eight notes on “boyfriend” clothing …

… stemming, as is probably obvious, from this Decibel bit on Urban Outfitter’s “Classic Rock Boyfriend Tee.”

  1. Just so I don’t sound nuts, let me say that I do understand what the marketing category of “boyfriend” clothes is trying to conjure: some kind of insouciant grace where you’re just so fabulous that you can throw on other people’s too-large clothing and look all casual and smashing in it. Plus maybe boyish in that one small way it’s considered feminine to be boyish. Personally, I own some roll-neck cardigans that are this close to being advertised as “great-uncle” sweaters — it’s not like I don’t get the thrust of this stuff.
  2. Note that this insouciant grace, “boyfriend”-wise, requires you to be really thin and feminine from the get-go, because if that “boyfriend blazer” looks like it actually suits you, suddenly you’re “butch” instead. The society-approved feminine-boyish zone is awfully exclusive, body-wise — it wants you to be so small and feminine that the large men’s-clothing item actually contrasts and accentuates those qualities. (It’s also, significantly, not aimed at much of anyone above the age of 25 of so.)
  3. The big cheat that makes this Iron Maiden t-shirt so galling is that it’s not cut like a man’s t-shirt. Once you remove that fit issue, the statement appears to be that just plain wearing a (faux)-old Maiden t-shirt is a boy thing to do, not a girl thing to do. Hence: galling.
  4. That said, if you have ever griped anywhere about men being bizarre children who walk around wearing ratty band t-shirts well into their 30s, then it’s possible you have partially signed off on the gender dynamics this t-shirt’s marketing is leaping off from, maybe.
  5. Urban Outfitters is a particularly vexed place for the “boyfriend” thing, because their sensibility is such that the bulk of what they sell has a similar “borrowed” drag. This is a very 90s thing. Urban Outfitters was just about the first clothing chain to go in hard on the fake-vintage distressed t-shirt, whether it was “leftover from late-70s day camp / youth sports” or “familiar product logo in foreign language”: that, for a lot of years, was practically their Thing, and they retain it to this day. They way they sell flannel shirts, lately, in the women’s section, revives the exact same “I took this from my father’s closet” style that was huge in the mid-90s. And in between, there have been times when nearly everything in this store wanted to look like it was borrowed or found and thrown on casually — a whole store full of clothes desperately embarrassed to possibly look new or purchased.
  6. I’m not gonna lie: I totally enjoy making “won’t someone think of the poor boyfriends” jokes whenever boyfriend-items are advertised. Just look at the pernicious messages these clothing chains are sending out, tacitly encouraging willy-nilly theft of our precious smelly clothes.
  7. I have probably dated a couple women who have thought the same thing in the other direction, due to my always borrowing their jeans. I would wholeheartedly support the sale of “girlfriend jeans,” which in my experience would just be regular jeans but with actual space for asses. Sometimes I think the primary difference between men’s and women’s jeans is that the designers assume women couldn’t possibly have anything larger than a thimble to put in their pockets and thin men couldn’t possibly have any ass. Just backs that turn straight into legs.
  8. Billing things like loose jeans or blazers as “boyfriend” clothing occasionally seems like an effort to pitch women this weird get-out clause on the hassles of femininity. It’s as if they’re suggesting this fantasy where you’re not wearing looser jeans because they’re comfortable or sensible or you just fucking feel like it — no, now the loose jeans possibly suggest that someone loves you.
102 notes | | Mar 25, 2010
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    grammar: eight notes
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    a grammar: eight notes...“boyfriend” clothing...very...