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Every time (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/funny@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 24 points 10 months ago (19 children)

What if I told you that women's clothing is form-fitting with small pockets because that's what is popular among women?

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  • [–] 14 points 10 months ago

    I'll drop this link to a video that goes over pocket fashion history but from what I know of it the option of large pockets largely never existed for women in a meaningful way. By the time we as a society moved away from men using under garment bags we never gave women the same option.

    But yes, currently it's popular. There is pressure to wear form fitting clothing. There is pressure to have a bag to accomodate the lack of pockets. This will continue a perpetual demand for small/false pockets.

    https://youtu.be/jA_elEw-Oog

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  • [–] 18 points 10 months ago* (3 children)

    Yeah, right? I thought this was settled at least five years ago. Preface: I get we're not in a frictionless vacuum free market with perfectly rational agents acting on perfect information. Auto makers in the US, for example, induce demand for massive fuck-off pickup trucks – which exploit regulatory loopholes and are worse than standard cars for most people – by driving down the supply of alternatives and massively marketing trucks to people who categorically don't need them.

    However, pants are an obvious case where you can't have both: you can't have normal-sized pockets (let alone the Felix the Cat-ass ones men can have with cargo pants) and elegant, form-fitting clothing. Demand always exists for big pockets because big pockets are objectively beneficial, but at a population level in a zero-sum game, women prefer form (fitting) over function (bigger pockets). This does leave a minority who actually would prefer and buy the larger pockets, but because this is a minority, it's also the minority of supply, and these women are faced with fewer options. Because the supply of pants is highly elastic, the amount of pants with good pockets is probably close to its actual demand – even accounting for imperfect information where some women may truly want but just not know how to buy them. It's also true that demand for bigger pants would go up if purses weren't so normalized among women, but they are, and there's not a strong force acting to reverse that.

    On a personal note: I don't get what the big deal is (I mean I do, but not from what I'd see myself wearing); the women I've known who wear looser pants with baggier pockets to me have usually looked better.

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  • [–] 18 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I'll give you points for the elegant part because formal dresses are hard to add pockets to. But my bootie is currently sitting in a pair of form fitting flare jeans with functional sized pockets. There are pockets added to workout leggings to at least carry phone, ID, and keys in. I also have some cute skirts and dresses with functional sized pockets. I don’t want cargo pants size pockets, but at least enough to hold my ID and some cash without fear of losing them.

    These things do exist, they are just hard to find because companies don’t manufacture them. Most women I know would buy pants with functional sized pockets even if they didn’t use them and pretty much every woman I know has complained about our barely able to hold a chapstick sized pockets.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I appreciate the insight; I don't buy these products, so hearing from someone who does is helpful. I guess at the end of the day there still have to be forces pushing these companies not to add/enlarge pockets, because any economic model would say that corporations – who'd burn your house down if it saved them a nickel – know that this debate has been going on, have probably run countless trials, focus groups, etc., and would pounce on this the second they saw profit.

    • Purses do alleviate this burden on corporations a lot. If purses disappeared overnight, the children working in Southeast Asian jean sweatshops would be in for a bad, bad morning. (I'd also say I don't think this is a conspiracy to sell purses, as the market's barrier for entry is low enough and purses already commonplace enough that they'd only be hurting themselves.)
    • At minumum there's always some tradeoff when you have pockets. I'd bet that, beyond the baseline material cost of making pockets, it costs more and more in labor to hide the pockets as the pants become more form-fitting and the pockets become larger.
    • So even if you could make something that's form-fitting with normal pockets (assuming no noticeable trade-off in form), it'd probably cost more at a price women aren't willing to pay in an age of expansive wardrobes and fast fashion.

    That's just a guess going off what you've said, which I believe – mostly, anyway, since it feels like larger pockets would always diminish form-fitting in at least some small way.

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago

    So first off, I want to say I really appreciate how respectful your comment is. I’ve voiced my opinion on this topic before and oftentimes guys get pretty freaking rude. I’ve seen some guys get really nasty with women voicing an opinion specifically about women’s pockets before. So I truly do appreciate you.

    IMO, it is likely that fashion companies make too much money off of purses to add pockets. Why add a small amount of fabric for pennies when you could sell an entire accessory for $15+, and that’s a cheap purse, many can go for a significant amount more.

