Woman's Pockets Are Inferior
pudding.cool
pudding.cool
It stretches credulity, given the control women stereotypically have over clothing decisions, that large-pocketed clothes would not be an option if there was demand. Evidence suggests that any demand is a vocal minority.
Choice only reflects preference when sufficient choices are available (in this case, having common options with large pockets), and that making a selection based on preference in that area does not require significant downgrades on other areas (having a cargo pants option is not sufficient if the user is looking for skinny jeans with larger pockets).
These "experts" only maximize for their own preferred design and target profits. The fact that womens pockets are ridiculously small has become a meme is a good indication that they are wrong and do not care.
Ask any seamstress and they will agree.
This isn't true, it can be a meme anyway if women prefer the looks of small pockets they wont even consider the larger pocketed one, and we end up in the current situation.
It isn't hard to find clothes with larger pockets, it is hard to find clothes women like with larger pockets.
If you can get skinny jeans with room for a phone for men, you should be able to get skinny jeans with room for a phone for women.
And making clothes with bigger/more pockets does not require a high barrier to entry, the technology has been there for decades.
And profit margins on clothes are tiny, so it stands to reason that sellers would be looking for any edge they can get to sell more clothes and/or at a higher price.
If you agree with the above, then there are two options:
1) for decades, people whose livelihood is selling clothes have missed an obvious opportunity to earn more money
2) people whose livelihood is selling clothes have not been able to succeed in selling women’s clothes with bigger/more pockets
If option 1, then someone needs to jump into this business. I sympathize with my wife and daughter who also complain about the lack and size of pockets, but I am not sure how to square that with the above parameters. Maybe it is an under-explored business opportunity, but it is so low barrier to entry that it seems unbelievable that the answer is not sufficient lack of demand (option 2).
1. The popular brands are run by men who do not understand and/or agree with the issue.
2. The large manufacturers as they have favorable supply deals, and threaten suppliers to not sell to competitors at the risk of losing their business, resulting in lack of affordable materials to build competing businesses.
The former being the reason for the current bias in options, and the latter explaining why there is no fair market for alternative options.
> 1. The popular brands are run by men who do not understand and/or agree with the issue.
What is there to understand? Bigger pockets fit more things. It is physics.
It is possible, but I doubt a man leading a clothing company is deciding against making more money by selling clothes with bigger pockets due to a philosophy of believing women’s clothes should not have pockets.
Given the option of earning more money or preventing women from having more or bigger pockets, surely every single leader in the clothing business is not going to forego more money.
There is no market force that would decease revenue from not changing existing products unless another but manufacturer does it first and attracts customers away.
Literally every time this has come up in conversation I've heard women complain that there aren't any options.
But of course if you ask them if they magically want larger pockets they say yes. I'd also want magical pants.
I've looked nowhere and I can't find it!
Literally every few years some company comes out claiming they'll make woman's pants with pockets.
I bought a phone without a 3.5mm jack once because I didn't think to check. I may have to buy one again when my Pixel dies due to lack of options.
Clearly I don't care about 3.5mm jacks /s
Sure, try to buy anything from Pairess (2019) [1]. It turns out functional woman's clothes isn't a good enough business to last 4 years.
[1]: https://www.affirm.com/business/blog/affirm-pairess-disrupt-...
2018: https://www.fastcompany.com/90262598/pockets
2019: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/570469/finally-womens-je...
2021: https://yourstory.com/herstory/2021/10/functional-pockets-wo...
A lot of these brands are still alive as well from what i can see:
https://mmlafleur.com/collections/pants
https://www.bodenusa.com/en-us/womens-pants
One brand went bankrupt due to covid however:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Outlier/comments/mv3th8/brands_like...
If some indie brand was seeing huge demand selling women's clothes with large pockets, the mainstream brands would hop on the bandwagon in a heartbeat.
https://www.eshakti.com/default.aspx https://www.cloudtailor.com/
I do not want to go rummaging on niche shops or to buy online and have the faff of returning things that don't fit
Fashion is always on the move, vacillating through a range of possibilities in a way that rhymes with previous periods. And yet, certain invariants seem to hold or dominate over time and space.
I bet that if large pockets were introduced, women would express either indifference or select against them. (Anecdotally, I asked a woman whether she'd want larger pockets, and she responded that she doesn't like pockets at all, and doesn't like having anything in them when they are there.)
