Blind to Fashion

Earlier this week in class we had an interesting debate on the article we read, "There Is No Unmarked Woman." There were good points raised on both sides pertaining to the many relevant points of the article, but the part that interested me the most was the argument about fashion. Of course, I agreed with most of what Tannen wrote, but in the fashion area, my opinion was that women are marking themselves rather than some mystical overarching mark that transcends genders. My reasoning was that because men are less likely to notice what women wear than women are, then it is the women that determine what the societal standards and et cetera are for clothes. This acute perception of fashion is what drives women to buy clothes made by male fashion designers, like Armani and Louis Vuitton. The fact that the fashion designers are male is almost irrelevant. If not for the tastes of women, then people wouldn't buy their brand and they would go out of business. The reasonable next step would only be to relax the standards for clothing that women have. People complain about being noticed when their lack of makeup is noticed, but this would never happen if they never wore makeup. On the flip side though, I would even argue that men are even more limited by women, but not only by their gender. Men's clothing choices are often very influenced by the idea of masculinity, and to dress more feminine is seen as a statement or a bold declaration of individuality. Masculinity itself is determined by societal perceptions as a whole, not only men's ideals, so I believe that men have even less of a choice in changing clothing conventions than women.This isn't to say that I disagree with Tatten's piece though. I found that it had brilliantly argued out examples for the case of unwanted attention, such as the fact that a women writing the article makes it a feminine piece. I only took issue with the example of women's fashion, as I feel that her acute observations of other women were a detriment, as she became unable to consider the viewpoint of a gender blind to the intricacies of women's fashion.