Winter is officially here, and just like how classes have started up again, so too has going out at night. The problem? Deciding whether or not to spend a pound on coat check at Club 601, or to take the risk and hide your coat, or to just not wear one altogether and brave the cold for the outfit. I, like many others, will choose the latter. But why? Women are conditioned to make inconvenient and uncomfortable choices in the name of aesthetics and social ease—a pattern that feels trivial at the door of a club, but becomes much more troubling when you realize how deeply rooted it is in the history of women’s fashion.
Last week, I really only fully realized just how impractical women’s fashion is.
It was my best friend’s birthday party, and I was wearing a short red skirt, thigh high black heeled boots, and a black turtleneck. My red skirt, as cute as it was, had absolutely zero pockets. Because of this, I couldn’t really carry my phone without it being a nuisance, so I asked my guy friend to put it in his pocket for me (who, comically enough, was wearing pants that had like 10 pockets).
That same night, as I walked to the Student Union all the way from DRA in my high heeled boots, I realized that I could have worn tennis shoes, and my feet would be in way less pain, but it wouldn’t exactly look very good, especially for a night out. It seems absurd when you actually think about it after the fact – why was I so negligent of my own comfort and wellbeing in favor of ‘looking cute?’
The answer lies in historical patterns throughout women’s fashion in several regions.
Only about 20% of women’s fashion historically prioritized comfort over aesthetics, and given how incredibly dense and versatile the documented history of women’s fashion is, that percentage is staggeringly too low.
Most people are familiar with regency era fashion—thanks to the popular show Bridgerton and various other period films and television— and more specifically, the use of the corset. It’s tight, restrictive, and entirely inconvenient for moving around or having to use the bathroom.
Girls and women may not use corsets as much as they did then, if at all, but we do have something similar: Spanx. Spanx makes women appear smaller, accentuates their waists, and smooths their stomachs for the price of being unable to move freely and comfortably— as Bridget Jones comically displayed in Bridget Jones’ Diary— and having to peel an extra tight layer on and off while using the bathroom. While not as drastic as the corset, Spanx certainly mirrors the corset’s original function in a more modern frame.
But the corset isn’t the only historical piece of women’s fashion that has made a modern reappearance.
Footbinding was a Chinese custom that began in the 10th century and carried all the way to 1949, in which young girls would bind their feet extremely tight to alter their size and shape as a means of appearing smaller and daintier. Today, while girls don’t bind their feet to fit into shoe sizes made for an infant, heeled boots and shoes marketed towards women mostly have a slim pointed toe design that is bound to make your feet ache if you wear them for hours on end (and not to mention, give you the worst calluses and bunions that are a pain to get rid of).
I’ve also been victim to this impractical shoe design with my cowboy boots from Texas. They’re big, heavy, and would take up too much weight and space in my checked bag, so I decided to wear them for my flight back to Scotland from Texas — a trip that spans more than 10 hours. Everyone already hates flying in economy for an international flight— but flying in economy with high heeled boots and a pointed toe that squishes your feet for ten hours straight (in addition to not being able move because the person behind you kicks your seat whenever you recline your seat to sleep and the person in front of you has reclined far too much?) Brutal.
So, why does uncomfortable women’s fashion persist even now?
Restrictive fashion has been historically linked to sociocultural control of women.
Corsets and other restrictive garments (like Spanx) have long been interpreted as symbolic and practical tools that constrained women’s bodies, and by extension, their roles in society.
Gerda Lerner’s The Creation of Patriarchy argues that systemic misogyny developed over millennia in Western cultures and influenced what women could or should do, including how they had to present their bodies. Restrictive clothing for women thus became a visual reinforcement of their ‘place’ in society— where feminine virtues like modesty and delicacy were valued over mobility and agency.
This brings us back to my first example about my skirt. Women’s clothes having small or no pockets is a delicate design. It’s natural to see men carrying twenty things in all four of the deep pockets of their jeans– that’s manly, even. But women are chic, they’re small, and having big pockets wouldn’t look right.
And this is why the coat at Club 601 matters. Standing outside in the cold, debating whether warmth is worth a pound or a minor inconvenience, isn’t actually a shallow decision—it’s the end result of centuries of conditioning. Just like pocketless skirts, painful shoes, and shape-restricting undergarments, choosing to freeze rather than “ruin” an outfit reflects the same expectation that women should quietly endure discomfort for the sake of appearance and social ease.
The coat isn’t just a coat; it’s another modern test of how much inconvenience a woman is willing to accept to look acceptable. And most of the time, without even realizing it, we’ve already been taught the correct answer.
But, this is an issue we can begin to solve without dismantling entire systems overnight. It starts with unlearning what we’ve been taught is “standard” and allowing ourselves to choose comfort without guilt. We already accept that we deserve comfortable clothes to sleep in and to work out in, so why should going out be any different? Prioritizing comfort is not lazy, unfeminine, or careless; it is a quiet rejection of the idea that women owe discomfort to be seen as presentable. Choosing comfort, even in small ways, is choosing agency.