“Girls don’t dress for boys. They dress for themselves, and of course each other. If girls dressed for boys, they’d just walk around naked at all times.”- Betsey Johnson
Women wear what they want, when they want, where they want, because they want to. We dress ourselves to feel sexy, comfortable, professional, invincible, pretty or confident. Trench coats unharness every woman’s inner Olivia Pope, the gentle woman commands her inner war general in combat boots, and to be honest, white skinny jeans tend to unleash my inner rockstar (and my paranoid clean freak). Women are warriors and our wardrobe is our weapon that helps us, ‘carpe the diem.’ Clothing is like a continuous shot of caffeine; it boosts what women want to feel throughout the day.
But wait! There are countless movies, TV shows, books and magazine articles with examples of women trying to make men jealous by stepping up their style game. Aren’t ‘makeovers’ just code names for “Make Him Finally Notice Her?” And does that mean that there are times when women do dress with men in mind? No.
At the end of the day whether a woman chooses a skin-tight bodycon dress on a first date or, ‘all black everything’ when she expects to run into an ex-boyfriend, she is still dressing for herself. Dressing with the intention of evoking feelings of jealousy, desire, or regret in others has underlying motivations. These motivations include restoring one’s own self-dignity and satisfaction, the desire to be noticed and the desire to feel powerful. It all comes back to the message we want to send to ourselves: “I want to feel this way so THIS is what I am wearing.” So men, if any woman tells you she wore that certain dress, “just for you,” –guess what? She’s really didn’t. She wore it for herself, to feel desired when you compliment and can’t keep your eyes off her. Of course, kudos to the men who can’t keep their eyes off a woman in just sweatpants and tank top.
So we’ve confirmed women don’t dress for men. They dress for themselves…but what about other women as Betsey Johnson explains? Women dress for other women to in order to feel respected and admired. When a female stranger asks me where I got my shoes from, or when I tell a co-worker I love her sweater, it injects feelings of pride and confidence in a woman’s clothing choices.
But I think dressing for other women also involves feelings of superiority. Women don’t buy clothing with other women in consideration, but when getting dressed, occasionally we have in mind that we are running into an ex-best friend, a competitive co-worker we dislike or a frenemy. Suddenly, we need to look better than another fellow female. And I think these feelings of superiority are manifested as a result of the fashion industry and the media. Tabloid magazines, fashion blogs and entertainment news shows feature “Who Wore It Better” “Fashion Fails” and “Do or Don’t” where people vote on who wore the same outfit better. Advertisements tell you to get the latest fashion before anyone else. But why should dressing well make you more superior than others? It shouldn’t.
At the end of the day, you could have a Michael Kors watch and Ralph Lauren blazer you got for twenty percent off, but that doesn’t make you better than me. It shouldn’t make you feel better than me. So this is where a problem arises: women should not dress for other women in order to establish a fashionomical (fashion + socio-economic) hierarchy.
But let me propose a new concept. Women should continue to dress for themselves and other women. When one of my friend’s outfit is slaying – and not slaying in comparison to other people’s outfits, but slaying compared to her own previous looks), I acknowledge and applaud her. And isn’t that what feminism is partly about, we as women needing to put aside cattiness and competition for collaboration and empowerment?
So can clothing be a powerful asset to female empowerment? I think so. Complimenting each other’s #OOTD tells us that, “Hey, I appreciate you are dressing for yourself, and you my dear, have inspired me to dress for myself.” Dressing for other women is a call to arms: a call to project body acceptance, confidence, modesty, sexuality and individual self-expression.