{"id":589,"date":"2013-12-15T00:00:46","date_gmt":"2013-12-15T08:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/?p=589"},"modified":"2018-06-18T13:52:29","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T20:52:29","slug":"skirts-and-pants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/culture\/skirts-and-pants\/","title":{"rendered":"Skirts and Pants"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"photo<\/a>

photo courtesy of Emily Hill<\/p><\/div>\n

Most American women have more pants in their closets than skirts. So why are there no skirts or dresses in men\u2019s closets? A silly question, you say? But think about it. How hard would it be to design dresses to suit the dimensions and lifestyles of men? The Scots used to wear kilts after all. They sometimes still do.<\/p>\n

So why isn\u2019t there any interest among men to adapt this feminine style to their needs?<\/p>\n

Feminism<\/b><\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Grade 8, Central Grade School, Sedro-Woolley, WA<\/p><\/div>\n

When I was growing up, my classmates and I wore dresses or skirts to school every day. We weren\u2019t allowed to wear pants. There must have been a sub-conscious connection in our minds between the power men held in our society and the pants they wore. We skirt-wearers would get married. We\u2019d become teachers, nurses, secretaries or stewardesses. Before \u201cWomen\u2019s Lib,\u201d we didn\u2019t expect to become lawyers, doctors or CEOs. And certainly not president.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s why Hillary Clinton wears pantsuits.<\/p>\n

Pants do have the practical benefit of keeping one\u2019s legs warm in winter. But that\u2019s not why women started wearing them. It was a question of equality, I think, of symbolically identifying ourselves with the group that possessed America\u2019s wealth and power: men. By the same reasoning, men have no incentive to adopt the clothing of a less-privileged group.<\/p>\n

No, the majority of men are not about to start wearing dresses. Not in the United States anyway.<\/p>\n

Mulan<\/b><\/h4>\n

The Chinese tend to prefer sons over daughters. Fortunately, though, my Chinese husband never complained about us having three daughters and no sons. He assumed that our daughters would grow up to be as brave and strong as any man. They\u2019d be like Mulan, the Chinese woman warrior who fought beside her comrades for twelve long years, never once disclosing the fact that under the clothes of a man beat the heart of a woman.<\/p>\n

\"Mulan\"<\/a>The legend of Hua Mulan is an old one, possibly dating back to the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534). (See a comparison of the Wei version of Mulan with the Disney version<\/a>.) My husband told me about the legend years before Disney thought of making Mulan into a movie. Mulan was an excellent fighter, a heroine. Still, she had to dress like a man if she was to have any chance of proving herself.<\/p>\n

My husband was right, our daughters did grow up to be brave and strong. And the careers they chose\u2014actuary, lawyer and engineer\u2014were nothing like those open to women in the past \u2026 in those \u201cgood ol\u2019 days\u201d before women wore pants.<\/p>\n

In my novel, Tiger Tail Soup,<\/i> I write about a Chinese woman whose father, disappointed that he didn\u2019t have a son, insisted that she dress like a boy. He gave her adventure stories to read and toy soldiers to play with. When she started school, she finally began to dress like a girl. But she never forgot her early dreams of heroism on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

When the Japanese invaded China, she was a young mother, with responsibilities to her children, mother and mother-in-law. Fighting for her country, she found, would not be as easy as exchanging her dress for a pair of pants.<\/p>\n

\"my<\/a>Next post: “The Magic of Mothers’ Milk”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most American women have more pants in their closets than skirts. So why are there no skirts or dresses in men\u2019s closets? A silly question, you say? But think about it. How hard would it be to design dresses to suit the dimensions and lifestyles of men? The Scots used to wear kilts after all. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[115,119,117,118,925,114,116],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-girls-not-allowed-to-wear-pants","tag-kilts","tag-male-power","tag-the-legend-of-hua-mulan","tag-tiger-tail-soup","tag-women-wearing-pants","tag-womens-lib"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Kn1e-9v","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7035,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/culture\/i-used-to-wear-dresses-now-i-wear-pants\/","url_meta":{"origin":589,"position":0},"title":"I Used to Wear Dresses; Now I Wear Pants.","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"June 24, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was a kid, I always wore a skirt or dress to school. 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