# Women and fashion



## ezcomes (Jul 28, 2008)

so...i stopped by the local University to drop something off today...

as i'm walking up the street, this girl in paint-tight pants and a black bra with shirt made out of essentially the screen door screen...walks by...

as you stand there and watch...not just at the School, but also downtown, you'll see women wearing these pants that are so tight, and either tight tops, extremely low cut tops, or in today's case...screen tops...

when did it get to be that bad that women need to dress like this? how can women these days scream about how they are objectified, and then have the mass population dress like this...i know its the same in Ottawa...i'm there at least once a month...i just don't understand it...


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## kat_ (Jan 11, 2007)

ezcomes said:


> when did it get to be that bad that women need to dress like this? how can women these days scream about how they are objectified


You seem to have forgotten that there are many different, individual women, not one single just a single unified conglomeration, so different individuals will think, feel, act, and even dress in different ways.


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## puckhead (Sep 8, 2008)

more importantly,


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## Jeff Flowerday (Jan 23, 2006)

God bless paint your pants on Friday's in downtown Calgary!!!


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## guitarman2 (Aug 25, 2006)

ezcomes said:


> how can women these days scream about how they are objectified, and then have the mass population dress like this.


How did I miss this fashion trend? I haven't noticed anything like this. Where did you see this again?


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

It's getting a touch nippy out for that kind of attire, no?

Alas, the days of summer are fleeting.


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## Sneaky (Feb 14, 2006)

hollowbody said:


> It's getting a touch nippy out for that kind of attire, no?


That can be a good thing.


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## six-string (Oct 7, 2009)

ezcomes said:


> so...i stopped by the local University to drop something off today...
> 
> as i'm walking up the street, this girl in paint-tight pants and a black bra with shirt made out of essentially the screen door screen...walks by...
> 
> ...


shut up. what's to understand?
some of us are enjoying the scenery.


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## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

That is a trend that has been ongoing for about a year now but more prevalent these days. It's about time hahaha


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

i worked at york university for a month this past august. of course, like every construction job at a place like this they have the staring rules. there just seems to be some sort of irony when you see how some of those girls dress, but claim they don't want the attention that comes with it. lucky for me i'm married, fat and middle aged. if i was 22 and single, i prolly woulda got thrown outta there


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## Bevo (Nov 24, 2006)

One word "Lululemon"

lululemon athletica, yoga-inspired athletic apparel


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## gtone (Nov 1, 2009)

God bless 'em all I say!!


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## Starbuck (Jun 15, 2007)

Bevo said:


> One word "Lululemon"
> 
> lululemon athletica, yoga-inspired athletic apparel


Personally I love, my Lululemon. For working out. WORKING OUT. That's what those clothes are made for. That Said, If I was built like a brick S$#t house, I may never wear clothes!!! LOL!!! I've seen some of these girls too and yeah it makes me shake my head.. Especially the Moms waling around with their 12 year old daughter who have "juicy" written across their ass!!!


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Although, as a primarily male-dominated web-forum (thank goodness there is SOME female representation!) it may be the example that precipitated this thread that captures the most attention, but I gotta say that "fashion crimes" are committed on both sides of the gender divide. I ride the bus daily, and the seemingly intense desire by some young males to demonstrate just exactly what brand of underwear they are sporting is dismaying. The irony is that while young women make efforts to convey every bodily indent and protuberance by what they wear, young men seem to be intent on having a Ken-doll like appearance by migrating their pants crotch down to their knees. I may know what underwear they sport, but have no idea if they even HAVE a crotch.

For my part I think the Amish, Chasids, and Maoists pretty much nailed it when it comes to clothing. Simple, plain, casual, predictable, respectful.

D'ja ever see "Ernest Goes to Jail"? There's a precious scene where the late Jim Varney, in his Ernest personna, tries to pick out his clothing for the day. Of course allhe wears are jean, t-shirt, denim vest, and ballcap, so his "wardrobe" is all the aforementioned items, identical in colour, on a long motorized rack. That's my kinda guy!