    I also believe there is also an element of sexism that is baked in from over a century ago. Many of the comments that are “if women wanted them, they would have them” echo the same comments on flyers against pockets from the 1910s. A great book about this topic is Pockets An Intimate History of How We Keep Things by Hannah Carlson. She pulls a lot of examples from history about why women don't have pockets and how long we have been asking why we don’t, she incudes an article from the NYT from 1899 asking that question. Another example is when women were fighting for our right to vote, the antis thought we could hide things in pockets like flyers or it was assumed we would use them for scandalous things like tobacco and our own money. Women also used to have pockets in skirts for a long time, but as we gained rights, purses were pushed in and pockets were pushed out.

    To your second point, I don’t think it would cost that much and definitely not so much that women wouldn’t purchase them. Below is a picture of two pair of jeans I own. Both are thin in the thighs with flares at the bottom and cost roughly the same amount. The one on the right, the pocket barely goes up to my second knuckle, these are jeans that I can maybe clip my knife and keep a lighter in one pocket, but it’s likely the lighter will fall out. The one on the left, while not as large as men’s pockets, fits my entire hand, I can keep my phone, cash, or ID in those pockets without having to worry about them falling out. The amount of fabric between the two is not that much and the cost would not be too crazy.

    Again, I super appreciate your very respectful comment 💚

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Women never got the option to buy pants with pockets. It was decided for us and now it’s intentional to prop up the purse industry, one of the most profitable items in fashion.

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  • [–] -3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Check my other comment, pants with pockets are widely available.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    I saw your comment. You’re wrong.

    No, they are available online. That’s not the same thing. Buying clothes online is a gamble especially in women’s clothing where the sizing is all over the place and the numbers are arbitrary.

    I promise those retailers do not carry pants with real pockets in physical stores. I have, on multiple occasions, bought clothing in the men’s dept after checking all the available options in the women’s dept.

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (9 children)

    Yeah, the reality is, if women really wanted pockets in their clothes then any one of them could start making clothes with large pockets, sell them, capitalize on this market, and make oodles of money

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  • [–] 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (8 children)

    They're already widely available. Just google "women's pants big pockets." You can buy women's pants that have a looser fit with big pockets almost anywhere, in many styles and materials, from any major retailer, at price points ranging from Walmart to designer.

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  • [–] 12 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    I'm not sure that they're necessarily "widely available" or available "from any major retailer" I searched what you suggested and found a bunch of drop shipped results on amazon, walmart, and random sketchy sites.

    I guess to me "widely available, almost anywhere, from any major retailer" sounds like these pants have saturated the market enough that I should be able to find them at any department store but honestly I have never seen large pocket options for women in a physical store. If there are physical stores carrying this option that you know of please let me know because I would love to be able to go try them out!

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago

    Yeah, I agree with this. I’ve shopped looking specifically for pants with appropriate sized pockets and they are hard to find. When the local Kohls was closing, I bought 8 pair of pants at about a dollar a piece. Only 1 had real pockets, the others weren’t even big enough to keep a lighter or chapstick in place, they always fell out.

    Now, I only buy pants with appropriate sized pockets. And if I find a pair that I really like the fit, I will rip out those shitty little things and put adult size pockets into it.

    My favorites are the very few super cute dresses that actually have real pockets. My friends and I always get very excited!

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (3 children)
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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Hey, thank you for listing them. I'm still looking through them and a lot just say "with pockets" not necessarily with "large pockets" which is fine but I'm willing to bet they're like every other womens pant in a large store that "has" pockets which is barely enough to fit chapstick in.

    Some of these pants are locally available to me so I can go and physically check but just pointing out that off the bat containing pockets doesn't mean they contain sufficient pockets.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    You can see quite clearly in many of the pictures that the models have their whole hands in them. And I'm not just talking about the ones where they hook the thumb and stop there.

    Idk what people want, I'm a male and I have never in my life had a regular pair of jeans that "fit an iPad in them" except for when I had JNCOs as a kid. My Levi's pockets are not much bigger than my smartphone. And I can personally tell you that there are women's pants with pockets as big as men's as that's all that my wife wears.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    Ah I see. Unfortunately this happens a lot. The photo may show they can fit their hands inside but there are a lot of times the pockets in person are still just so so small. Its quite disheartening.

    I'm not saying these pants don't exist, I was just pointing out that I've never seen them exist at both the size and level of availability you described originally.

    I'll still check out the ones available locally to me that seemed hopefully sufficient and get back to you if they work out!

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