That last word is the key point. Men receive less judgment for remaining single than women, but they also receive more judgment if they don't work. That's a reason we're much more willing to code an unemployed or underemployed man as a "loser" than we are to do so a woman.
Still though, I think there are dimensions of this where this is less true, perhaps in ways that men are expected to seem "confident" or "strong" or "independent" which I think can be stiffing. The typical men's section of a clothing store normalizes a lot more conservative wardrobes compared to women. I wish I had better words to explain it.
Yep, and women demand this too: many women's dating profiles talk about how they want a guy who's "confident but not cocky", who "makes a plan" for dates, who "takes the lead", etc. Basically, American women want hyper-masculine men who look like George Clooney (when younger), but then they sit around complaining about "toxic masculinity" and how they're mistreated by men.
>The typical men's section of a clothing store normalizes a lot more conservative wardrobes compared to women.
Men's fashion is truly horrible compared to women's fashion. Men basically have the choice of either a stuffy suit that look like it hasn't changed in a century and is completely impractical, or baggy pants and a baggy hoody. Women get all kinds of choices in clothes, including lots which show off their bodies, while men's clothes are basically designed to hide our bodies completely and look as boring as possible. I guess that's helpful if you're fat, but if you're athletic and toned, it's really not.
I don't believe men's fashion is horrible, but I think the sheer variety and design quality of clothing available to women is pretty impressive.
But then, to be honest, that's consumer driven. Some will harangue me for pointing out that a great majority of women love looking good and put vast amounts of time and money into it, between clothing, accessories and makeup. As such they've a much wider market of choice as producers try to attract that demand.
Men have nice options. As I brought up a stereotype above, I'll bring one up now which holds as true - a vast majority of men put little or no effort into their own appearance and with obesity rates heightening it's only getting worse.
I've only briefly touched it but check out the Thread app if you want an idea of good looking outfits available to guys at various price ranges. I'm not sure of alternatives, as I generally just shop / dress myself with some effort, but it certainly looks like it both offers great variety while also taking out a lot of the guess work, an example being you can state if you've wide thighs and they won't show you pants that won't accommodate that.
Not in any way associated with Thread fwiw.
Strongly disagree—you may just not have been exposed to all the options in men's fashion. There are tons, without even deviating too far from traditional/normal.
Right now, most men's fashion is terrible in terms of how it models the waist. Put on anything that you consider to be fashionable, and then see how well your hip-hinge and thighs-parallel squats do. No wonder the Scottish loved their kilts!
A trip to a women's clothing store would disprove the notion that women don't have choices very quickly.
What choices for bottoms do men have that aren't trousers? There's shorts if the weather's warm enough (though there seem to be a bunch of weird men out there wearing shorts in freezing weather for some reason), but that's it.
Don't forget the colors. Dress too colorfully as a man, and people think you're gay. So we usually end up sticking with darker, solid colors.
I don't wear either of these on a daily basis, nor my birthday suit, and people think that I dress nice. Men have a plethora of clothing options that are stylish, comfortable, and appropriate for work situations. I'm currently wearing slacks that are designed to feel like sweat pants and a thick cotton button up shirt.
Women have it pretty bad when it comes to clothes shopping. Men take for granted that we all are roughly the same shape, so most of us can shop at the same stores. It's not like that for women.
Women come in many different shapes. So you look and see that a clothing store has twice as many jeans for women as they do for men, but don't realize that all of those are split over four or five styles that are mutually exclusive: most women can only fit into one, maybe two styles. But for men, most of us can wear slim fit, regular fit, bootcut, etc jeans.
This same phenomenon extends to stores as well. Lots of women's clothing brands specialize in a certain shape of woman.
I read this frequently, but it just seems flat wrong, I think men just have lower expectations about how clothes should fit, and there is less expectation that men stay slim. I’m trim and fit, and I can only buy from a couple of brands if I want clothes that fit me well without being skin tight. I’m not alone. There is a great variety of shoulder geometries for men, I remember hearing on JRE, but I can’t find a source to link, that their is a huge of amount of variation in men’s(everyone’s?) shoulders, probably due to Homo sapiens evolving to hunt with overhand thrown rocks. I could be flat wrong, but I detest this, “men’s bodies are mostly the same” attitude, you can definitely tell the difference between someone wearing a well tailored suit and someone who isn’t. I’m pretty sure men just have lower standards/expectations.
Difficulty: you have to know what to look for in fit so you can diagnose what's wrong with a given article if it's not quite right.
My theory right now is simply that on average women have the will power to spend enough time and energy on the task regardless... men might have the desire to look good, but when faced with the reality of time and money required to achieve it say fuck no, it doesn't hold their interest enough.
Compared to women, men have less choice in clothing and don't drive the market in the way women's choices do.
As a trim, broad-shouldered 5'2" guy, I had to laugh at your entire comment. I have literally never found a shirt or jacket that fits off the rack from... dozens? Hundreds? of different brands.
My bet is that you fall into a conventionally masculine body shape, and you universalize your own experience to all men.
What kinds of masculine-coded clothing articles would you like to see?
Everything in your comment implies you are the last person who should be asserting what woman want.
Just because you can have an erection and produce sperm at 70 doesn't mean you can have children and if you do they'll most likely suffer from down syndrome or other conditions.
Having kids after 45 as a male carries risks for the children as well.
Please cite something for this assertion or delete it, as it is not in line with anything I've read on the matter.
Increased paternal age carries some potential for increased side effects for their children, but it is absolutely nowhere near the risks involved in a delayed pregnancy for women [0].
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/well/family/older-fathers...
An order of magnitude higher chance of genetic defects isn’t very significant when the initial risk is less than .1%