The belief women's pockets are inferior because they're smaller sounds to me like a boneheaded presumption that completely ignores the difference in needs, body shape, and preferences between the sexes, a kind of boorish and blinded egalitarianism. You wouldn't say that the wool dress pants a lawyer might wear are inferior to jeans because construction workers can't use them during work. That's just pure fallacy. The purposes that each is made for is different. The purpose is the measure, and there are different purposes.
Have you worn skinny jeans for males? The pockets are horrendous as well.
> On average, women’s skinny jean pockets were 3.5 inches (48%) shorter and 0.3 inches (6%) narrower than men’s skinny jeans.
Contrary to small phones though, big pocket pants seem like something you could produce without much investment. But then you could not compete with the pricing of big cheap brands and I assume that makes the market situation as is: it's too niche for mass taste and the niche is not willing to invest more money.
I am wondering how many women just buy pants made for men to get bigger pockets?
Cargo pants. Also its not a problem to buy and wear mens clothes.
Then why complain about women's clothes being dysfunctional?
"Not a problem, just buy a pick-up truck instead"
Cargo pants are not the same as jeans with larger pockets, nor is changing to mens clothing the same as getting larger pockets in the womens option, which tend to have different shapes and available sizes.
Being uptight about gender performance should always be ridiculed.
And this isn't limited to jeans. If you take an average hiking coat men's ones also have more and better pockets to women's. And we do not take handbags on hikes.
IMHO you have it backwards. The women that control clothing decisions are a small minority of all women. I bet if you polled women you’d find a majority that would favor larger pockets.
If we conducted a poll of 50 women, we might well find most of them say they want pants with bigger pockets. If you start a big-pocket line of womans clothing, you'll probably sell a lot less than someone who tries alternate tactics. Or make a fortune, what do I know. But if anyone believes there is a fortune to be made they can go try that remarkably easily and yet small pockets persist.
Calling them liars is a bit much in this scenario. I would blame the poll more than the person answering the poll. If I ask you: do you want a Porsche? You might say yes, but if i say: i can give you a Porsche for a million. You will probably say no.
They should probably ask a more nuanced question around what kind of trade-offs people would be willing to make for those bigger pockets.
The apparel/garment industry is highly fragmented with a low barrier-of-entry. It's not as "top-down" as your sentence seems to be implying. There are plenty of how-tos on the web explaining how to turn your clothing designs into products using contract manufacturers in China etc. That's why amateur Youtube influencers with no experience in the garment industry can "launch" their own clothing lines.
It seems that if "women's pants with bigger pockets" was desired by enough potential buyers to be profitable, some entrepreneurs would already have taken advantage of that arbitrage opportunity and become rich.
I agree with the sibling comment[1] that women may prefer bigger pockets if that one characteristic was isolated -- but they also prioritize other aspects such as the "look" the pants that end up forcing smaller pockets. Women's clothing is often a prime example of form-over-function (as a deliberate tradeoff) rather than function-over-form.
I think it's slightly more nuanced than that.
The way I think about values is that everyone values everything all the time. The interesting part is when values come into conflict.
So it's probably true that women do value putting things in their pockets. But they (evidently) value incompatible things more.
As an exercise, go to any mall or shopping center and try to find a pair of women's jeans that meet the following criteria:
1. Decent quality material, is not deliberately pre-destroyed 2. Functional pockets, but not outlandish 90s style cargo pockets 3. Cut with a straight lower leg, not flared or tapered "skinny", and a proportional leg overall, not extra-wide or skinny 4. A waist size that doesn't assume the wearer is an athlete with a flat stomach (remember, women's pants are sized by number, not by waist x length), even in a "curvy" fit 5. Is not purpose-designed hiking gear
If you can find anything meeting all 5 criteria, I will pay you a $50 finder's fee and consider booking a trip to visit your fair city, because my wife would be thrilled to know they exist.
Revealed preference only ever makes sense when interpreted as preference among available options, not preference among all possible options.
> Evidence suggests that any demand is a vocal minority
The demand for any one individual improvement is probably a relatively vocal minority. There are so many busted messed up attributes about women's clothing that it's hard to choose any one of them to be vocal about. So the overall effect is diluted.
That, and, a lot of women are probably just used to carrying their stuff in a handbag and don't even realize that decent pockets could be an option. Likewise for the unnecessary forced selection between super skinny and super wide jeans.
Is it possible that your criteria is not possible? If it is possible, buy a vacation to Bangladesh or India, and go to one of the many fabric stores. They have people who can design and make literally make whatever clothes you want. It won’t be $50, but it would be affordable for many in the US.
The question is, is it worth sufficiently more than the $30 clothes that clothes sellers are betting will appeal to a much more broad audience?
