Blast from my USENET Past: Women's Clothing

I joined USENET newsgroups in April 1988 due to the good graces of Massachusetts-based geek Jim Murray.  He was running USENET on a home system and wanted to offer it to others.

I'm pretty sure I made a USENET post or two on Rodney King back in 1991, but I haven't been able to find them.  But I did find some other old posts.  So, from time to time, I'll go back and grab old posts I made.  There was no date attached to this posting, but, based on the signature, it was from the spring or early summer of 1993 (before we moved to Pittsburgh).  The issue I was complaining about here is something I've never changed my opinion on:

Downloaded from a USENET archive:  http://fooo.fr/~vjeux/epita/search/20news-bydate-train/rec.autos/101603

From: lmann@jjmhome.UUCP (Laurie Mann)

Subject: Clothing (Was  Re: male/female mystery [ Re: Dumbest automotive...])

Lines: 41

In article <1pima2INN180@gap.caltech.edu>, wen-king@cs.caltech.edu (Wen-King Su) writes:

> This has me thinking.  Is there a biological reason why women can't put

> their keys in their pants pockets like men do?  I have two pockets on the

> back of each of my pants.  I put my keys in one and wallent in another.

> Many of the pockets even have a botton on them so I can close them securely.

> Everything is that much simpler for me.  Why can't women do the same?

> Is is biological (ie, not enough room for a bigger bottom plus keys and

> a wallet) or is it the way they are raised by the parents? 

Oh PULLEEZE!

It's not biology at all, it's clothing design.  Women's clothing is

generally designed to be as non-functional as possible.  It's only been

in the last five years or so that you could buy women's pants with

pockets deep enough to carry anything in.  Previously, deep pockets were

virtually unknown in women's clothing.  Skirts generally have better

pockets now, too.  Dresses, espcially fancy dresses, are still pretty

hopeless.  I often hand my driver's license over to my husband if we're

dressed up to go out somewhere, so I don't have to be encumbered by a

purse.

If women consistently bought functional clothing, and boycotted the

manufacturers who refuse to make functional women's clothing, I think

manufacturers would tend to bow to market pressures.  There's

an interesting chapter in Susan Faludi's Backlash that described

what happened the LAST time clothing manufacturers ignored the

need for functional women's clothing.  The manufactuing industry

lost millions.

From a woman who would rather buy men's clothing WITH decent pockets and

long legs and high waists than women's clothing without....

-- 

******** lmann@jjmhome.uucp (Internet) Laurie.Mann (GEnie) *********

** Claiming that sex education leads to irresponsible sex is like **

*****  claiming that driver education leads to car accidents.  *****

Rodney King, 1965-2012

I think Rodney was basically a decent man who did some bad things but was treated horribly by many people in Los Angeles. The cops used him as an excuse to savagely beat a black man. Angry people used his trial as an excuse to behave savagely. On the day of the LA riots 20 years ago, King could have gone into hiding, but instead, clearly very shaken, stood before the cameras and begged for calm. He could look beyond the injustice done to him to ask people to not do injustice to others.