That last word is the key point. Men receive less judgment for remaining single than women, but they also receive more judgment if they don't work. That's a reason we're much more willing to code an unemployed or underemployed man as a "loser" than we are to do so a woman.
Still though, I think there are dimensions of this where this is less true, perhaps in ways that men are expected to seem "confident" or "strong" or "independent" which I think can be stiffing. The typical men's section of a clothing store normalizes a lot more conservative wardrobes compared to women. I wish I had better words to explain it.
Yep, and women demand this too: many women's dating profiles talk about how they want a guy who's "confident but not cocky", who "makes a plan" for dates, who "takes the lead", etc. Basically, American women want hyper-masculine men who look like George Clooney (when younger), but then they sit around complaining about "toxic masculinity" and how they're mistreated by men.
>The typical men's section of a clothing store normalizes a lot more conservative wardrobes compared to women.
Men's fashion is truly horrible compared to women's fashion. Men basically have the choice of either a stuffy suit that look like it hasn't changed in a century and is completely impractical, or baggy pants and a baggy hoody. Women get all kinds of choices in clothes, including lots which show off their bodies, while men's clothes are basically designed to hide our bodies completely and look as boring as possible. I guess that's helpful if you're fat, but if you're athletic and toned, it's really not.
I don't believe men's fashion is horrible, but I think the sheer variety and design quality of clothing available to women is pretty impressive.
But then, to be honest, that's consumer driven. Some will harangue me for pointing out that a great majority of women love looking good and put vast amounts of time and money into it, between clothing, accessories and makeup. As such they've a much wider market of choice as producers try to attract that demand.
Men have nice options. As I brought up a stereotype above, I'll bring one up now which holds as true - a vast majority of men put little or no effort into their own appearance and with obesity rates heightening it's only getting worse.
I've only briefly touched it but check out the Thread app if you want an idea of good looking outfits available to guys at various price ranges. I'm not sure of alternatives, as I generally just shop / dress myself with some effort, but it certainly looks like it both offers great variety while also taking out a lot of the guess work, an example being you can state if you've wide thighs and they won't show you pants that won't accommodate that.
Not in any way associated with Thread fwiw.
Strongly disagree—you may just not have been exposed to all the options in men's fashion. There are tons, without even deviating too far from traditional/normal.
Right now, most men's fashion is terrible in terms of how it models the waist. Put on anything that you consider to be fashionable, and then see how well your hip-hinge and thighs-parallel squats do. No wonder the Scottish loved their kilts!
A trip to a women's clothing store would disprove the notion that women don't have choices very quickly.
What choices for bottoms do men have that aren't trousers? There's shorts if the weather's warm enough (though there seem to be a bunch of weird men out there wearing shorts in freezing weather for some reason), but that's it.
Don't forget the colors. Dress too colorfully as a man, and people think you're gay. So we usually end up sticking with darker, solid colors.
I don't wear either of these on a daily basis, nor my birthday suit, and people think that I dress nice. Men have a plethora of clothing options that are stylish, comfortable, and appropriate for work situations. I'm currently wearing slacks that are designed to feel like sweat pants and a thick cotton button up shirt.
Women have it pretty bad when it comes to clothes shopping. Men take for granted that we all are roughly the same shape, so most of us can shop at the same stores. It's not like that for women.
Women come in many different shapes. So you look and see that a clothing store has twice as many jeans for women as they do for men, but don't realize that all of those are split over four or five styles that are mutually exclusive: most women can only fit into one, maybe two styles. But for men, most of us can wear slim fit, regular fit, bootcut, etc jeans.
This same phenomenon extends to stores as well. Lots of women's clothing brands specialize in a certain shape of woman.
I read this frequently, but it just seems flat wrong, I think men just have lower expectations about how clothes should fit, and there is less expectation that men stay slim. I’m trim and fit, and I can only buy from a couple of brands if I want clothes that fit me well without being skin tight. I’m not alone. There is a great variety of shoulder geometries for men, I remember hearing on JRE, but I can’t find a source to link, that their is a huge of amount of variation in men’s(everyone’s?) shoulders, probably due to Homo sapiens evolving to hunt with overhand thrown rocks. I could be flat wrong, but I detest this, “men’s bodies are mostly the same” attitude, you can definitely tell the difference between someone wearing a well tailored suit and someone who isn’t. I’m pretty sure men just have lower standards/expectations.
Difficulty: you have to know what to look for in fit so you can diagnose what's wrong with a given article if it's not quite right.
My theory right now is simply that on average women have the will power to spend enough time and energy on the task regardless... men might have the desire to look good, but when faced with the reality of time and money required to achieve it say fuck no, it doesn't hold their interest enough.
Compared to women, men have less choice in clothing and don't drive the market in the way women's choices do.
As a trim, broad-shouldered 5'2" guy, I had to laugh at your entire comment. I have literally never found a shirt or jacket that fits off the rack from... dozens? Hundreds? of different brands.
My bet is that you fall into a conventionally masculine body shape, and you universalize your own experience to all men.
What kinds of masculine-coded clothing articles would you like to see?
Everything in your comment implies you are the last person who should be asserting what woman want.
Just because you can have an erection and produce sperm at 70 doesn't mean you can have children and if you do they'll most likely suffer from down syndrome or other conditions.
Having kids after 45 as a male carries risks for the children as well.
Please cite something for this assertion or delete it, as it is not in line with anything I've read on the matter.
Increased paternal age carries some potential for increased side effects for their children, but it is absolutely nowhere near the risks involved in a delayed pregnancy for women [0].
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/well/family/older-fathers...
An order of magnitude higher chance of genetic defects isn’t very significant when the initial risk is less than .1%
That is an interesting angle. What do you think is going to change, and what is going to cause it to change?
