The Times last Wednesday ran an article in Times
2
called "We should pity poor men — women can wear
any colour".
In it, the fashion editor Anna Murphy writes:
I received a letter from a reader in response to something I wrote about trousers, verboten for women until remarkably recently. In the first paragraph, the reader told me they were a fan of skirts. "I hate trousers because of the way they compress my nether regions." In the second they revealed themselves to be "a bloke" and, in so doing, to have the narrative pacing of Dashiell Hammett.
"I am not trans," our anonymous reader went on to say. "I have no desire to be a woman. Women's clothes are FUN. Men's aren't. Why should we be denied this? Clothes do not have gender — people do."
Let's pity poor men their wardrobe limitations and hope for their sakes that this changes, while in the meantime enjoying our lack of them. Let's wear our red suit and pink top. Let's tell another woman how good she looks when she does. And if a man does, let's go up and shake his hand.
As I've shown in this blog, you can find men's clothes that ARE fun. And you can find men's trousers that don't compress your nether regions. I'll write about this in another post, but Indian and "Eastern" shops are a good place to look, so is "Fez", and so are online suppliers such as Fantazia.
After seeing Anna's article, I sent her a tweet inviting her to shake my hand. But perhaps she won't take up my invitation. Because The Times hardly ever writes about clothes for men. When it does, the clothes are drab. And it always writes about new clothes. Never vintage. And never ever ever foreign styles such as the Moroccan and their wonderful colours. Her paper's words belie her pity.