What it feels like for a girl: Itchy.

Sexist culture is sprinkled liberally with double-standards, the most famous being the vile “men are studs, women are sluts” maxim that refuses to die despite daily sacrificial goats by yours truly.

But there are lots of other double-standards that are just as insidious, if not quite as damaging. One of them is “A woman can dress like a man if she really wants to, but God help the man who dresses like a woman.”

As an old sage once put it:

Girls can wear jeans
And cut their hair short
Wear shirts and boots
Cause it’s ok to be a boy
But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading
Cause you think that being a girl is degrading
But secretly you’d love to know what it’s like, wouldn’t you
What it feels like for a girl

Well, Madge, men have been trying to find out for a while now a la eyeliner and platform shoes… and now they have “mantyhose” – pantyhose for men from e-mancipate.net. In patterns and colors, even.¹

Interestingly, in its advertisements, mantyhose are always justified in practical (and therefore, it is assumed, manly) terms. They’re warm! the makers say defensively. Putting aside that lie for the moment, note that that same rationalization has generally not been applied to women’s hose.

At least in the “old days” (like up through the 1980′s) women were supposed to wear hose in the workplace and to all events requiring “nice” clothes, like weddings. Bare legs were quite frowned upon – but not because they were worried about us getting cold.

Women’s bare leg skin meant that only the thin cloth of her underpants lay between her hoohah and the whole world. And that was simply not acceptable.

I am all for abolishing antiquated ideas about “gender-appropriate” anything, including clothing which is the least of our worries. But I don’t get mantyhose.

Not because I don’t think men should degrade themselves by wearing traditional women’s clothes. I simply don’t understand why anyone would want to wear something that makes you feel like a sausage.

But if they want to experience the itch and confinement of pantyhose, more power to them. I have a bunch they can have, no charge.

[tags]mantyhose, sexual double-standards[/tags]