Pockets: A Gendered Technology

1. Steven Connor argues that internal pockets demark “one of the most striking differences… between male and female clothing since the end of the eighteenth century. Trousers have pockets, while women’s clothes continued to be conspicuously and systematically unprovided with them” (Connor 267).

2. Pockets did not become a gendered technology until about the sixteenth century. Before that, while external pockets had been adopted within fashion for both men and women.

2.1. “Pockets allowed a person to continue to carry possessions on their body when their hands were otherwise engaged, such as in the world of work, whether that involved domestic activities or professional employment” (Unsworth)

2.2. Later the purse was introduced as a separate accessory specifically for women.

2.2.1. Early on, “a purse of this kind would probably have been worn tucked over a belt or waistband. In form, it resembles the flat oval 'pockets' of the period, usually worn in pairs and tied around the waist beneath a full skirt, through which they were reached by slits or pocket holes” (Wilcox 31).

3. Though it may not immediately come to mind, the fact that the pay rate between men and women is further exacerbated by refusing the simple technology of a pocket to be integrated into women's clothing is also worth noting.

3.1. Lack of this simple technology leaves women without the mobility to move about without carrying things such as keys, cellphones, and wallets in their hands. This should be recognized as an ethical obstacle to equality

3.1.1. To have the same mobility rights as their male counterparts, gender investments must be made in finding alternate accommodations.

3.1.1.1. Mobilty, how you move within space, agency over ones belongings

3.1.1.1.1. The gender-specific right to have functional pockets affects every sensorium in a collective kind of relation.

4. finding support in academia

4.1. Authors such as Annemarie Strassel, Susan Bordo, Rebecca Unsworth, Roland Barthes, have looked across time to capture how prevalent pockets have been within the background of fashion

4.2. How can I look through history

4.2.1. Foucault

4.2.1.1. Through paintings, we can further note pockets being a part of central society back to 1468

4.2.2. ome of the earliest recordings of pockets designed into the clothing of women are seen in the skirts of powerful monarchal women such as Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots

4.2.3. There are examples of clothing shifting to androgynous styles and integrating pants, or suits for women in the nineteenth and twentieth century

4.3. Roland Barthes’ seminal work on The Fashion System in 1983 and feminist theory

4.3.1. it is possible to see that the full implicated meaning assigned to clothing is not simply attributed to the individual garment, or the material it is created out of, but is a culmination of each piece together and the structure of the industry behind them.

4.3.1.1. Barthes employed a matrix equation to break down the signifiers in each outfit to qualify their qualitative value “use current abbreviations to designate aimed at by signification ( 0), its support ( S), and the variant ( V); this emanation of meaning contributes to making the written garment: into an original structure” (Barthes 64).

4.4. Butler performative gender

5. the expectation of internal and external pockets, not just for women, but for men as well

6. Their supposed insignificance belies their social significance in reproducing gendered inequalities.

7. 1848, the year of the women’s property act

7.1. it is no longer exclusively men who are able to dictate how ‘coin is spent,’ or if we adopt this mindset to the current day to be ‘in charge’ of finances.

7.2. Yet, while the fashion industry has become more androgynous with social change over time, pockets continue to dominate male fashion

7.2.1. woman must continue to purchase additional accessories to accommodate their needs due to the lack of adaptatio

7.2.1.1. the lack of pockets in women’s clothing can be seen as the choice to refrain from offering women the same agency that traditional pockets may provide.

7.2.1.1.1. A woman must still rely on buying exterior pockets now labeled purses to do precisely what the internal pockets in men’s clothing do for no additional cost.

7.2.1.1.2. If the capital of an item lies not in the market value, but in the utilization of that item, then the worth of women's clothing should be seen as less than that of men's.

8. Gendered acess to utilitariansum

8.1. the doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majorit

9. How does fashion empower

9.1. Camilla Olson, creative director of an eponymous high tech fashion firm, points to inherent sexism within the industry…. she thinks it’s this preoccupation that’s kept the fashion industry from becoming relevant in today’s technocentric society.” (Basu)

9.2. How do they stay in power

9.2.1. The productive forces within the fashion industry have dominated social practices across historical periods.

9.3. what roles are restricted, as well as what roles are enhanced through this technology.

9.3.1. The pocket can tell us about the historical reproduction of gendered inequalities through the fashion industry and how those inequalities are or are not expressed in contemporary fashion.

9.3.1.1. why do styles hold fast to gendered denotations or tradition and gender roles, perpetuating inequalities.

9.3.1.1.1. Some of the denotations I will focus on are the silhouette, the expectation of the image of the person that clothing ‘should’ facilitate,