eldridge Cleaver would’ve made quite a splash in today’s apparel industry.
The only place I've ever longed for gender-neutral clothing is for little kids. It would be nice to have winter coats, sneakers, etc. that can be worn by all the kids growing up in a family. I noticed that this company doesn't sell kid's clothes, but I probably wouldn't buy them even if they did. The clothes look like they'd smell of weed or patchouli.
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Historically, up until age six or so young boys wore dresses. It was only after that they started wearing pants and breeches.
The bar always moves upward for peak woke stupidity. There is no upper limit.
After reading about the woke halfwits in Wisconsin demanding the removal of a 20 ton, 4 billion year old rock because of a 100 year old newspaper story that used a racial pejorative to describe said boulder, the sky may be the limit, Darrell !
How do "compression fabrics," here described as liberation from the "gender binary," differ from Victorian corsets and Renaissance codpieces?
"Cis" is a denial of how heterosexual and homosexual people are ironically forbidden by the current diktat to participate in defining their own identities. The pyramid of transgender fascism seems to spend most of its time dictating to us how we must accept their definitions of our sexuality.
The first recorded use by the Times' of the slur "bitch" appeared in 1853: the newest is 7 hours ago. There are more than 8,000 references. The word is most commonly used now admiringly by liberal people of many races and genders, and it is never criticized unless used by the wrong types of people, in which case it is absolutely terrible.
The first recorded use by the Times of the slur "n****r" appeared in 1851. There are more than 6,000 references. Many examples from the early 20th Century are casual, such as describing the color of silk. This is even more dehumanizing, like many uses of the word "bitch" today. The latest examples of the "n" word are either: admiring if used by the right people; condemnatory accusations of its use by the wrong types of people with little or no proof that they said it, or the subject of long scholarly disquisitions.
The first recorded slur "c**t appears in 1852. There are some 1700 examples of its use. The latest, by John McWhorter, is also one of the latest references to n****r. McWhorter feels no need to conceal the "c" word. He views them as vastly different in effect. The DOJ agrees with him. You can carve the word "cunt" on the thigh of a woman you are killing, and the DOJ will disregard that as hate. Perhaps McWhorter should disquiet a tad more on that.
It's useless to look too far back for words such as "queer" or "faggot" because they have several and changing meanings. And some of the earliest examples of each of these words are just unfortunate names or seeming misreadings of old typeface by the TimesMachine search technology
Cis-Gender is very hard to search. If you put quotes around it, there are only five examples in the Times (I can think of more). If you don't, there are about 1700, mostly modern but with the majority of the early ones being about gender, or feminists, but not using the word. So are they projecting back into time to make this newly-invented term a subject? If so, it's utterly incoherent, since the articles range from cross-dressing traditions to women voting to the French, generally.
This is known as Will to Power.
Billowing clothes are a pain. It is said that in ancient Rome, the upper classes took actual lessons about how to wear the toga, how to drape it over one's arm, and how to gracefully restore it to its proper place and shape. Frequently, I suspect. And with the fashion impetus that if some is good, more is better, there were probably some real doozies of linen flying.
Clothes which fit more snugly imply, if not advertise, body shape. Go woke, go genderless, stay home Saturday night. My guess is...some folks aren't going to get on this particular merry-go-round.
"Everybody can be as femme or as masc as they want. "
I think this is the key sentence for understanding what is going on here. There's a huge clue in this sentence that should give people who are bothered by all of this "genderless" talk some comfort. Even as you talk about genderless this and nonbinary that, "femme" and "masc" are still there, lurking in the background.
Granted, there is a VERY strong push in some (VERY vocal quarters) against the notion of binary sex/gender.
But this push is, like teenage rebellion, entirely defined by the very thing against which it pushes. Without the undeniable, biologically-rooted sex binary, and the behavioral differences that go with it, there's nothing to "rebel" against. If there really were no biological sex, then all this "genderless" talk would be silly because it would just be the way things were anyway. There would be no novel identity to be found, and the notion of it being a fashion statement of any kind, in any way, would be ridiculous. It would be like saying wearing shoes is a fashion statement.
Like teenage rebellion, the "war against gender" does not posses an actual internal coherence. It is wholly defined by opposition.
And like teenage rebellion, it will almost certainly fizzle. And the brute facts of life -- the Gods of the Copybook Headings -- will outlast.
As a kid I expected to dress like the crew of the Enterprise by now.
When I look at these clothing styles I think to myself that not everyone can get into our elite schools of architecture.
Pinging off of Joe Smith's comment, "every style is available equally across prints and colors" is a recipe for unsold inventory. Not every style/print/color combination will sell equally. This is Retail 101. They will have to adjust or have some plan to write some of the losses off by donating piles of clothes to charities.
As a resident of NYC, I must note (and perhaps it's mentioned in the article, which I also won't pay for) there was a gender-neutral clothing store that opened on Broadway a few blocks north of Houston a few years ago that was shuttered before the pandemic and attendant lockdowns slaughtered retail here. Prime location with all the foot traffic you could possibly want and it didn't inspire much. Could be that they couldn't support the weight of the outrageous retail rents on Broadway, but it seems like a fairly reliable test case that this approach to fashion isn't a long-term winner.
If you don't want to be gender-neutral here, you don't want to be gender-neutral anywhere...
Not enough people want political underwear to keep a company like this in business. If their clothing line is comfortable or is attractive to people who really want to see it on the floor, they’ll do fine. Otherwise they won’t finish out the year.
Once upon a time there were "Department Stores" wherein products for sale were located in physical departments within the store ... so that shoppers knew where to start looking for what they wanted to buy. Among these departments were, Mens, Womens, Children -- Boys and Children -- Girls. As well as non-gendered Appliances, Sporting Goods, Electronics and Hardware.
Fortunately, today we all shop on-line so that it is we, the shopper, who decides what to call what we want to buy. And it is the gender-neutral, non-human, non-judgmental, always-learning search engine that sends us in the right direction.
Gen Z is the woke resistance.
"After reading about the woke halfwits in Wisconsin demanding the removal of a 20 ton, 4 billion year old rock …"
The persnickety geologist in me is compelled to point out that the boulder is likely much younger than that; perhaps only a billion years old. Certainly not 4 billion.
Go woke, go genderless, stay home Saturday night.
I'm seeing the seeds of the last two lines of a four-line verse of a Country & Western hit. And so, with a slight edit:
Get woke, gender-free,
Stay home Saturday night.
Even as you talk about genderless this and nonbinary that, "femme" and "masc" are still there, lurking in the background.
And why I appreciate the writings of Camille Paglia.
I propose an alternate method of genderless choice regarding undergarments: Commando!
"You wanna know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK2VZgJ4AoM
My error… 2 billion…
"As a kid I expected to dress like the crew of the Enterprise by now."
Just don't wear the red uniform : )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirt_(stock_character)
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