>Revealed preference only ever makes sense when interpreted as preference among available options, not preference among all possible options.
In the case of clothing, especially women’s clothing, surely the available options comes close to all possible options, especially after all these decades. Carrying smartphones has been ubiquitous for 10+ years, surely someone in the supply chain has personally (or their spouse) experienced the need for bigger pockets.
Yes, clearly. That's a reasonable thing to suggest /s
The issue is that the meaningful demand is not there, or already filled and the market is just small. As nerdponx observed, it isn't really about pockets. There are 4 different other concerns that probably outrank pockets and that is just specific to his wife. And she might not even buy the things when she sees them. When I buy pants, I literally just buy a long pair of pants with the most and largest pockets. I dunno what the name for them is, tradesmen wear them. Cargo pants? They carry a lot of cargo. That in a nutshell is why male pants get pockets and womans pants don't.
Which is an answer of course, just not a satisfactory one for the majority of people.
Whenever I find a pair of jeans that are, as you described, straight leg, 4 pockets of a size large enough to fit my phone comfortably and my wallet (yes I use a men's slim wallet), not sparkly or embroidered, I will buy a half dozen and pray my weight won't change too much. (Asking for a good fabric in top of that is just too much now.)
Women against burkas or female circumcision are also vocal minorities in parts of the world too.
I'd suggest starting with some market research. The clothing industry is said to be pretty responsive to customer demand, with fairly low barriers to entry. Why aren't your future competitors already cashing in on this problem?
Damn dude, I didn't ask to catch strays like this :(
https://www.hexagona.com/fr/sacs-bandouliere-sacs-banane/553...
Otherwise, the company(ies) that don't create purses don't make more money selling purses + pants.
Of course, there could be a new company that makers neither pants nor purses that gets into the pants making business.
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It's aesthetics, pockets don't make a woman's figure slimming so they don't sell as well.
I've heard many women complain over the years about the small pockets, but my assumption (possibly very wrong) is that they might not buy a pair of jeans if giving them full sized pockets made them significantly less fashionable (i.e. they'd get less utility out of them).
Talk to those women and they will admit there are many clothes for women with pockets, just that those doesn't look as good so they are searching hard for good looking clothes with pockets which basically doesn't exist. They rather buy clothes they like without pockets than clothes they find ugly with pockets.
There are womens clothes with pockets, also womens cargo pants exist, but in the end, most women buy other stuff, and most non-specialized stores sell stuff that women (..well, and men) buy the most.
Women, believe it or not, are just like men, in that they are human beings.
As human beings, women (just like men!) have a variety of competing preferences that all must be balanced in the presence of a limited budget set.
It's totally possible to find women's pants with big pockets. It's also possible to find women's pants made of high-quality materials. Furthermore, it's possible (if you browse carefully) to find women's pants that have a relatively neutral straight cut, but still fit nicely around the hips, thighs, buttocks, and waist.
What's broadly impossible is to actually find all three of those characteristics in the same pair of pants. If you buy pants at H&M, they might fit how you want, but they are going to fall apart. If you buy pants at Marshall's, they won't look good and they might still fall apart. If you buy pants at Madewell, they are cut assuming the wearer is a scrawny teenager, unless you specifically size up into the "plus" category. Etc etc.
What's also borderline impossible is to find pants that fit in both waist and leg length if your body proportions are not that of a limited prescribed set, because women's pants are not sold according to separate waist and leg sizes. But that's a separate issue. It actually exemplifies the problem here, but that first requires us to think about adult women as adult conscious intelligent human people and not as abstract instinct-driven chimpanzee-like entities. So let's not go there.
The overarching problem as I see it is that there are no women's pants that are just normal pants. There's always something funky about them.
Remember, I'm not just talking about knockaround faded blue jeans. Pants are worn for a variety of reasons. Go to any urban downtown area and look at the men who look like they're on their way to work. Several of them will probably be wearing high-end selvedge denim or twill chinos. The lower leg will be straight and slim, landing more or less at the correct location at the top of the shoe. The thigh and seat will be fitted comfortably but not baggy. The material is sturdy and high-quality. There is no unnecessary wear applied to the pants, no feathering, no tears at the bottom edge, no holes at the knees. The pockets will be standard size, big enough for the wearer's oversize iPhone XQBERT 45 with 6 cameras in one pocket, and their tactical EDC card clip in the other. They will likely also have some kind of shoulder bag or backpack, revealing that they do in fact desire to carry items that don't fit in a standard pocket.
