Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Clothing and harassment

Krista Ford's unfortunate tweet got me thinking about the clothes I wear and creeps' reactions to them. I've never been raped, but, like everyone, I receive a fair amount of street harassment. After thinking about it some, I noticed a clear pattern in which clothes correlate with more harassment, but it isn't what you'd expect.

The one outfit that has correlated with the most harassment is a white sleeveless t-shirt, a long flowered hippy skirt, and off-brand birkenstocks. It has no redeeming qualities except that it's completely comfortable on a hot day. Only my arms, face, and toes are showing, the shoes make my feet look manly and my ankles look fat, the shirt is a size bigger than I'd normally wear so it does nothing for my figure, and the colour makes me look like the undead.

Number 2 on the list is my now-defunct green sundress. It's one of those hippy-style dresses from the 90s that you'd crumple up and tie in a knot after you wash it to make it all crinkly. The colour was flattering, it was incredibly comfortable on a hot summer's day, but the shape was, quite literally, like a burqa with the arms and head exposed, falling all the way to the ankles and doing nothing for my figure. It started getting holes around the seams so I had to stop wearing it, unfortunately. I do miss it, but I did get yelled at by men in cars an awful lot when wearing it.

Number 3 on the list is my black trenchcoat, which is also notable for its shapelessness. It's a giant shroud of black that falls to mid-calf and reveals no hint of my curves. I wear it when my bright fucking red raincoat (which is so bright fucking red that the profanity is in fact necessary) is inappropriate. Its only redeeming qualities are that it's a raincoat and it isn't bright fucking red.

Number 4 is a black pinstripe jacket that was originally my mother's before it got handed down to my job-seeking, office-clothes-lacking university student self. I received it 10 years ago, it was in my mother's closet for years before that, and she was middle-aged when she bought it, most likely at an age-appropriate store. It is not unflattering, but its style betrays its era and target audience. I wear it because there's a narrow window in the fall when, despite my best efforts, no other article of clothing I've acquired in my life does the job nearly as well.

All these clothes reveal less of my figure than my usual clothes. All of them are older (both in objective age and in age of the target wearer) than my usual clothes. I'm usually wearing low necklines and high heels and fitted tops. On non-work days when it's hot out, I wear camis with spaghetti straps. Most of the summer I'm wearing skirts that fall to the knee and show my legs to their best advantage. The vast majority of the time, including right this minute as I sit here typing a blog post with a cliché gunky green mask on my face, I'm dressed significantly sexier than any of the outfits described above. I wouldn't look at myself twice in these clothes, but the creeps always do.

So it seems the creeps do have some kind of clothing preferences going on there, but it isn't dressing like a whore, and it isn't even dressing sexy. It seems to be shapeless and frumpyish clothes that looked like my mother picked them out (and, in some cases, that my mother actually did pick out.)  I can't imagine what they might be thinking, but it doesn't seem to be anything that outsiders can predict.

Have you noticed any patterns in your own life of which clothes correlate with more street harassment?  Are these patterns at all predictable?

6 comments:

laura k said...

When I got street harassment on a regular basis, I was in almost always on my way to work in casual business attire. I almost never got harassed when wearing mini-skirts or other going-out-at-night wear.

laura k said...

I wonder if in your more frumpy, non-sexy attire if you seem (to the harassers) more vulnerable?

impudent strumpet said...

If they do think I'm more vulnerable in my frumpy clothes, I'd be very interested in why they think that. I don't feel more vulnerable and I don't think I look more vulnerable, but we've already established that I can't figure out what they're thinking, or what information they do and don't get from clothes.

Unless they think I'm poor when I'm wearing my frumpy clothes? I can't imagine why that would make a difference to them though.

It would be really interesting if someone could study this on a large scale.

What's weird is that I still get the message from some of the men around me (who, as far as I can tell, are not street harassers) that you should avoid dressing sexy to avoid harassment. So this isn't a "men and women read clothing differently" thing. It's a "harassers read clothing differently than everyone else thinks they do" thing.

laura k said...

I wish we could somehow interview street harassers to learn what drives them, what they are thinking. I think this all the time about internet trolls. But how do you study people who by definition function anonymously? Few men would admit to either activity.

impudent strumpet said...

There was a thread on Reddit a while back where they had rapists telling "their side of the story." It was creepy but not particularly helpful - the tl;dr is "I unilaterally decided she must want to have sex because reasons."

I'm not active on Reddit and don't think I could make a good thread happen, but maybe someone could.

impudent strumpet said...

In a couple of branches of the comment thread here, various people indicate that, in their experience, the most attractive women get less harassment, because the dickheads assume they're taken and/or out of their league.