And unsurprisingly you are wrong.
1960's and risqué clothes?
- Thread starter Nakita Akita
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It went beyond that. Here is every case of TOS women wearing Starfleet trousers, in chronological order, which I cite from original research by the late and sorely missed Greg Schnitzer:
- The Cage
- Where No Man has Gone Before
- Publicity still of Kirk, Spock, and Rand (post-WNMHGB, pre-Corbomite Maneuver)
- The Man Trap (background players in Enterprise corridors)
- Charlie X (a brunette seated in Rec Room, and the young blonde turned into old woman)
- Operation: Annihilate! (a blonde woman seated in the Briefing Room)
That’s called ‘fashion’ and you follow it, or sub-cultures of it, or you don’t. It is a choice. And society is made of everyone, the rules for clothing (in general, outside of work policies what have you) aren’t codified and enforced. I think the tight trousers common in men’s fashion look as ridiculous as anything. But mine was the era of boot cut.
I sometimes think of them as being closer to the young girl ice skating outfits which are actually pretty substantial, at lest they used to be. The material was/is a heavy polyester type material. Possibly, when we see Olympic or world class skaters, their outfits might be a lighter weight, they tend to fall less often.
The skating outfits were/are one piece outfits too. Like the Next Generation season 1 and 2, but fancier and with an attached skirt.
Help me out here, are you seriously implying because we saw Kirk with his shirt torn that there was no problem with Roddenberry's behaviour?
Indeed, but we are talking on a TOS forum.
Several years ago I was called conservative in here for my views on sex scenes in the media because a couple of people couldn't distinguish between moral outrage at something being shown and, well, moral outrage at an industry which put pressure on the real human beings who play their parts in that show.
I have no problem with the most explicit sex scenes, up to and including actual penetration provided those taking part do so entirely without external pressure. The problem is that for a very long time the industry has been really rather lax in making that distinction and women in particular have been objectified with little regard to their feelings on the matter.
Hell, I'll even name the key poster, it was @RJDiogenes.
In the interim we've seen #metoo and an awful lot of political pressure from women sick of being treated the way Hollywood has in many cases turned a blind eye to. Society has become much more aware in the past few years of just how predatory much of the mainstream entertainment industry actually is. I don't think it's unreasonable that we are willing to dispel a lot of myths and dispense with revisionist history which portrays Gene Roddenberry as being some sort of hero for the rights of minorities or a visionary.
My point is, that I don't need a man telling me which bra or underwear are comfortable or not. Even if that man wears bras and women's underwear. (A man's musculature and overall body structure is of different composition and build than a woman's s for a man wearing the traditional female clothing, it isn't going to cut and bind the same as it does for/on a woman. )
A person may state, " as a white person, as an American, as a man, I feel ,think, belive...."
I feel as a woman that wearing the camel toe, up the butt, butt injury inducing exercise outfits is ridiculous and condescending to women.
If there comes a day when you are expected to wear items of clothing that can cause or have cause injuries that actually bleed, oh yea, in an area of your body normal considered a private or intimate area, please let me know.
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That's one of the accusations.
Society dressed them. Sadly.
Yes, but some women also tell men how to dress. either directly or indirectly. Just like how not all men tell women how to dress either directly or indirectly.
Hell, an ex (a male) told me (a male) how to dress because of homonormity or whatever the phrase is supposed to be that is the gay or bi equivalent to "heteronormity".
And few people in real life have come up to me or friends and start out something by rattling off a checklist of skin color and/or ethnicity, sex, orientation, and everything else. Should everybody now do so? What happened to working together for a common good? But it's not 1970 anymore, I agree...
That aside, I agree with you 100%.
Is there such a thing? When did a man tell a woman a miniskirt was "empowering"? That article seems to imply they dressed themselves, as a social statement.
https://www.mic.com/articles/139429/power-clothes-the-unabashedly-feminist-history-of-the-miniskirt
Not all men dictated the terms, surely? Here's one possible example of the contrary, which doesn't involve Grace Lee Whitney wanting them included as a sign of liberation and empowerment (and during the 1970s, the mindset had definitely changed) :
Or maybe a man did put in the idea somewhere, I'm no historian and even a dozen historical articles may not all be 100% precise.
Or is the solution to get everyone in a room, work out differences no matter how large or minuscule, agree to some standards, and then go forward with it? And at what point will that be deemed "wrong"?
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TOS.
And many other occasions.
The mini skirt isn't an issue per se, it's just a cut of cloth and has no inherent political meaning. The concern is about an industry which was (and still is) very free and easy with using human bodies but showing so little concern for the wishes and choices of those bodies' owners. TOS and GR have a mystique built up around it which is almost exclusively revisionist. The "Great Bird of the Galaxy", the "Vision of a Brighter Future", yadda yadda, none of which stands up to scrutiny and completely disregards the much more basic motives which were really at play, not to mention the boorish, exploitative and sexist behaviour which endemic in the culture of the show.
