Gender pocketics

Not giving women handy pockets, implies her being is more about style than substance

I have a bone to pick with people who design clothes for women. They don’t seem to believe that, like men, women, too, need pockets in which something can actually fit. I would understand if they occasionally did away with this essential element in, say, skirts and dresses, but what explains the absence of usable pockets in everyday-wear jeans for women? Why do even my comfy-fit, boot-cut jeans not have pockets worth being called so?

And this has been my gripe for a while now. Back in the 1980s, the decade of abominable fashion, we made do with the ungainly baggy trousers and jeans. Ugly as they were, they did have generously sized pockets. We could stuff them with our bicycle keys, handkerchiefs, our money, pebbles and marbles and chewing gum… But oh, how we longed for the snug-fit jeans we only saw on French and American models in rarely available, secondhand, bought-off-the pavement fashion magazines.

Then in the early 1990s, India opened its doors to “phoren” brands and we, miraculously, got our snug-fit jeans. They came with pockets, if not as generously sized as the ones the baggies boasted of but large enough to accommodate the keys of our mopeds (colloquial for gearless motorcycles under 50 CC), our home keys, our money and later, our Nokias.

I don’t recall at what stage the pockets started shrinking. Today, they have shrunk to the extent that they will not fit even a hanky, forget a cell phone or keys. And, I would not risk carrying any money in mine, even with the currency notes rolled up or folded twice over.

Photo: iStock

This past week, I pointed out to a few male colleagues how we women, thanks to some bizarre design-driven logic, have to go through our lives either without pockets or with pockets that are utterly useless or even fake. They rewarded me with looks of utter disbelief, their baffled reactions ranging from “You’re joking, right?” to “That’s just ridiculous!”. One colleague incredulously pulled out his wallet, his cell phone and his car keys from his man pockets and then put them right back, declaring, “Look, good to go.”

Compare that to our situation. We women have no choice but to lug a handbag on our shoulder because you, dear designer, will not give us functional pockets. I am okay with that if lugging a handbag is my choice — after all, we women do enjoy flaunting our handbags, sling bags and totes — and not a compulsion.

It is hard not to envy my male colleagues walking with their hands free, their cell phones and pens secure in their pockets. And here I am, always, always with the phone and pen in my hand. Even when I am walking my dog, I am compelled to carry a sling bag for the phone, which, as a journalist — or any other professional for that matter — and a mother, I will not leave at home. And, I do not carry it in my hand because I am terrified of it getting snatched, having learnt it the hard way.

The bottom line is: we women need useable pockets so that we can reclaim our hands. Jeans cannot be designed just for ramp walks.

But then, this conspiracy to deprive women of pockets is centuries old. From the 1700s, when women were given concealed and difficult to access pocket pouches that were tied under their petticoats (skirt), to the present times, irksome pockets have for long been a well-disguised symbol of gender politics — their shape, size and form determined by the perceived role of a woman in society over different times.

Not giving a woman handy pockets, even on jeans, basically implies that her being is more about style than substance. And that’s just not right.

This week, two of the world’s biggest fashion firms, the owners of Christian Dior and Gucci, said they will stop using underweight models for their catwalk shows. That’s a huge revolution taking place on the ramp. It may well be a step towards changing the stereotypical image of women. Such a revolution is also needed off the ramp, where skin-hugging jeans and clothes that serve purely to accentuate a woman’s form come at the cost of practicality.  

veenu.sandhu@bsmail.in