It may be unusual for a man to stay home and take care of the children while his wife works. But the idea that I could ever stigmatize or criticism someone for this life arrangement is ridiculous to me. I'm sure that 40 years ago most men would only be able to respond with criticism. But these days that kind of reaction is laughable. And the men who have that kind of reaction would be viewed as backwards simpletons.
In terms of what is causing it to change, I think is deindustrialization and the nature of a capitalist, individualist society. If your peers or culture are asking you to be “masculine” as a hunter gatherer, Breton-Woods-era American tradesman, or Jay Gatsby-type, you’re going to feel out of place if you don’t feel like that’s how you want to live your life.
Much like how first wave feminism was a response to advanced in pressure vessels producing distilled alchohols, and second wave was a response to the obsolescance of muscle in manufacturing, so too is 3rd wave feminism the response to the key technologies of social media and contraceptives.
We've replaced the concept of a couple investing in eachother from a young age to build a nuclear family with college, debt and a status symbol competition; Social media and dating apps have cast relationships and sex as something that you purchase like a product, and they advertise to women that they too are a product, and that they are more valuable than 90% of men. When you remove the risk of STD's and pregnancy, advertise to women that the ability to act like a masterbation toy improves their "social worth" with no consequences. It's a disgusting trade but it has prooven unbelievably effective. The business model of OKCupid is to dissaude their audience from viewing relationships as investments so they instead invest time in OKCupid. Many women have shut themselves off from men approaching them entirely until they can fully vet them online first. The flip side of this is the "top dogs" become unbelievably pessimistic about, and often abusive of, women.
Today a newborn male child has a 1 in 2 shot at procreating (US Census data for Males never married, no children; look at the growth rate); that's 60 to 100 million men, TODAY, who are in search of a purpose in their lives that won't be fulfilled by a family. Ever. Replacement fertility is 2.1 births per women; we're at 1.7. When the USSR Collapsed they were down to 1.3. The dislocation this has produced is absolutely massive and is what is behind birth rate declines in western countries.
What nobody wants to talk about is how much of a powderkeg that will become when those men reach the end of their economic and reproductive utility and determine, rightfully so, they have been been screwed over. The reason you get the CEO of cloudflare blanning white supremacist material isn't because he REALLY hates those kinds of people; it's because the population is becoming a powderkeg and group identity politics is a VERY bad way for that to go. Every revolution has been predicated upon the concept of society losing it's concept of self-respect and dignity, and so devoid of those concepts, unable to engineer them into the solutions they impliment. After the french killed the aristocracy, they engaged in the reign of terror.
No amount of engaging in psychological warfare exercises selling information pollution such as the concept of a "CISGender" or taking down websites is going to change billions of years of evolution or the consequences of bad policy. I'm all for studies on sexuality but they have to be realistic; it is, like psychology, a complex topic.
If you like malthusianism, the approach of allowing the next wave of feminism take it's toll is about as tactful of a way of going about doing it as using a AAMRAM to kill a baby. The kind of generational complex trauma and resulting child maldevelopment this is going to create is not what suites any kind of functioning society well; all you have to do is look at the chicago ghetto's and the never-ending cycle of violence to understand that. The Chinese with their 1 child policy is far wiser for contrast. Think about it; you allow nuclear families and hey they really invest a heck of a lot into that one kid with the government stepping in to ensure it works out.
As far as the roles go in relationships, the correct way to look at it is, the two people in the relationship make the decisions, and if you have something to say about it, go to hell.
Real housewives of x city...??? I just don't get it! I feel autistic. You can really see how far we have fallen when this type of stuff turns people on, and not only does it make a buck but so much more.
How is it that people don't see the narcissism and immorality that is portrayed and profited off of.
I mean, how can someone like teresa and joe giudice get caught doing things with loan applications and financial fraud that lead to our(usa) economic implosion, yet they still have a viewership and profit off of this.
Sorry to rant but I have to. I have a therory and would like opinions. In a semi-perfect economic system all actors trying to start and run a business would play by the rules. In the system today we know people are not perfect. Some are flawed and make decisions they know are illegal because of the situation their companies are in. Others just want to be on top and will do what they can as long as the scales will tip in their favor in the end, ie fines are less than profit.
As the number of people increase and the market increases the number of actors who are willingly doing these actions becomes more and more. In the end the only ones on the top, the only ones with money, are the ones who are willing to take calculated risk that include breaking the law and the morals of the society they live in.
I claim we live in a time where the vast majority of those in power and those with money have gotten there by the use of illegal means.
If you look at the bush family their great grandfather ran drugs into china illegally. A lot of beer and hard liqueur companies started out during or continued during prohibition. Walmarts own Sam walton under paid employees and then when the feds said he had to pay them he threatened that any one that cashed the check would be fired.
They say with that the milk cream rises to the top, and that is true for a certain amount of time. If you wait longer it is the stench of rot and decay the comes to the top. A stable system will always be over taken by rule breakers, hacker, criminals, an immoralist.
My point was that I think society will broaden its view on what a good life for men looks like. I think it will help a lot of the difficult things you mention. I think people will eventually agree with your closing statement much more than they do now. Could you help me understand what you think I’m misguided about? I genuinely don’t understand.
It's not uncommon to read comments on Hacker News or twitter from men feeling that they seen as less valid for doing less traditional activities[2][3] (eg: caring for children, prioritizing their careers less, being less traditionally forward, etc.) and I think society is going to need to change to acknowledge this better for both men and women.
[1] https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/blog/details/1594/est...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21775631
[3] https://twitter.com/SpaceCptZemo/status/1215034934319964160
EDIT: Am I allowed to interpret downvotes as "nah i dont want it that way the world is Malthusian"? Nothing would make me happier.