I dunno what the underwear in your example is made of. I also suspect those exercise outfits did t damage anyone’s bum. *shrug*
And the world is full of people helping each other. Gok Wan has made a career out of suggesting what clothes individual women might feel more comfortable in. My point is not, and never has been ‘men know about women so shaddap’ it has and always has been that anyone’s gender etc is no reason to assume their opinion/information is not of merit. Odds are, for example, underwear salespeople usually know more about it than the layperson. Lack of education about decent fitting underwear has plagued both sexes/genders for yonks now.
Yours has not.
Throughout much of history and society it has been exactly that and it isn't limited to conservatism as per the usual narrative.
A great deal of coercion and control has been exerted on women in the name of liberalism, where an image sells but the wishes of the individual have been inconvenient.
And this poor dude was dressed like this even when he wasn’t doing exercise videos. This was his thing. No one even remembers his real name. But he is legend.....
TOS really didn’t predict this future of exercise wear, though it did get close to the Linford Christie lunchbox, sixties values permitting. (See Burt Wards Batbox or Robins Nest controversy for details) Also, for an absolute laugh, check out Seperatec men’s underwear. Very comfy. At first...then...maybe not so much.
Good thing it’s not that I argue then init.
It is interesting (and confusing for those of us of a certain generation) to chart the relationship between fashion and gender politics through the ages. Burn the bra. Don’t wear the bra. Wear the bra but make sure it fits. Binding. Corseted. Have you tried a sports bra? Pointy Bras on Madonna.
Armpit hair is probably just as fascinating, but probably much lower profile and a shorter read involving 100 percent more Julia Roberts.
In Trek terms, the skirt *on its own* represents both sides of the coin I would say.
Derrick Evans.
But yes, men do sometimes wear lycra too.
Don't see the appeal, it's not ideal for stretching exercising where is balls up in creases and strength work is generally best done in slacks which allow better freedom of movement.
Sprinters were it for aerodynamics and a lot of lifting sports have tight rules about the body mechanics of a lift, which require a referee to have a clear view of the angles during competition. For day to day gym work I think it's more fashion than practicality.
Oh, I don't disagree he was selling concepts the same way people manufacture and sell 99 bottles of beer on the shelf of a store's wall...
But a man told Grace Lee Whitney and others that the outfit was empowering? That seems counter-intuitive, surely?
I don't disagree about the show's sexism as prevalent in the scripts and Roddenberry more or less being in a similar league as some others from the era (a lot of it is obvious and certainly demeaning, even for the time), but as a historical perspective, at the time, miniskirts were still used as a symbol of empowerment as a metaphor. Which is one of the few times a modern day trend has been doubled as such.
https://www.vintag.es/2013/05/mini-skirts-in-star-trek-1966.html
But that one does prove both our points as well, as Nichelle Nichols points out from her autobiography:
Is she wrong on any of those points? She was a direct eyewitness, and directly involved in the era. I was not, so I'm inclined to believe her. As well as what Grace said:
Which corroborates both our points, to be fair. she was possibly trying to one-up but I can only guess, which isn't always for the best.
Not to mention Theiss' creativity as an artist of clothing (style, and use of color, et al).
The most interesting part is that William Ware Theiss wasn't exactly a 0 on the Kinsey scale of sexuality. Much closer to 6. Yet a gay guy can create such wardrobes that drive heterosexual men wild. To coin a phrase, human nature is "fascinating". Unless he was bisexual, but he himself said he was a private person and rarely gave interviews...
And, it's not untrue, Roddenberry was not quite what he was selling in his show (since Gene Coon, DC Fontana, and a few others were in spirit as much co-creators of TOS as we know it). It didn't stop people from thinking in different perspectives as a result of the show, at the time, in the time in which it was made. Which leads to other generalized questions like: What's changed since the 60s and 70s? What's improved? And what has gotten worse? And what's perception vs fact and where does their intersection meet? (For example STD transmission is at an all time high and drug-resistant strains compounded the problem... so something went awry somewhere...)
I agree with a lot of this and frankly I keep trying to distance myself from the miniskirts question. The standard narrative is that they became a key symbol of empowerment and I have no problem with that being in many ways true where they were a statement of choice and not an imposition.
What, however, is more of a concern is the revisionism that TOS was intended as a driving force for that movement in society as a whole rather than a commercial product capitalising on it. Theiss's outfits for the "babe of the week" were about anything but empowerment, they were about creating something that would keep men watching and it was by all accounts frequently the case that Roddenberry's attitudes were pretty regressive even when you take the period into account, he saw the women he cast as being first and foremost flesh he put on display in order to get rich.
That's a long way from the legacy many of us would like to ascribe to a beloved TV show.
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