Why Men Dress Women

~ Laura

The Times has had a few articles in the recent year about why women aren’t getting ahead in businesses that are aimed at the female consumer. It seems counter intuitive that the heads of advertising companies are men who are trying to reach women consumers. Perhaps the biggest head scratcher of them all is the fashion industry. Again, women aren’t reaching the tops of the ranks. Why is that?

First, the Times points the work-family problem. We’ve discussed that factor enough in the past few weeks, so let’s move on. What else?

Second, the Times points out that gay men don’t think that women are up to the job. Tom Ford says, “Men are often better designers for women than other women…. Of course there are many more gay male designers. I think we are more objective. We don’t come with the baggage of hating certain parts of our bodies.”

Gay men are part of the patriarchy, too. Who knew?

Third, gay men take care of other gay men, but women are threatened by each other.

“Gay men stick together like a band of brothers,” Ms. Subkoff said in an interview. “It’s more common for a man to bring up a younger assistant” who is male “and be proud of that,” she added, “whereas a woman would be threatened” to promote another woman.

Discuss.

Published by Laura

6 thoughts on “Why Men Dress Women”

  1. I think a lot of it is due to intensive friend networks that some gay people have. If you have a lot of relatively close friendships in the fashion industry this will probably help you a lot. It could also be that the press and companies use that gay social network to find about new talent which would intensify the issue.
    It would be interesting to see how non-gay men do in the fashion industry.
    This part is odd:
    >Paradoxically, at the grass roots many more women seek entry to the industry than men. Fewer than 7 percent of students in the fashion department at the Parsons the New School for Design in New York are men.
    This makes the problem seem even bigger. With disparities like this I would be suprised if judging systems that hid the gender of the designer wouldn’t help women, like the curtains at orchesta auditions do.

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  3. The fact that only 7% of people in the fashion department are men at Parsons, yet men predominate at the top levels is very disturbing.
    In publishing, you also get men at the top, women in the middle and bottom. But this happens because the top levels of publishing don’t have anything to do with books. They all have MBAs or business experience in other industries. The editors never move up past a certain point.
    Non-gay men do okay in the fashion industry if they are hip-hop moguls. Puffy and Russell Simmons are doing great. And they never had to bother w/Parsons or paying their dues behind a sewing machine.

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