PLEASE mess with Texas!

Oh my goodness this piece in The Daily Texan, by Ryan Haecker is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read! (via Figleaf)

Dresses epitomize womanhood in the Western world. Such has been the case since the western man adopted pants to replace the tunic in the sixth century (an aspect of the West’s Germanic barbarian heritage). Dresses allow us to differentiate between the silhouettes of men and women on restroom signs. Dresses are the indelible image of womanhood because of the symbolic nature of pants and dresses. If all fashions are symbolic, dresses in particular symbolize womanhood by more fully embodying the ideal of a true lady, the objective understanding of what men find attractive in the fairer sex: passivity, domesticity, childrearing, coital love, piety and fertility. These defining aspects of womanhood are immutable. We all tacitly reaffirm these attributes in our attempts to find a partner. Flirtation and courtship are reaffirmations of what it means to be masculine and feminine because it is only by fulfilling the obligation of our form that we can attract the opposite sex.

You might say these things were once true but times have changed. Not so. The nature of sexual attractiveness in women is objective, immutable and incontrovertible because it is directly related to the constant and unchanging physiology of men and women. What men find attractive in women is fixed because the physiology of humanity has been relatively unchanged. In this way, the ideal form of femininity is also unchangeable and without regard for cultural context or time period. What men find attractive in women – the form of a true lady – is objectively identifiable, just as it was in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. In short, femininity is sexy, and sexy is timeless and universal.

It seriously gets even worse:

The androgynous masculinization of the modern woman, through the donning of pants, suits, uncovered shoulders and unveiled hair, has in a sense led to the slow whorification of ladyhood.

I would try to rebut it but I think any thinking person can see why his blanket dismissal of pants, feminism, and, well, the entire 21st century, perhaps, is so misguided. Wonder what he thinks about men in dresses and whether they count as that “essential part of a true lady’s attire?” The ironic thing is that I almost exclusively wear skirts and dresses; probably less than five times a year do I wear pants. But not because I want to be “ladylike.” Because I’m femme and that’s how I feel the hottest!

Tags: antifeminism, dress, dress codes, dresses, fashion, feminism, gender, gender roles, lady, ladyhood, pants, sexuality, stupidity, whoreification, womanhood