Cover up!

Women need modest clothing options for more respect

Although it is 2018, women are still not being taken seriously and much of that is because of the revealing clothing that is being marketed toward women. There should be more options for modest clothing so that women can be respected for their minds instead.

Jordan Owens, Staff Writer

In the world today, women are not being taken seriously as much as they should, and one of the main causes of this is the clothes we wear. It seems like the more revealing clothes get, the more men get distracted by our bodies instead of listening to the words that come out of our mouths.

Women need more modest clothing options, and that won’t happen unless the fashion industry makes more modest clothing. I’m not saying that clothing is the only reason why men don’t take women seriously, but it is a huge part of the reason today. Furthermore, clothes that are considered modest do not need to be the type of clothing from eras like the 1700s.

I don’t think that the fashion industry really knows what a woman wants. They just know how to make money, and if that means stepping on all the women in their path, then so be it. The clothes the industry makes basically tell men in this society that women should only be seen for their bodies and not their minds. It’s like some men are trying to tell us through fashion that women can not make decisions for themselves, which is not true because women, and people in general, have a mind of their own.

As of a 2015 survey done by Business of Fashion, only 14% of top fashion brands for women are actually run by women. With more men in power, the fashion industry is portraying women how society sees us, provocative and clueless.

I feel like I have to be in a pantsuit to be taken seriously, and I don’t want to feel like that. Since there are more men in power in the fashion industry, they are making the actual decisions of what a woman wears, but women should be making the decisions because they know what they need.

Already in this American patriarchal society women are not being taken seriously when discussing serious topics, whether it is in the workplace or school. Maybe one way to make our voices be heard is to cover up a little bit.

A woman’s reputation is judged more than a man’s reputation, so until men learn how to respect women for more than their bodies, women should just keep a modest profile so we can be respected like we deserve.