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

mhammer said:


> Although, as a primarily male-dominated web-forum (thank goodness there is SOME female representation!) it may be the example that precipitated this thread that captures the most attention, but I gotta say that "fashion crimes" are committed on both sides of the gender divide. I ride the bus daily, and the seemingly intense desire by some young males to demonstrate just exactly what brand of underwear they are sporting is dismaying. The irony is that while young women make efforts to convey every bodily indent and protuberance by what they wear, young men seem to be intent on having a Ken-doll like appearance by migrating their pants crotch down to their knees. I may know what underwear they sport, but have no idea if they even HAVE a crotch.
> 
> For my part I think the Amish, Chasids, and Maoists pretty much nailed it when it comes to clothing. Simple, plain, casual, predictable, respectful.
> 
> D'ja ever see "Ernest Goes to Jail"? There's a precious scene where the late Jim Varney, in his Ernest personna, tries to pick out his clothing for the day. Of course allhe wears are jean, t-shirt, denim vest, and ballcap, so his "wardrobe" is all the aforementioned items, identical in colour, on a long motorized rack. That's my kinda guy!


ok, so i totally agree with the pants thing. pants need to be pulled up where they belong. 
and when i see the guys in the kung fu movies, i think it would be cool to dress like that, they look totally comfortable. trouble is, people already point and laugh, no reason to encourage them.

aside from that earnest goes to jail is one of my fav movies. when he becomes electro man, and has all the stuff magnetically stuck to him i cant help myself from lol


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

cheezyridr said:


> aside from that earnest goes to jail is one of my fav movies. when he becomes electro man, and has all the stuff magnetically stuck to him i cant help myself from lol


Apart from the "wardrobe selection" scene, my favourite line in the film is "I've been vandalized by Elvis!"


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## Starbuck (Jun 15, 2007)

This thread and particularly the comments about not being able to help looking make me laugh as I truly do belive that you maybe get what you ask for in those terms. I'm sure you guys all know who Christina Hendricks is on Mad Men, a Well endowed beautiful woman who consistently wears gravity defying clothing that showcase her ample busom. I read an interview where she was complaining about men staring... At that moment I thought that if I had her in front of me the only thing I could think to say is "really? What did you expect" I truly think that women dress that way solely to attract attention. 3.5 inch heels may be sexy as hell, but are Hell to walk in. Likewise from cramped tight clothing, accept of course for the aforementinoed lululemon (which seems to be more a status symbol these days) You men have it easy as far as dressing goes.


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## six-string (Oct 7, 2009)

wasn't that a Led Zeppelin song?

"squeeze my lululemon until the juice runs down my leg..."

(sorry i couldn't resist)


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Starbuck said:


> This thread and particularly the comments about not being able to help looking make me laugh as I truly do belive that you maybe get what you ask for in those terms. I'm sure you guys all know who Christina Hendricks is on Mad Men, a Well endowed beautiful woman who consistently wears gravity defying clothing that showcase her ample busom. I read an interview where she was complaining about men staring... At that moment I thought that if I had her in front of me the only thing I could think to say is "really? What did you expect" I truly think that women dress that way solely to attract attention. 3.5 inch heels may be sexy as hell, but are Hell to walk in. Likewise from cramped tight clothing, accept of course for the aforementinoed lululemon (which seems to be more a status symbol these days) *You men have it easy as far as dressing goes.*


Yes...we do. What takes me 3 minutes between finishing breakfast and dashing off for the bus, takes my wife at least a half hour. My apologies on behalf of my sex. Of course, the folks who really have it easy are the redheads. They get up and think "Hmm, what do I wear today, blue, green or black?". ;-)

I might concur with your assessment of high heels. But, it was meet-the-teachers night at my son's high school a few weeks ago, and his French teacher needed to wear 4" spikes just to be able to look up to the 5'7" people like me. She was just an itty bitty thing. I guess it was either that or the Gene Simmons boots....or severe neck strain.

