Of all the things covered in PBS’ documentary on modern feminism Makers: Women Who Make America last night, fashion was admittedly towards the bottom in terms of importance. In fact, it covered so many important things that you should probably go watch the whole thing. But before you do, let’s take a moment to talk about how feminism affected women’s shirts, because you can’t liberate yourself and others without first purchasing the right shirt, can you?
(That was a rhetorical question. You obviously can. But you won’t look as cool while you’re doing it.)
According to the documentary, the practice of wearing floppy bow ties like the one seen above experienced a resurgence during a time in the ’80s when women were shattering glass ceilings in a major way. As it turns out, it wasn’t merely a floppy bow tie, but a floppy power tie. A pussy power tie. Says Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett-Packard:
We used to dress in suits with a skirt and a jacket with button-down shirts and a little bow tie, because that was sort of our interpretation of the man’s tie. I look back at those pictures today and I think, ‘what were we thinking?’ but it was our attempt to be feminine but fit into what was then a male world.
The internet tells me that these kinds of ties were named after the little bows some people like to tie around cats’ necks, but I’d rather think of them as powerful vaginal symbols we can walk around displaying proudly in the workplace as a counterbalance to men’s phallic neckties. So the next time someone is dissing you for dressing too “cute” in your retro little Zooey Deschanel outfits, remind them that your cat/vagina bow is actually a tangential result of feminism before telling them to fuck off.
(Via Jezebel)
Photo: Polyvore
