Excuse my poor attempt at a physics metaphor but here goes…
Westerners (Americans, Canadians, Western Europeans), are said to be more liberal than they were 20 years ago on many issues. Abortion, gay marriage, parenting, etc…
But when it comes to gender dynamics in dating, personal appearance, masculine/feminine traits, attitudes; nothing much has changed. I think the spread of classical feminism/egalitarianism is completely overstated and an example of sensationalism bias not just in the United States but in Europe.
The fact of the matter is, a good number of people by both sexes still view being feminine as a not-so-desirable trait in males, men and women are expected by many companies to have an appearance that matches what is typically expected of their gender and penalized or not hired at all, any many more examples which I can’t think of at this point.
Why is this though? maybe these things happen in really liberal areas of the West but then it proves my point of how uncommon progressive attitudes towards gender are. Even among young people of my age. (<25)
Your perspective is way too short. With the exception of LGBT issues, 20 years is way too short a time to expect major societal changes. 20 years isn’t even one generation. Gender equality has come a very long way just in my own lifetime, and had already come a long way previously. 100 years ago, women couldn’t even vote in much of the U.S.
True…but I always find some conservative older folks particularly complain of ‘feminized’ men; skinny jeans, feminine behaviours, being sissified in relationships (not being a gentleman), weak, not chivalrous. Also complain that women are becoming too ‘masculine’ for men to find them attractive; However IME, it’s actually pretty rare to see a generally feminine man or a masculine man. The vast majority of young people still fall into categories of being relatively masculine or relatively feminine with masculinity having a much narrower spectrum.
The fact that there was such a large backlash to the North Carolina bathroom bill undercuts the argument that Americans still see gender in traditional terms. I have a very hard time seeing such a backlash occurring even ten years ago.
Even in terms of personal style, the measure of skinny jeans shouldn’t be, “Does somebody not like them?” but “How popular are they?” If it was a widespread opinion that skinny jeans were too feminine, they wouldn’t be stocked to the rafters in every goddamn men’s department because no men would be buying them. The fact that they are popular belies your assertion, notwithstanding old grumps who don’t like them.
Very common for young people in the major cities - they even have skinny sweat pants now. I don’t think you’ll see much of it in rural areas, or among the over 40 crowd.
You would have found “conservative older folks particularly” complaining of those things with virtually every generation. It didn’t start with long-haired hippies and pants-wearing libbies in the mid-20th Century. Old-school wags crying woe over “loss of virile values” have been around for ages and it has been a very common trope to signal a portrayal of social decadence through perceived effeminacy.
Just an aside- I grew up in the country of country. Town of 600. Graduated in 2001. Guys wore skinny jeans, absolutely. They were called Wranglers and were referred to locally as Nut Huggers. Way more skinny than the hipster kind.
We’ve been through millions of generations that have shaped those traits into our social dynamics. I doubt they’ll ever truly change due to social expectations because, in general, we still pick who we will mate with based on those sexist instincts.
Effeminate men are much more tolerated than they were in the past, as are women in traditionally masculine roles (military, politics, medicine, etc).
So I think the OP is wrong.
However I think we are ingrained by evolution to a degree to like masculine and feminine traits in sexual partners. Men find women whose faces are shaped by estrogen more attractive, women find men whose faces are shaped by testosterone more attractive. There are likely certain psychological traits we look for too and I don’t think that urge is going to be socially engineered out of us anytime soon.
Living in San Francisco, I have an entirely different perspective on this issue. I would say the majority of women here fall into the “gender neutral” category, with their appearance and dress style being something that could work for either a man or a woman (jeans, t-shirts, sweatshirts, athletic shoes, etc.) Women who are dressed in a very feminine way tend to stand out and look unusually “dressed up”. The major corporation that I work for, which has hundreds of thousands of employees around the world, doesn’t care at all if you look feminine or masculine, regardless of gender.
Men tend to be more on the masculine side, but there are still plenty that are not, and I see people who are obviously transgender and ambiguously gendered all the time.
I frequently find myself playing the very un-P.C. game of “is that a man or a woman” just because clothing styles here tend to be so similar for men and women. Of course the current hipster beard trend has reduced the potential for confusion.
But appearance is only a small part of gender issues. On the really big, important things, like financial independence, the ability to make political choices, the right to education and good, well-paying jobs, and of course the right to control our own bodies and make our own choices about sex and procreation, we have made huge advances in gender equality. As a woman who has seen the developments of the past 50 years, I am thrilled with our progress and where we are now.
If I remember Wranglers correctly, they would often be very tight in the waist/groin area and then have a boot-cut leg. Skinny jeans tend to be quite snug in the upper part, and tapered legs that are far tighter than what your typical Wrangler wearer would have.
To say it another way, with Wranglers you can show off your junk and still wear cowboy boots with the boot inside the pant legs. Hipster skinny jeans would never allow you to have the boot inside the pant leg.
The OP is far too young to have any idea how much has changed in exactly the things he says haven’t changed. In a sense that’s a good thing; it shows just how much stupidity and evil has left the civilized world. Perhaps even not to return next year.
Ultimately, the differences between men & women are real. Some are purely social, others are purely biological, and some are a social amplification of a biological difference.
Contrast that with, say, race. A black man and a white man are biologically almost identical except for skin color. Where they differ is almost entirely socialization = culture. Once we put them in a common culture it becomes pretty easy for the assumed immutable differences to be recognized for what they were: the obsolete embodiment of an obsolete culture. All they have to do is stop defining one another as opposites and they become the same.
Conversely, men and women are gonna stay different for many millennia to come. Not only do both groups define themselves as different, in many ways the more different the better. That last may well be social = cultural fashion and someday we’ll find a lot more overlap between macho women and femme men than we do today.
Certainly over time clothing fashions have changed and there have been eras where the men were the clothes horses and the women dressed very functionally and plainly. So we can imagine other areas of difference likewise rearringing over time.
The thing we’re not going to see, I don’t think, is everybody merging into a single category of “human” with just an individual gentle tendency to macho or femme. The biology won’t let us go that far.
It’s always going to be inconvenient to be 4 feet or 7 feet tall. Both hyper-macho and hyper-femme men are equally far out on the bell curve and will not find society all that convenient. Bell curves are like that.