Ever since I was a little boy, I have always paid attention to the way women dress. I witnessed how the '80s put my mum into some kind of boxy dress, a shoulder-padded suit, powerful heels, bold accessories, and let's not forget that megalomaniac, bursting hairstyle, a la Melanie Griffith in the movie Working Girl. I am so gay, I know. But I swear I never wear any of her clothes. But I must admit I do adore them.
One thing has never changed over the years. Women dress up more than men.
I start to wonder why that is. How unfair that women can spend hours decorating themselves from head to toe, doing their hair, putting colors on their faces, coordinating what to wear, accessorizing and even having a wider selection of shoes. Men tend to just wash and go.
I remember an old Indonesian song with the lyrics, "Women have been ruled by men since ages ago." Is it partly true? I don't know, probably that regulation stopped after the 80's disastrous and glamonstrous revolution making women equally boxy and bulky as men.
But one thing is for sure -- women have never stopped being ruled by fashion.
You don't believe me? Let's face it, how many times in a day do you realize how torturous it is to wear women's shoes? Although not all women wear them, the high heel is a major torture for most women.
If Marie Antoinette could be reborn, I don't think it would be too much trouble for to create her pompadour hairstyle again and again, to squash inside that torso-eating corset, or to carry a heavy layered skirt with bustle that doesn't allow her to sit comfortably. Today is not as bad as the past. But still every now and then we hear women unconsciously whining about what they wear.
So why all these troubles? What's making the beautiful, fashionable women of today willing to suffer?
There are some women that have voluminous brown hair with some arrangement of blonde streaks, peach lips paired with bronzed cheeks and brown eye make up, volume mascara or fake eyelashes, colored contact lens, heavy bling all around, embellished outfits with beads, pushed up boobs, shapely bustiers contouring the body, the latest handbag and, of course, high heels.
Lately how many have you seen women dressed like what I have just described? Why does every woman suddenly want to be a Hollywood starlet? After some edgy fashion experiments in the past, it has been decided that women want to be glamorous ever after.
When it comes to appearance, do women have higher level of insecurity than men? When I threw the dice to my gal pals, and they refused to be called insecure. Insecurity is when you keep wearing your bra while you're sleeping. To be beautiful and fabulous is the art of image presentation. We are our own product, they said, and we don't want to look purely like ourselves, rather just like any promotion material. It's a habit, women live with it even though it doesn't comes for free. Women pay high prices for their time, effort, knowledge and taste. So what is it then?
I couldn't stop thinking about it until I suddenly realized, the trend today is actually moving globally beyond just fashion. Comparing now and then, the concept of life in many aspects has transformed drastically, not to mention dramatically. How many dressmakers can you count then, and how many fashion labels turn you on now? How expensive was it to fix your nose? And how easy is it now to inject botox to our face? How amazing was being a housewife before? And how many single gals with fabulous careers are there lately? What about the lasting marriages that our ancestors had, and how many divorces our friends have now? What of the faithful relationships that our parents may have had, and the one night stands we can have every week?
Women today do have real choices. The selection is way beyond many. There is one major fact that I find rather haunting: there are more women in the world than men. The selection is even less for women when you take into consideration how many men have actually turned out to be jerks.
Okay, I blew the last part out of proportion to spice up my column. But not all those examples are false. With more option and competition in the market, no wonder women are so fierce in presenting how they look. You can be anything you dreamed to be, but attraction and men issue still take places somewhere in women's priorities. So which comes first? Fashion or men? I know it truly ain't easy being in women shoes, but if I were one of you, I would keep on walking with my head up high.
-Diaz