On the broader level, people like to be valued for a lot of different things. Among them, particularly at younger ages, is their "smoldering sensuality". The trouble is, one's appearance should also provide opportunities for other redeeming features of the person to be conveyed, and when it seems like the ONLY thing worth valueing in you is that perceived sensuality, it leaves a whole lot of the rest of you behind. Younger people are not as adept at assessing those "imbalances" in their social presentation.


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## Bevo (Nov 24, 2006)

I watched a report about how woman dress, at certain times of the month they feel indirectly a need to attract men.
This has something to do with our natural survival.

No jokes it was on TV!


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## mrmatt1972 (Apr 3, 2008)

Bevo said:


> I watched a report about how woman dress, at certain times of the month they feel indirectly a need to attract men.
> This has something to do with our natural survival.
> 
> No jokes it was on TV!


Yeah, there have been studies (I wish i'd thought of getting the grant for that) of women at night clubs. The closer to fertility, the more exposed skin, especially on young, single women.

That said, wear what you want...


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Actually, there is considerable research on variations across the menstrual cycle in the sensory faculties of women. For example, empirical research indicates that certain male pheromones simply smell "better" to women - as a group, NOT individuals - about 2 days before ovulation. Chocolate tastes better at certain points in the cycle. Visual acuity changes at certain phases of the cycle, and so on.

We'd like to think we are these impartial beings whose "decisions" about reproductive and/or courtship behaviour are entirely our own to make, but evolution is not dispensed with so quickly or easily.

I used to work in a lab that studied, among other things, the hormone melatonin. It is largely secreted by the pineal gland (what Descartes believed was the "seat of the soul" because it was situated smack in the middle of the brain), but more interestingly it is connected to the visual system such that production of melatonin is linked to day length and daylight in general. It is produced more during darkness, and during the winter, and is classified as an "anti-gonadotropin", meaning that it works to quell/underpower one's reproductive organs, be they ovaries or testes, such that they are less active, and smaller in size during seasons where daylength is shorter. So, in our lab, we had hundreds of hamsters, some of whom had 10hrs of daylight and 14hrs darkness, and some of whom had the reverse. The size/weight of the nuts on the guys with 14hrs daylight was literally *10x* that of those with 10hrs daylight.

Now, I'm not going to equate us with hamsters, but the role of things like seasonal variation in both hormonal levels and "reproductive interest" in a great many mammalian species, including humans, is easily demonstrable. The phrase "In springtime, a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love" predates ANY sort of historical introduction of more alluring and revealing clothing in the fairer sex, as a function of warmer temperatures. And given how rarely people used to bathe, brush their teeth, or wash their hair, those carnal feelings were not prompted by any special efforts on the part of the object of one's "fancy".

So why does this happen? Well, given the length of human gestation, and seasonal variation in the availability of food sources and sources of risk to the offspring, it often works out best for a great many species that they get horny when spring sets in. In some cases, that tends to result in offspring born after winter, while in other species, that can result in offspring being born long enough before winter sets in that they can fend for themselves. As for things like boys smelling better to girls 2 days before ovulation, that increases the likelihood that reproductive behaviour will occur at a point where there is greater likelihood of fertilization and implantation. Two days before is better than 3, the day of, or the day after. One would expect, as well, that such differences in appreciation of male pheromones would be linked to fertility in general, such that pre-pubescent and post-menopausal females would not have that pattern, if any appreciation at all.

One of the neatest studies I ever read involved the researcher sticking a camera in the ceiling of a dentist's waiting room. He first measured the baseline likelihood of women sitting in any of the chairs in that waiting room (the one just beside the door to the dentist's work room was the least used). Then, he did a nicely controlled dose-response study where he rubbed a male pheromone on the least-used plastic chair each day (cleaning them thoroughly at the end of each day so the amount applied neither wore off nor built up), and had his assistants blind-rate how much and how many women sat in that chair, from the video-recording off the ceiling camera. The likelihood of women sitting in the chair increased linearly with the concentration of pheromone, compared to baseline, and post-application return to baseline. I doubt the women involved could actually smell it specifically. They probably experienced it as "It's not so bad here. I'm going to sit down.".

