How women dress for other women - AlterNet |
| How women dress for other women - AlterNet Posted: 14 Mar 2020 06:40 AM PDT "If you can't be better than your competition," Vogue editor Anna Wintour once said, "just dress better." Indeed, new research suggests that women don't just dress to be fashionable, or to outdo one another when it comes to enticing men. They also dress for other women. But Wintour's quote misses some of the nuances that go into the outfits women choose with female friends, co-workers and acquaintances in mind. It's not just about dressing better. In fact, my colleagues and I found that women can be motivated by another factor: avoiding the slings and arrows of other women. The psychology of women's wardrobesMy social psychology lab explores how women navigate their social relationships with other women. With my co-authors, Oklahoma State graduate student Ashley M. Rankin and Arizona State University graduate student Stefanie Northover, I recently studied what goes into women's fashion choices. Of course, both men and women consider a variety of concerns when selecting their outfits: cost, fit, occasion. Existing psychological research on women's clothing choices tends to center on how women dress for men – the makeup, shoes and colors they select to impress the opposite sex. But we posed a different question: How might women dress for other women? For over a century, psychologists have been interested in competition between men. Only over the past few decades have researchers started to seriously look into how women actively compete with one another. The competition isn't necessarily nice. Like men who compete with one another, women can be aggressive toward other women they're competing with. But it's rarely the physical kind. Instead, social scientists like Joyce Benenson, Kaj Bjorkqvist and Nicole Hess have shown that women are more prone to rely on social exclusion and reputation-damaging gossip. So we wondered: Do women ever dress defensively – to mitigate the chance that other women might go after them? We know that women who are physically attractive and who wear revealing clothing are more likely to be targets of same-sex aggression. For example, psychologists Tracy Vaillancourt and Aanchal Sharma found that women behaved more aggressively toward an attractive woman when she was dressed in a short skirt and low-cut shirt than when that exact same woman wore khakis and a crewneck. We reasoned that women would be aware of this dynamic – and some would try to avoid it. So we tested this theory in a series of experiments. Dressing defensivelyFirst, we studied whether people would expect women to be aggressive toward attractive, scantily clad women. We asked 142 people to read a scenario about two women, Carol and Sara, who met for coffee after connecting on a friend-finder app that was like Tinder, but for platonic relationships. We asked the participants how they thought Carol would treat Sara during an otherwise uneventful coffee date. Although the scenarios were the same, some people saw a photo of Sara that depicted her as an attractive woman wearing khakis and a crewneck; others saw a photo of her wearing a low-cut shirt and short-skirt; and a third group saw her in the more revealing outfit, but the image had been photoshopped to make her look less physically attractive. We found that when Sara was attractive and revealingly dressed, people expected Carol would be meaner to Sara. We then wanted to see whether women would also act on the awareness of this dynamic, so we ran a series of experiments with college-aged and adult women from the U.S. For a set of two studies, we instructed female participants to imagine that they were going to meet new people in a professional setting, like a networking event, or at a social gathering, such as a birthday party. They were also told to imagine the event as either single-sex or mixed-sex. In the first, we asked women to draw their ideal outfits for those events, and we later had undergraduate research assistants measure how much skin was revealed. In the second, we asked women to choose outfits from a menu of options – akin to shopping for clothes online. Each of the possible outfits had been rated for modesty by a separate set of participants. In both studies, women chose more revealing outfits for social events than professional ones. This wasn't surprising. But interestingly, women chose less revealing outfits to meet up with an all-female group – regardless of whether it was a professional or social setting. But wouldn't the more revealing clothing in mixed-group settings simply reflect their desire to attract men? Not exactly. Not all women dressed the same for other women. The women who rated themselves as more physically attractive were the ones who chose more modest outfits when meeting up with a group of women. This supports the idea that they were dressing defensively – to avoid bringing attention to themselves and being targeted by the other women. Because same-sex aggression is more likely to come from strangers than friends, in our final experiment we asked 293 young women, aged 18 to 40, what they would wear to meet up with a prospective female friend. Again, we found that more physically attractive women indicated that they would dress with more discretion. Together, these findings show that women don't always dress to impress. Nor do they dress to aggress. Instead, there's a more subtle social dance taking place – one that involves humility, hesitance and heightened awareness. [Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.] Jaimie Arona Krems, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Oklahoma State University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Enjoy this piece?