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Comment by danbolt | Hacker News Reader

That's very true. We definitely are more lenient towards people in different ways depending on their gender, and there are a lot of relaxed social expectations that men have compared to women.

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.

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>perhaps in ways that men are expected to seem "confident" or "strong" or "independent" which I think can be stiffing.

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.

>Men's fashion is truly horrible compared to women's fashion

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.

> 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.

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.

Sure. Women are limited to painted-on pockets for pants, while men get the entire gamut from painted-on leghuggers to many-small-knapsacks cargo pants.

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!

Women have a choice of what they want to wear. If they want to wear leggings with no pockets, they can. If they want to wear "boyfriend" cut jeans with exactly the same pockets as men, they can. If they want to wear a dress with pockets, they can.

A trip to a women's clothing store would disprove the notion that women don't have choices very quickly.

Exactly. If a woman wants to wear jeans, it's OK. Or slacks, or a skirt, or a dress, or shorts, or leggings/yoga pants these days.

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.

> 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.

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.

> Men take for granted that we all are roughly the same shape.

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.

Decent (read: donated to by people with money) thrift stores are a great place to find one's sizing. Go in with a few brands in mind and an understanding of how their sizing works (they may have cut variations in addition to just small/medium/large, like trim/slim/regular, for instance) then just start trying on anything from those brands until you narrow down your correct sizing. If you get very close you may be able to guess for e.g. online sale orders from that brand (say, a pair of chinos at the thrift store is a tiny bit too tight but looks alright otherwise, so you're very confident 1" more in the waist would fit well, so you catch the next sale from that brand and order their chinos in the size you're almost sure will fit)

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.

I duno, what you say sounds right but my experience seems to be the opposite, i can never find anything that fits in physical shops, everything seems to be stocked for either obese or tall people, i'm slim and on the shorter side (but not very short)... alternatively perhaps I just expect shopping to actually be efficient, i hate spending ages shopping, but perhaps frequency is the only way you can find a good fit... and the only thing I have managed to figure out so far is that fit is important.

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.

As soon as I started working out, I basically gave up on finding a pair of jeans that fit both my hips and my waist.

Compared to women, men have less choice in clothing and don't drive the market in the way women's choices do.

It takes some combination of time and money. On the high end of the money side you know nothing about fashion and pay someone to dress you well. On the low end you have to learn a bunch and spend serious time so you can buy pieces via thrift, sales, and seconds, that'll actually fit, look good/appropriate, and last.

> Men take for granted that we all are roughly the same shape, so most of us can shop at the same stores.

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.

I'm 6' tall and I have trouble many times finding shirts to fit these days, because they seem to be cut for fatter men than myself (I'm rather thin). Most shirts and other tops seem to be really baggy to me.

I'm 6' as well and 75 lbs overweight (working on it). If I find dress shirts that fit my neck they are basically potato sacks on me. And it has always been that way, even when I wasn't overweight. The only option I've ever had if I've wanted to look sharp was to get shirts tailored.

Your best bet is to find some kind of East Asian brand(Uniqlo or H&M for example but they are fast fashion tier places so I'm not actually recommending those specifically) where smalls are actually small and fit nicely on smaller frames.

I actually do have a bunch of shirts from Uniqlo. The problem, however, is while they mostly fit nicely (i.e., they aren't designed for fat people), they're not quite long enough for me, so they frequently become untucked. Their idea of a "medium" guy is a guy who's 5'7 at the most, I'm guessing, and I'm over 6'. This isn't that much of a problem, though, compared to the long-sleeve shirts: on those the sleeves are an inch or two too short, because again they're not thinking a "medium" is a guy who's over 6' with long arms. I have gotten pretty lucky with some of the short-sleeve shirts though.

Have you looked into Everlane? They're quite more expensive but there's a range of sizing that they provide with exact measurements and from what I read their clothes are designed for more European/Asian bodytypes instead of Americans. I also like the philosophy behind their company/brand which you can read on their website.

Thanks, I'll check it out!

The issue with those is just that my height is small; they don't fit my shoulders, which are a snug medium.

I find branching outside big-box stores and seeking out smaller brands will impress you - just in San Francisco, Taylor Stitch makes handsome quality clothes and Marine Layer clothes look and feel great.

It is unfortunate that the range of clothing coded as masculine is not as expressive as the range coded as feminine.

What kinds of masculine-coded clothing articles would you like to see?

Formal outfits that involve bright colours that aren’t necessary a three-piece suit. I’d love to see dresses and jumpsuits tailored to men.

Something that won't crush my balls when I sit down. If skirt-like or kilt-like, it would also be a lot cooler than pants in the summer, if it was acceptable in an office.

"Basically, American women want..."

Everything in your comment implies you are the last person who should be asserting what woman want.

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