Like I say, we think these choices are entirely ours to make, but Mother Nature keeps tapping us on the shoulder.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

ahh yes, the subject of the pineal gland comes up. i kind of found dr. edward pretorius' research rather facsinating. it's a shame what happened to his assistant.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Clothing is over rated. Women should just go Ferengi and have done with all the fashion insanity :B

>_> and some people can smell pheromones and hormones.


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## Starbuck (Jun 15, 2007)

keeperofthegood said:


> >_> and some people can smell pheromones and hormones.


Dogs aren't people Keeps!


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Starbuck said:


> Dogs aren't people Keeps!


HAHAHAHAHAHA



Touche!

Actually, I can smell many pheromones and hormones. I shock my ex all the time by it.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

keeperofthegood said:


> >_> and some people can smell pheromones and hormones.


Hormones, no. Pheromones, yes. Pheromones are the skin-secreted subset of everything that counts as a hormone. I seriously doubt you could smell insulin, or prolactin. Pickiness aside, though, the capacity to detect them is not like being able to walk by the stove and say "Hmmm, did you put some cumin in there?". It's more like "Something just smells....I dunno..._different_".

Generally, some pheromones produced by males are perceived as smelling better by females than by other males. Though I've never seen the research, it would not surprise me at all if individuals attracted to the same sex rated pheromones produced by their own sex better as better-smelling than those produced by the opposite sex. When it comes to the biology of interpersonal and romantic attraction, it's a whole lot more complicated than you realize, and it is easily imaginable that folks would be hardwired genetically to find different combinations or features of each sex, whether visual, tactile, auditory, or olfactory, appealing or unappealing.

I have to say that, for whatever reasons, when some women decide to slap on perfume during "that time", it just jumps out at me. Smells nauseating. I don't know if it is some chemical interaction produced by whatever is being secreted by the skin and what was slapped on it, or whether the perfume simply helps to diffuse whatever pheromones are being produced at that point, but I really can't leave the room fast enough when it happens. I find it a little uncomfortable and guilt-provoking when someone at work or in a store has "that smell". It's like I know something about them I wasn't really supposed to find out. Of course, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with "feminine hygiene" since we're talking about an aroma wafting from their neck, wrists, or earlobes.

But to return to the original point, while people are not always *consciously* aware of smelling pheromones, they are doubtless infuenced by them. When they ARE able to consciously detect something....different, they are generally not able to isolate it from everything else entering their nose.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

LOL Mark, it would be interesting to test out sometime actually.

I knew a girl once, named Paula. She had an aroma that was like a mix of hot chocolate, soft caramel, and a warm hug from mom all rolled into one. If I had to say it more like a wet ferrite or other similar musky critter but that scent just put your whole mind into a sweet sweet place  and she was like that all the time, even just hugging a shirt she had worn a week later would invoke the feeling.


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## Bevo (Nov 24, 2006)

Keeps, that reminds me of my old girl.
I could always smell her no matter where she was. Once at her work she asked me which work station was hers, I told her to blind fold me and her and her friends walked me around the office, got it first try.

Damn I miss that girl, can't even remeber the smell anymore...suck!


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

keeperofthegood said:


> LOL Mark, it would be interesting to test out sometime actually.
> 
> I knew a girl once, named Paula. She had an aroma that was like a mix of hot chocolate, soft caramel, and a warm hug from mom all rolled into one. If I had to say it more like a wet ferrite or other similar musky critter but that scent just put your whole mind into a sweet sweet place  and she was like that all the time, even just hugging a shirt she had worn a week later would invoke the feeling.


 
funny, as we drift further off topic, one of the things about my wife is, somehow she _never_ smells bad. since i have known her, there has only been one (literally one) time she was funky. and that was 3 days with no shower because of surgery, in an apt with a runaway heater. pretty extreme circumstances. still she wasn't that bad, just a little funky . 
she can work out at the gym, and get all sweaty, and not stink. i don't know how she does it.


