Barbara Walters at the Spiderman opening, New York City, June 2011. Via Wikipedia
The Atlantic Wire asks “is it defensible, in this day and age (day: Tuesday; age: the 21st century) for an established news organization to put forth a 3-page article on how newswomen dress?”
Well, yes, as they point out, depending on how you do it. They’re referring to a Washington Post article titled “The New Powerlessness of the Evening Newswoman (or at Least Her Outfit)“, where they discuss the outfit choices of Diane Swayer and Barbara Walters, among others. Both the Post‘s and the Atlantic‘s articles miss the point. It’s not bad to discuss how newswomen dress. The way people dress and have been doing so for hundreds of thousands of years is hella interesting and (can be) complex and filled with meaning. And let’s face it, in the current state of affairs, men’s clothing is mostly boring and has hardly changed in like 80 years (minus a few subtleties –what, ties?). You can’t even begin to compare with women’s clothing. There’s so much more variety in color, shape, texture, form, cut, etc. If we’re going to start to dissect the suit choices of Anderson Cooper and Jorge Ramos, then the conversation will unfortunately be rather short. I genuinely feel this is lamentable; many men are missing out on a form of self-expression you can take part in literally every day, and that can be fun and fulfilling.
Of course, I’m also all for not giving a shit if a woman doesn’t want to put time into her dress –that’s her decision, and just because she’s a woman doesn’t mean she should care about these things. If she wants to put that time into other outlets of expression, artistic or not, then awesome.
The opposite also goes for men — if a guy wants to put time and care into his wardrobe, and doesn’t care if that’s seen as feminine, then also awesome. But I don’t think we should pretend that we’re blind and that women’s clothing, as of now, isn’t more visually engaging, meaningful and, for some, worthy of discussion.
There is also the issue of how the media talks about talking about fashion, for men and women. If we compare this newswomen fashion piece to, say, Richard Cohen on the deathless appeal of men who know how to send out an expensive suit for dry cleaning, we find a world of difference. Though it’s but one line in a piece mostly about how sex appeal wasn’t about muscles but about confidence, in men like Humprey Bogart and Cary Grant, Cohen is supposed to be bold because he notices men’s dress choices, whereas if someone discusses the dress choices of newswomen, that’s frivolous and sexist.
What is also telling is that Cohen’s piece is about sex appeal, but there’s not much discussion about what the men wear or about their bodies, which is interesting in itself — the same, I think, would not be true about an article on women’s sex appeal.
The Atlantic article at least wasn’t characterizing women as frivolous; that would be too passé. It was criticizing the media for being sexist and worrying about women’s fashion (though all in a somewhat convoluted way, in my opinion). It opens and closes with the same trite idea: “Sometimes clothes are just clothes. The best article about female empowerment in the newsroom or out of it would not, I dare say, need mention them at all.” Again, I think that’s unrealistic. And actually, dismissing fashion as a frivolous subject, because it’s a “woman thing”, is what is at a culturally subconscious level most sexist of all.
Related articles
- The colorful evolution of newswomen’s attire, by @Katherine Boyle (nextlevelofnews.com)
- 72-year-old grandaddy models women’s clothes (lostateminor.com)
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