…but I know what I know and I know what I like and I believe that women dress for other women but men think women dress for them.
Yesterday I had to toss out my favourite shoes. The high-heeled leather booties were on my feet as we landed in London, England three years ago. On that flight I saw the very same shoes in the new issue of Elle Magazine that I was flipping through and I may have squealed with glee. I love those shoes so much that I had the heels redone once and recently tried to get the scraped toes recovered but the cobbler looked at me like I was crazy. You can’t fix the toes! I conducted an internet search and even wrote to the company that made them but I never heard back. I did find them on Ebay from a retailer in Niagara Falls who only had them in brown, not black. So I dabbed on some black shoe polish and almost convinced myself that I could get away with it. But I can’t. Men probably wouldn’t ever notice them but a woman definitely would and the humiliation of that moment would live in her memory of me forever. I couldn’t chance it so I tossed them out yesterday. They’re still in the trash in the kitchen and I’m still thinking about them even though I know it’s over between us.
It’s about standards. It isn’t a matter of worrying about what someone else might think of me as much as it’s deciding whether I’m a woman who can feel good about herself while wearing worn out shoes. And I’m not – I’m better than that! But I think that if you ask a man, he’ll say that women dress for men. But if you ask women, they’ll say they dress for women. Women notice details and have unspoken rules about what’s appropriate for work attire, for cleavage revelation and for a sense of class. Do you agree?
Yup! I agree. I don’t have to understand it, but I know it’s true now. It took me many decades to come to that conclusion.
In the same vein, and still unknown to a lot of men, women don’t know or care what kind of car we drive. With very few exceptions, a women couldn’t even tell you if the car you picked her up in for your date last night had two or four doors. (They would only know whether it HAD doors, or not!)
Kinda strange how our respective perceptions can be so totally off the mark and yet co-exist, generation after generation. Do you suppose it would be boring if all of the other gender’s eccentricities were understood? It would put a lot of comedians out of work!
Yes, no and sometimes. When it comes to fashion, women are fickle, fussy, finicky and damn frustrating with their fixation on fashion.
A woman will primarily dress to feel good about themselves and there’s where the problem often begins. For a majority of women often have that one part of their body they are dissatisfied with and will do nearly anything to try and hide that part of their body only to detract from the overall appearance.
When a woman is single or dating, she’ll often dress in a manner which makes her feel pretty and/or sexy drawing the attention of those single guys, the admiration of her date and envy of other women.
In the business environment, a woman will often dress more conservative using the style, cut and colour of her outfits to project an image of confidence and authority. I only wish this was always true, I’ve had several relationships end because of a debate over appropriate dress.
A woman will often dress, not for other women, but because of other women. For even though she has a closet full of outfits, if she’s dressing to attend a social event, she will not wear anything she has worn before if there is likely to be someone at the event who has seen her wear that outfit before. She can have an outfit she’s only worn once and that was to last year’s special event, hell will have to freeze over before she’ll wear it to this year’s special event!
Do women dress for men? Yes, but not in the way you may think. We’re not all that interested in what you’re actually wearing, we’re interested in the results of how it makes you feel. If you put on an outfit, which makes you feel pretty, sexy and confident, the psychological effect it has, the bounce in your step, the sparkle in your eyes is what we’re interested in because it brings out the best in you!
At the end of the day, women drive themselves nuts fixating on the opinions of other women, whereas if they would focus on dressing for themselves in a manner which is appropriate for any given situation, their body type and those things which make them feel good, pretty, confident an on occasion sexy, you’ll find yourself much happier.
… I’ve really got to stop associating with women, I’m beginning to understand this foolishness and that’s damn scary!