On Women’s Pockets
It’s deeper than you think.
If you’re like me and, well, male, then you wear pants most of the time. Those pants have pockets and you probably use those pockets to store things while you move around, like your phone or your wallet. Simple enough right?
Now take a look at the nearest female, specifically their pants (I recommend you do so in a tactful manner). You may notice that their pockets, if they have any at all, are pitifully small in comparison to your own big, manly compartments.
And if you’re a girl then you’re already painfully aware of this.
Barely able to fit their fist in them, women are forced to rely upon purses to store their personal items. This asymmetry leads to an obvious question:
How did it turn out this way?
The History of Pockets
By the 17th century, at least in the west, pockets came standard with men’s clothing. They were on everything from their coats to their trousers.
Women on the other hand, lacking an easy and comfortable area to sow a pocket onto their large and overbearing dresses, opted for ‘tie-on’ pockets. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, women wore these accessories underneath their petticoats and in them carried everything from money to jewelry to alcohol and even cakes!
In fact, the term pickpocket comes from thieves who used to snatch men’s wallets from their pockets and in the case of women, literally steal their pockets!
This doesn’t seem that bad. Sure, women were still expected to wear extremely cumbersome, multilayered dresses but at least they had functioning pockets right?
Unfortunately, even that sliver of comfort would soon be taken away from them. Starting in the late 18th century, women’s fashion began to change (shocker). Instead of large hoop dresses and petticoats, women started to don dresses with very high waistlines and which more closely hugged their bodies. As such, the ‘tie-on’ pocket was no longer fashionable nor practical.
To get around this, women started carrying around reticules, the first iteration of the modern purse. They were simply small embroidered pouches, big enough to carry a handkerchief and some change at most. A big downgrade from carrying cakes around…
By the 18th century, the rise of industrialism and the working class gave rise to the need for more utilitarian clothing. This led to girls and women alike sowing pockets onto their skirts.
This trend was bolstered by the advent of WWI and WWII which saw women becoming a large part of a now male-less workforce. Women were now wearing pants (like real pants!) and with those pants came pockets.
Modernity
As you can see pockets have a long history, and that’s just in western society. The history of all of humanity’s dealings with pockets goes back much farther.
“But hold on”, you may object, “if women were wearing full blown pockets during WWII, what happened?”
Good question. It seems that, following the war, practicality was not of paramount importance to women’s clothing (at least that’s what the male clothes designers thought). And so, while it eventually became commonplace for women to wear pants, their pockets grew increasingly smaller to allow their pants to be slimmer and “accentuate their figure.” Something that a male dominated society deemed more important than comfort.
Blouses
This can be seen in other types of clothing as well. Take the modern blouse. Ever noticed how men’s shirts have buttons on the left side, while women’s blouses have buttons on the right? While at first glance it may seem like an easy way to differentiate men’s and women’s clothing (and that it is) it actually has its roots in who dressed who.
It turns out that since women traditionally buttoned their husbands’ and children’s shirts for them, putting the buttons on the left side made the processes easier (at least for right-handed women). And since women had to dress themselves (men weren’t going to do that for them) blouses had buttons put on the right side, making them easier to self-button.
Pockets Today
While women’s fashion has always reflected ideals of beauty and femininity, the modern feminist movement seems to be changing that. In fact, the ever increasing size of the modern smartphone has, literally, been a thorn in the side of women everywhere. The average women’s pocket not being able to carry a smartphone should be concerning to all of us, not just women.
“More women are expecting and demanding pockets… Fashion looks selectively at who they let in and keeps women at a certain place. It’s not helping women move forward in the workplace.” — Camilla Olsen
This, along with more general calls for gender equality, have motivated many to demand more comfortable and functional clothing.