Find me a pair of pants like that in a cut appropriate for a woman's hip/thigh/seat proportions, and I'll pay you a finders fee, because my wife would be very interested in purchasing them.
I figured out fairly young that any disagreements or drama between my female relatives were their business, not mine, and it was generally wisest to make myself scarce for the duration.
The specific claim is the low supply or even total lack of women’s clothing with bigger pockets is a reflection of the desires of the market as a whole, not specifically about pocket size, but the entire garment being purchased. This claim is because making and selling women’s clothing with bigger pockets is trivial, so the deduction is that the sellers have experienced insufficient demand if they are not offering it.
The other option is sellers have not picked up on an opportunity to sell a more competitive product, which might be true if buying tastes have changed.
I would classify small startups as more inconvenient which might in part explain why they struggle to fill this niche.
Characterizing that as "convenience" seems demeaning to me, unless we also consider it a convenience that I don't need to fetch my water from a well or light a fire to take a warm bath.
The lack of workable pockets comes down to women's morality. After all, doesn't the free market offer exactly what is demanded? The option must be there, women just don't choose it because they think it's ugly. Women are never socially punished for looking frumpy, obviously. Women are also responsible for the actions of the fashion industry.
Not to mention, my default stance is to simply believe people when they tell me what they want - you should try it sometime. With that in mind, even if you want to hold on to your weird market utopia fantasy, it certainly seems like there must be a sizeable minority of people who want (and, anecdotally, who DO go out of their way to find when possible) pants with functional pockets.
"That's what the market sells so it's what you must want" is such a wild take.
That is even more childish though, we know for sure that people don't really know what they want. What is available is a much better predictor for what people want than what they say they want.
Peoples opinions are a valuable input, but it isn't the most important. Expert decisions that considered peoples opinions among many other things are a much better signal.
There are a limited number of retailers in a space where many like to try on the product. There are only a handful of major brands. It is cheaper to make and sell fewer SKUs. Style and fashion are driven by relatively few individual people.
Sure, it's obvious that some (perhaps many?) either like or don't care about the bad pockets. It's also transparently the case that if there are not readily available alternatives, still more will buy the products anyway.
It is also transparently obvious that this can and does result in sizeable numbers of unhappy consumers who want what they claim - better pockets.
You trying to simplify that with "women actually DO want shitty pockets" is absolutely wild.
https://www2.hm.com/en_us/productpage.0751471063.html
Those pants looks like they have good pockets, and they aren't cargo pants. Pockets for women are trivial to find, I found them instantly!
So the problem isn't "women's clothing doesn't have pockets", the problem is "the clothes I like doesn't have pockets". If women wanted pockets they could go buy pants with pockets, but they choose not to.
I think I've also reached my limit of interest in discussing pockets.
It sure does, H&M is massive and available all over the world. Them having cheap pants with pockets means that women all over the world can easily access pants with pockets.
If women craved pockets so much then those pants would sell out and they would expand the offering with more kinds.
This man can't even get all his fingers into his work pants [1].
[1]: https://catworkwear.com/collections/mens-pants/products/mens...
We need a variant of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect where individuals are eager to forget that they are themselves not experts in the topic at hand, and are therefore unqualified to evaluate a large variety of statement and scenarios.
On most other things - i.e.: economics, politics, social issues, history, et cetera and so forth - it's a parade of bad takes from people that obviously think very highly of themselves, but are actually pretty dumb.
One problem: human economics are based on human psychology, a subject which is in its infancy. In fact, some who look up to economics look down on psychology.
Actual economic experts are doing the equivalent to "making shit up" since we know so little about psychology. It's all very backward.
Which comment? Most are discussing supply and demand.
> The option must be there, women just don't choose it because they think it's ugly.
The option is there, albeit expensive. Travel to a developing country with a reputation for making clothes and for a few thousand dollars, I am guessing you can get custom clothes with bigger pockets made for you.
"women want form over function"
"women [are lying] about wanting pockets"
"women refuse to wear clothes they find ugly"
These are all morality based statements. They hold a moral value. Other comments build on these assumptions to discuss supply and demand.
> Travel to a developing country with a reputation for making clothes and for a few thousand dollars, I am guessing you can get custom clothes with bigger pockets made for you.
Your solution is "have money and take advantage of developing labor." That's not helpful.
I would describe those as statements as more about economics, and which tradeoffs people are willing to make in their clothes buying decisions.
> Your solution is "have money and take advantage of developing labor." That's not helpful.