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)




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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

i once got set up, by a cousin, with a friend of a friend of hers.
talked to her on the phone a couple times, and she complained about guys hitting on her all the time, people whistling, guys at work staring at her, all that.
i was like, well thats just how it is, must make things difficult for you.
yeah, she wanted guys to appreciate her for who she was, not how she looked, all that. she told me this stuff a number of times, really making a point of it.
eventually she invited me over to her place for dinner-
turns out she was sporting these enormous breasts.
she saw the "holy shit" look on my face, and explained that shed had enlargement surgery done with the money she got from her evil ex husband when she divorced him.
these where of the size and shape that they were impossible to ignore- extremely prominant, i mean really big.
yet she claimed to hate bieng treated like a sex object, and didnt want guys staring at her etc.
anyway, i dont really know why people do or say or wear what they do, nor do i think on it much.
people are messed up.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

Ah yes, lulu lemon and tight clothes in general.

It's what the women wear, and the men don't mind. When we drive through Western campus for work (one day a week *sigh*) we always check to see if there's any 1's. 1 beer, not 10 beer LOL.

Some girls feel confident enough to dress a little provocatively.. and they shouldn't.. same goes for some guys though.

I don't know what's worse: pants-around-ankles guys or skinny-jeans but not 130lbs soaking wet guys.. either way, I'd just rather not see it *L*.

This thread is reminding me that I need to hit the gym!


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## mrmatt1972 (Apr 3, 2008)

I was rereading this thread and reminded of another pheromone study I learned about once. Apparently the pheromone (and maybe Mark can fill us in on its name) that women excrete from their "girl part" when fertile makes men less able to discriminate between good and less good looking women, and reduces men's ability to think logically.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

mrmatt1972 said:


> I was rereading this thread and reminded of another pheromone study I learned about once. Apparently the pheromone (and maybe Mark can fill us in on its name) that women excrete from their "girl part" when fertile makes men less able to discriminate between good and less good looking women, and reduces men's ability to think logically.


Not familiar with that, but do keep in mind that a lot of studies that are used as evidence of biological influences on thinking and reasoning are dealing with miniscule differences. e.g., studies looking at left/right brain differences may show that it takes 640msec on average to respond when some particular kind of stimulus/task is presented to one side, vs 653msec when presented to the other. "Reduces men's ability to think logically" could mean that success on some task was at 28% correct when chance dictated a 30% hit rate. So, while the consistency and reliability of results obtained within and across studies may confirm that it's "not nothing", the effects may be considerably more modest that some might think.

But with that disclaimer, it would not surprise me that male reasoning could be shown to be influenced by the presence of female pheromones.

As for perceived attractiveness, I remember one study that had male students rate pictures of females for attractiveness (as if those pigs weren't going to do it anyway), while seated in a chair in the lab, and wired up to monitor their heart rate. The investigator told the participant they would be able to hear their heart beat through a speaker off in the corner. Unbeknownst to the participants, some of them would be provided with false heart-rate feedback, where the pulse they heard was faster than the pulse they were actually producing. Compared to those who did not get the false feedback, male undergrads who thought their heart was going a little faster tended to rate the same pictures as more attractive.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

mrmatt1972 said:


> I was rereading this thread and reminded of another pheromone study I learned about once. Apparently the pheromone (and maybe Mark can fill us in on its name) that women excrete from their "girl part" when fertile makes men less able to discriminate between good and less good looking women, and reduces men's ability to think logically.


The same could be said for a low cut shirt and a few stiff drinks!


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