What we talk about when we talk about pockets

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Originally posted by at What we talk about when we talk about pockets

This post is about pockets, feminism, design, autonomy and common sense. Please feel free to repost or link to it if you know people who’d benefit from the discussion.

A few weeks ago trillian_stars and I were out somewhere and she asked “Oooh, can I get a cup of coffee?” and I thought “why are you asking me? You don’t need permission.” But what I discovered was that her clothes had no pockets, so she had no money with her.

Mens clothes have pockets. My swimsuits have pockets. All of them do, and it’s not unusual, because, what if you’re swimming in the ocean and you find a fist full of pirate booty in the surf? You need somewhere to put it. Men are used to carrying stuff in their pockets, you put money there, you put car keys there. With money and car keys come power and independence. You can buy stuff, you can leave. The idea of some women’s clothes not having pockets is baffling, but it’s worse than that — it’s patriarchal because it makes the assumption that women will either carry a handbag, or they’ll rely on men around them for money and keys and such things. (I noticed this also when Neil & Amanda were figuring out where her stuff had to go because she had no pockets.) Where do women carry tampons? Amanda wondered, In their boyfriend’s pockets, Neil concluded.

I then noticed that none of trillian_stars‘ running clothes had pockets. Any pockets. Which is (as they always say on “Parking Wars”) ridikulus. Who leaves the house with nothing? (It’s not a rhetorical question, I actually can’t think of anybody).

We fixed some of this by getting this runners wrist wallet from Poutfits on Etsy — it holds money, ID, keys … the sort of stuff you’d need. Plus you can wipe your nose on it. It solves the running-wear problem, but not the bigger problem.



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The bigger problem is that people who design women’s fashions are still designing pants and jackets that have no pockets. In fact, this jacket we got last December has … no pockets. It’s not a question of lines or shape, it’s a question of autonomy.



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So I’m asking my friends who design women’s clothes to consider putting pockets in them, they can be small, they can be out of the way, they can be inside the garment, but space enough to put ID, and cash and bus tokens. And maybe a phone. (And if you can design a surreptitious tampon stash, I’m sure Neil & Amanda & a lot of other people would appreciate it as well.)


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0 Responses to “What we talk about when we talk about pockets”

  1. eglantine_br

    I hate, hate carrying a bag everywhere. Sometimes I have to do it, especially if I know i will be stuck somewhere. (Then I want my Kindle, at least, and the best way to carry that is in a bag,) But mostly I want to use pockets. I am not a woman who wears dressy clothes much at all. i like jeans and t shirts, sweatshirts. But even some of those do not have pockets! Or else the pockets are too small to fit anything.

    My husband thinks it is sort of comical. He says the people making clothes assume a woman wants to carry a pocketbook. I somehow just never got into the habit.

    I have noticed, at least here in NYC, a lot of men carry bags, cross shoulder bags which are essentially pocketbooks. If you need to go several places, and you want a book, and something to eat, and something warmer to wear later etc, a bag is what you need. That has nothing to do with fashion or gender. But we should all get pockets too!

    • Marie Brennan

      I carried everything in my jeans pockets for years, but finally stopped when a) two different cell phones were lost by falling out of said pocket and b) I got a smartphone, which really doesn’t fit very well. Then I finally caved in and got a purse-type object — which is to say, a Swiss Army brand bag, about the side of a really fat trade paperback, with a nice broad strap that I carry cross-body. It’s large enough to hold more useful stuff than I could ever fit into a pocket: wallet, phone, small notebook, multiple pens, eye drops, kleenex, a fold-up bag for when I need more carrying space, etc.

      Except for the rare highly dressy occasion, I don’t ever carry a “purse” in the fashion sense, and I probably never will. If nothing else, I need something that doesn’t look stupid hanging cross-body: my shoulders slope straight down, so trying to carry anything on one of them is an exercise in futility.

      • eglantine_br

        Yes. I have that same kind of bag, and same kind of shoulders. At least the cross shoulder kind is stuck to me. I won’t forget it. (Me forgetting it is much more likely than me being robbed of it.) But in the winter especially it get entangled with my coat and hat and mittens. And it is one more thing i am forced to think about!

    • mindstalk

      There’s always a belt pouch/fanny pack!

      I used to use one all the time, and not my pockets. Eventually I switched to pockets, I think about the time I asked akashiver for a makeover. I still typically have a backpack as well — water bottle, book, pen, stuff. Mostly the water bottle, + book on transit.

      These shorts I got in Chile are odd. There’s usual location (hip) pockets, moderately deep on this pair but still sloped enough to make me nervous, even shallower on the other ones. And then deep, vertical, with snapflap, pockets on the thighs.

  2. d_aulnoy

    My 18 month old’s clothes all have pockets, because he wears “boy clothes.” Mine don’t.

    Where is the justice?

    • Marie Brennan

      Oh, come now. I’m sure his pockets are just like the ones on half my “professional” women’s wear: decorative and useless.

  3. klwilliams

    There’s an online test I took once that determines from your answers if you’re male or female. If you keep your wallet in your pocket (as I did for years), it claims you are male.

  4. livejournal

    What we talk about when we talk about pockets

    User referenced to your post from What we talk about when we talk about pockets saying: […] Originally posted by at What we talk about when we talk about pockets […]

  5. fjm

    That implies a relatively wide choice of clothing. I can barely find trousers that *fit* (thanks to a huge differential in waste/hip measurement) so while I would love pockets, it’s usually a choice between two pairs of trousers, neither of which have pockets.

    For a short while I had made to measure trousers, With pockets, Bliss.

  6. fjm

    Delany noted this about forty years ago and uses it as a feature in one of his novels: upper class women carry papers so their dresses have concealed pockets; middle class women don’t realise this, so their imitations of those dresses do not.

    Places to store things: bra strap, and the cleavage (particularly a spare tampon), and back packs are liberating.

  7. Marie Brennan

    Unfortunately, if I’m looking for dressy slacks, the ones that fit and have pockets are almost always constructed in such a way as to make the things I put in the pockets fall out. (They’re sloped; they’re made of really stretchy material; etc.)

    Most of the time I’m wearing jeans, and that’s fine. But “professional” clothing is harder. And formalwear? Yeah, no.

    • lizvogel

      The key there is almost always. Yes, the majority of dress slacks are constructed stupidly; why would I give my money to people who make clothes like that? I’ll keep looking till I find the exceptions that require that “almost”, and that’s the company that gets my money. And I get pants that hold my wallet.

      Formalwear, I’ll grant you; fancy dresses with pockets are nonexistent IME. I’d probably be more bent out of shape about this if I wore a dress more than about once every three years, or didn’t have a host of other reasons for not liking them anyway.

      Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of a push for more pockets and practicality in general in women’s clothing. Just because I can find pants with pockets doesn’t mean it couldn’t stand to be made easier. I just find the implication that women are somehow incapable of making choices that meet their needs a bit problematic.

  8. Marie Brennan

    I have a hard time with slacks of the “professional” sort — those are likely to have decorative excuses for pockets, or else to be sewn in such a way that things fall out. Once you get up to formalwear, there’s no hope.

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