The 7 Most Baffling Things About Women's Clothes

There are a lot of annoying things about being a woman, like periods, childbirth and not being able to play basketball in a way that keeps spectators awake. But near the top of the list has got to be buying clothes.

I know one way to fix it is just to be ballsy and wear men's clothes, and that's a bold choice. But you take a social hit for wearing "masculine" clothes, and most women don't want to take that hit. So they go to buy clothes made specifically "for women," and generally find a set of the most impractical, low-quality, high-maintenance crap that a sweatshop can make.

Here are a few of the many, many awful things about the clothes that manufacturers want women to wear:

#7. The Material Is Too Thin

Go through any women's clothes section and put your hand inside all the shirts and dresses and see if you can see it. (If you are a man, try to make sure no one is looking first.) About 50 percent of the time, you are going to get a pretty good view of your hand. And you don't have to go to a fancy boutique; this holds true for my neighborhood Target.

Wet Seal
I assume the men and lesbians among our readers would prefer I had this photo from the opposite side.

That means if a girl wears just that shirt, you are going to see her bra, or even boobs, which I'm sure sounds exciting and positive to many men, but violates workplace and school dress codes, as well as many public decency laws. Also, these are clothes for all women of all ages, not just young, attractive women.

This isn't a mistake. The solution is supposed to be layering, which has really caught on in recent years. All of these stores also sell plenty of tank tops, camisoles and plain form-fitting T-shirts, sometimes dedicating entire sections to clothes specifically designed for use in layering. Catalog photos will often show girls wearing three or more layers.

JC Penney
Count 'em. One, two, three. Or as JC Penney sees it, $, $$, $$$!

I can't prove they do this deliberately to make women buy more pieces of clothing, but once you found you could sell this concept to people, why wouldn't you? Someone who used to buy one shirt is now going to buy three from you. And you get to use less material.

On top of that, super-thin cloth isn't very durable, and its evil cousin, the lacy sweater with huge holes, easily catches and tears in a washing machine. So you get to spend even more money replacing them more often or dry cleaning them.

#6. Fake Pockets or No Pockets

One thing I think a lot of men take for granted is pockets. It seems like men always have pockets. They're a requirement in men's pants, men's coats always have functional pockets and I guess even men's prison jumpsuits must have them, since I hear about people smuggling goods into prison all the time.

Women's clothing manufacturers, on the other hand, seem to believe women can't be trusted with pockets. Something like 99 percent of dresses have no pockets at all, and the more formal you get, the more likely a women's coat or pants pocket is going to be a fake, decorative pocket.

LLYMLRS
It looks like it has pockets, but it does not.

I know the arguments -- "But women's clothes are so carefully cut and tailored. If you put anything in a pocket, it would bulge and look bad!" That's bullshit. I just went to the store with my bridesmaids and picked out some bridesmaids' dresses with pockets.

David's Bridal
It doesn't look like it has pockets, but it does.

Sure, there will be unsightly bulges if they put too much in their pockets, but the solution isn't to take them away -- the solution is to trust women to have the common sense to not put a bag of rocks in their pocket. These pockets are just fine for carrying a key or some cash or credit cards, and it's stupid to not give anyone that option because some idiot might try to put, I don't know, night-vision goggles or a piece of cake in their pocket.

But it's OK, because instead of functional pockets, we get a ton of decorative pockets, as well as numerous other nonfunctional decorations, like extra buttons, and buckles, and flaps. Look at these ridiculous boots.

Sure has a lot of buckles and stitching and all that, I bet these must be complex to put on. Oh wait.

It's just one zipper up the inside.

The only possible conclusion is that Rob "Pouches" Liefeld moonlights as a women's clothing designer in his spare time.

#5. Too Cold

Another problem is that women's clothes are too damn cold. Part of it is the thinness of much of the material, as mentioned before, but no matter how thick the material, many, many styles involve increasing exposure, like dipped necklines, three-quarter sleeves or skirts and dresses.

It can be easy to chalk this up just to women who dress "provocatively," but the truth is that a fairly normal, unprovocative women's style exposes a lot more skin than men's clothes. A below-knee skirt still exposes your shins. A three-quarter sleeve isn't terribly provocative unless you have a thing for forearms. And necklines don't need to go anywhere near the boobs to still be a lot wider than the average men's neckline.

Uniforme Vogue
Not a lot of men could get away with wearing that collar.

The obvious question, which might come up on a bunch of these points, is why we don't just avoid these styles. It's harder than it sounds, because they're everywhere. It can be hard to find a shirt with a neckline between "look at my bust" and turtleneck, and when you do, it turns out to be a three-quarter sleeve. If you find a dress with full sleeves, they've pulled the hem up to your ass.

American Apparel
Amish up top, streetwalker below.

What makes this all worse is that this is almost inevitably the case with all "professional" styles that are OK to wear at the office, and women being cold at the office is an enormous, widespread workplace issue, as I've covered before.

I don't think colder clothing is the cause, as bundled-up women complain of the cold just as much. I think it's just adding insult to injury that they're already feeling cold, and that there is no "professional"-looking outfit that will let them bundle up properly without looking like they are in a Christmas special.

AdventurousFoodie.com
Hard to get people to take you seriously in meetings like this.

#4. Arbitrary Clothing Sizes

Men's pants sizes are logical and come in measurements of at least waist size, and often inseam, too. Women's pants sizes, and clothing sizes in general, are meaningless, arbitrary numbers that come, as far as I can tell, from having kittens bat around a 20-sided die.

Can't make an analogy like that and not make a picture of it.

This isn't just a recent trend. Women's clothing manufacturers have been making up sizes as far back as sizes have existed. According to one fashion historian, a 32-inch bust would have come out to a size 14 in a 1937 Sears catalog, while being labeled a size 8 in 1967, and coming down to a size 0 in today's terms.

Even today, you apparently inflate and deflate like a balloon when you go from brand to brand, according to their sizes. A woman who is size 6 at American Eagle might be a 0 at Ann Taylor, as mentioned in the above article.

If we're being logical, shouldn't a size 0 look like this?

Obviously they're pandering here, trying to flatter women by making them sound thinner with a skinny-sounding number, because when you make people feel good, they buy things. As long as the market keeps rewarding for it, they'll keep doing it, so I guess there's no hope for making women's sizes any easier to buy.

On the other hand, if we can't make things easier for women, apparently they are making things harder for men these days by doing the same thing with their pants. According to Esquire, various brands of men's pants labeled as having a "36-inch waist" actually had waistlines ranging from 36 to 41 inches (Old Navy was the fattest liar). In an era where action heroes can no longer sport beer bellies (John Wayne, young Captain Kirk), I guess men need flattery about their waistlines, too.

Nobody used to mind a bit of a tummy on a leading man.

In attempting equality, I would have preferred making pants-buying easier and more consistent for everybody instead of making it suck for everybody but I guess that's the way they decided to go.