The clothes in Costco and pretty much every other store in America take advantage of developing labor.
> The clothes in Costco and pretty much every other store in America take advantage of developing labor.
Yes, so why suggest "more of the same"?
Because it solves the problem? The person making your clothes is in front of you and you can tell them make your pockets a certain size.
These are shoddy incomplete economic arguments because they focus exclusively on demand, treating supply as some highly reactive all-knowing pants creation engine. If women really wanted better pockets, they would magically become widely available at reasonable prices!
Of course, if you look at the actual context of those comments, relatively little of it attempts to invoke anything beyond a cursory nod to that particular anti-economic solecism. It really is largely about blaming women for not making better choices.
This is not accurate. There are multiple variables in play. Price, functionality, desirability (to others), etc.
The claim is that across all those variables, what major retailers sell for the lowest prices available is what the broader population of women are able and willing to pay for. Note that the lowest prices require economies of scale, which means the type of clothing that a broad population will accept, even with features they do not like.
It is publicly known that selling clothes is a very low profit margin business, so it stands to reason that unless you know what you are doing, you are not going to survive.
The thing with clothes is that many are not able or willing to pay for the customizations they seek. Because clothes are “easy” to make, the only question is how much are you willing to pay.
I hope that the above website and other discussions around this issue spur clothes makers to make clothes with bigger and more pockets for women at lower prices. Perhaps times are changing and bigger/more pockets is a more profitable market that has not yet been tapped.
My point was not that your assessment is wrong. It's that you're giving other people in this thread way too much credit here:
> I would describe those as statements as more about economics, and which tradeoffs people are willing to make in their clothes buying decisions.
Claiming that a group values good looking pants over pants with pockets isn't an appeal to morals.
You should be able to get pants with bigger pockets at H&M. My girlfriend buys her jeans there.
Can you explain why you think the experts are wrong and your hunch is right?
And yet, it's easy to find cargo pants and fishing vests if you want to own such clothing.
I can't think of us Germans having two different terms for that actually, which might explain certain things...
Well, clothing that isn't fashion needs to be designed too. So apparently some designers can favor function over fashion.
Also, I see women (and men) wearing many different styles every day, so not sure how effective your supposed fashion cabal is. Just dropping the kids off at daycare, there must be at least 4 or 5 distinct looks just amongst the women in their 20s.
Those are the only experts worth listening to: the actual people affected by these decisions!
Yours is precisely the same twisted illogic that prevents progress on a whole variety of economic and social issues.
As an extreme but hopefully illustrative case, consider that the people who listened to the "experts" on the topic of smoking tobacco in the first half of the 20th century had a substantially elevated probability of dying from lung cancer or heart disease.
Where are the women's pants startups? Show me a few that failed.
Oh thanks. It would have been even better if you hadn't done the scroll driven animations at all.
Edit: emphasis on pre existing thank you. Not replies to my comment after the fact :)
Also, self-selection/non response bias. Why would people who like them but otherwise don’t feel strong about them ever comment about it?
Me: "That's great for him, but I don't care how cluttered my butt is."
The moment I learned that some women (at least one of them), are more interested in form than function when it comes to pants pockets.
I imagine that for a tight pair of jeans would be pretty annoying put and carry things in pockets. You may even need both hands to put something in your pocket if your pants are tight enough.
This means that even if you had large pockets in tight jeans you would probably not use them anyways.
And looking at the data provided this seems to be a probable exaplanation, as skinny jeans generally have a smaller pocket compared to their straight counterparts.
Revealed preference
I'd like to report sexism.\s
To say that women have few problems more substantial than their stuff not fitting in their pockets is incredibly sexist.\s
As a guy, I'll throw the stuff in my laptop bag (that I carry daily without a laptop) or in a fanny pack if I am going to be more active. This is not a major source of frustration for me, even when I have to carry half-a-dozen medical gadgets with me due to my many conditions. Anyone who finds putting things in their pockets to be a major concern needs to get a real job.
As for the complaint that womens clothing is more for fashion than practicality, they can do what I did when an early Galaxy Note phone did not fit in my shirt pocket: Buy a sewing machine. I still love my Singer 44s.
- In many instances, a woman who actually prioritizes quantity and quality of pockets has the easy option of purchasing "Men's" clothing.
- Women are generally (by male standards) hyperaware of the "look" of other women, and often are systematically cruel toward a woman whose "look" doesn't meet their approval. If you're a woman, and really want good pockets...you may very reasonably conclude that it would not be worth the social costs imposed by other women.