Ann Althouse reacts to a New York Times article on what clothes “say” about the wearer:
I clicked on that title because I thought it was going to say that it’s a mistake for female candidates to wear pants (in any form) rather than a skirt/dress (of some kind). But the article lumped skirted suits and pantsuits together.
To my eye, women in pants look less dressed up than a man in a standard business suit, and I don’t think women should put themselves at that disadvantage, especially since pantsuits look sloppier on a woman’s body than a business suit on a man’s body.
I don’t mean to insult women by saying that, but women’s bodies are (generally) shaped differently than men’s and women’s pants are (generally) fitted differently from men’s suit pants. Men’s suit pants do not hug the legs or crotch, so they completely deflect attention away from the lower body. Men’s suits bring us right up to the shoulders — the idealized shoulders — and and then, via shirt and tie, aim us straight at the face.
Women’s pantsuits are more fitted in the leg and use color in a way that draws the eye downward, and they often do things with the jacket — such as making it very long — to cover up what’s happening down there in the legs. But then the jacket is distracting.
In the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton’s jackets were flat-out weird, with perplexing patch pockets. In fact, I don’t like Vanessa Friedman’s reference to the “Elizabeth Warren/Hillary Clinton/Kirsten Gillibrand mold,” because Warren and Gillibrand wear very low-key things and Hillary Clinton launched into clothes that we struggled to understand, that got compared to loungewear or sci-fi costumery.
I don’t really know what the best answer is. It depends on the individual. But you’re asking to be trusted with responsibility, not to be enjoyed as a pop star or fashion maven. You don’t want to look as though you’re seeking power for purpose of expressing your individuality.