… then let us make a small request. AlterNet's journalists work tirelessly to counter the traditional corporate media narrative. We're here seven days a week, 365 days a year. And we're proud to say that we've been bringing you the real, unfiltered news for 20 years—longer than any other progressive news site on the Internet. It's through the generosity of our supporters that we're able to share with you all the underreported news you need to know. Independent journalism is increasingly imperiled; ads alone can't pay our bills. AlterNet counts on readers like you to support our coverage. Did you enjoy content from David Cay Johnston, Common Dreams, Raw Story and Robert Reich? Opinion from Salon and Jim Hightower? Analysis by The Conversation? 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| NY1 anchor Jamie Stelter wants the 'TV dress' to die - New York Post Posted: 23 Feb 2020 10:31 AM PST This new look suits her! When NY1 anchor Jamie Stelter returned to TV in January following the August birth of her second child, a son named Story, the 38-year-old traffic reporter and "Mornings on 1" co-host chose a fab on-air ensemble: a hot-pink Theory pantsuit paired with star-patterned Stella McCartney platform shoes. The splashy look kicked off Stelter's #TVTrousers initiative, with her "wish" that "the TV dress dies a slow painful death," as she writes in an Instagram post to her 15,000 followers. "It just felt to me like it was outdated," Stelter tells The Post of the ubiquitous garment in question: The slim-fit sheath in bright jewel tones such as teal, purple or magenta, worn by nearly every female news anchor because it pops on camera.  "Eventually I had this wardrobe of dresses that I only wore a couple hours a day and then never wanted to put on my body to go out or do anything else in my life because it just wasn't me — it was some kind of costume I would put on for work," she says. "They say authenticity wins in TV and everything else about me is the same on and off the air, [so] why isn't my wardrobe?" Shopping, she says, is no longer a "huge stressor" now that she's experimenting with more menswear-inspired silhouettes, such as a navy blue M.M. LaFleur pantsuit with white-tone Tibi x Clarks shoes and bold Tanya Taylor plaid pants, all tailored to fit her 5-foot-1 frame. Stelter says her decision to steer clear of sheaths came from the "perfect storm" of having a new child, the excitement of returning from five months off-air and a jolt of newfound confidence. "I felt that I could wear what I felt most comfortable in," she says.  But it's also about challenging the norm of what's expected of a female news anchor in 2020, beyond the sleek blown-out hair, bright dress and toothy white smile — something Stelter's colleagues are fighting for as well. Last July, five female on-air employees of NY1 sued the network for discrimination based on age and gender. Later that month, two additional women who filled in at the station filed a lawsuit alleging age discrimination. (Charter, the company that runs the network, has reportedly investigated the claims and "have not found any merit to them.") Although Stelter is not part of the lawsuit and wouldn't comment on it, she says she hopes her new style helps set a different standard for women on TV. "[It's] taking back a little of the power and feeling like I don't have to wear the dress that everyone thinks I should wear," she says. "We can wear a suit, too. We can wear pants, too. And that's OK! Not only is that OK, but it's celebrated." Stelter's followers tag her when they see images of another woman on television shirking the TV dress, such as NBC News reporter Morgan Radford, who recently rocked a pink suit on "The Today Show." "They're like, 'Look! It's catching on! This is your thing!' " Stelter says of the comments, which come from supporters, not haters. "Am loving #jamie2.0's looks since day one of her return," commented one Instagram user on a January photo, while another wrote on a post of her wearing that first-day-back Theory suit: "Your outfit! From head to toe … [you're] phenomenal." She's also working on making sure her looks are sustainable — re-wearing outfits whenever possible. "There's only so much room in my closet and my wardrobe budget that it seems crazy not to repeat things," she says. Previously, Stelter — who's married to CNN host Brian Stelter — tried wearing roomier dresses for a bit of edge. But they didn't always fit her spunky-yet-serious persona. On TV, "You want things that are more on the form-fitting side, not necessarily tight. Baggier things don't read as well on TV and make you look bigger," she explains. "It's not about looking skinny, but it's looking like your clothes fit — and that's part of looking professional."  Stelter has long cared about comfort on camera, giving up stilettos years ago. Though that wasn't so much a mission as a must — she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 2003, and has had fusion surgeries on her neck and foot. Her fashionable flats contribute to her chill personal-style ethos. Still, she hasn't bid farewell to dresses entirely. "I still love skirts and dresses, it's just not going to be that TV dress," she says. "I will always be [wearing] something that's a little more fun, a little more edgy, and not what you would expect." She recently wore a button-front denim mini dress, paired with "glittery slouchy socks 'cause why the hell not," she wrote on Instagram. "I've just been trying to have fun with it," she says. "There are no rules in the #TVTrousers world. No rules."  |
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