Thank god for men. Am I right? The male species is seriously a gift from above. But us females aren’t so bad ourselves. Sure, we’ve been crushed by the patriarchy for centuries, and only in the last 40 years have we started making strides in the normalization of feminism and the equalization of the genders, but what we as women should be most proud of is our grasp of the male style. Forget the fight for gender equality, fair wages, and paid maternity leave. Our shining moment in the battle against the patriarchy has been our ability to incorporate guys’ style into our own lookbooks. From Dickies to Thrasher, from cuffed pants to oversized tees, guys have amazing style, and thankfully, they’ve allowed us to take part in such fashion and use their style tips and tricks. How generous of them. By incorporating such style, we can finally stop fighting the patriarchy and instead join it!
All jokes aside, as gender becomes more fluid and as style becomes more of an expression of ourselves, girls have started to incorporate guys’ style into their own looks. So here are some great ways to integrate your boyfriend’s style into your own.
Whether it’s because your waists aren’t the same size or because your boyfriend waits two weeks to wash his jeans, you’re probably not rummaging through your boyfriend’s closet to try and find pants to wear. But that doesn’t mean we can’t channel our boyfriend’s style. There are a couple things that make baggy jeans better than their skinny counterparts: they’re more comfortable; they give you room to wiggle around in; and they look great paired with little crop tops. Jeans shouldn’t make you feel like you’re one bite of your burrito away from popping out of them. Baggy, boyfriend-style jeans are a relaxed fit so you won’t be constricted when you’re out protesting for women’s reproductive rights…or whatever it is you do on the weekends.
A trend has popped up both on Instagram and Pinterest recently that shows girls in cropped polo shirts. At the root of this trend are the polo shirts that guys (who also wear Sperry Top Siders and shorts with little embroidered anchors on them) are often seen wearing. But girls have taken the polo shirt and made them their own–by cropping them. Leaving the sleeves long and cropping the crap out of it has made the polo a stylistic check mate: “We’ll take your polo, crop it, and look better in it than you ever could.”
For so long, men have dominated the manual labor work force. But that’s slowly becoming less and less true. No longer are women confined to the home, the kitchen, the classroom, or the office. We’re given completely control over our own career choices. But if working in a garage changing tires or scaffolding a skyscraper to build the next floor doesn’t sound appealing to you, you can find freedom in instead dressing like you’re a manual laborer. For instance, the carpenter pant or Dickies’ work pant were originally designed for men who held such jobs. But now, women can purchase these pants and wear this style and look good.
Hypothetically, you stole this shirt from your boyfriend who stole it from his dad. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, men wore tee shirts without the irony or sense of style that guys today wear them. Dads were just dads wearing shirts. But now, guys have adopted this carefree dad style and paired their striped GUESS shirts with cuffed Dickies. And even more impressive is the way girls have stolen this look both from boys and their dads. The shirts are oversized, look like they’re straight from the ’80s and feature either color-blocked stripes or an arena rock band like Journey or Boston. There are a couple keys ways to integrate the dad shirt into your own style: over biker shorts with your favorite Vans or with boyfriend-style jeans.
This might be the most obvious way to incorporate guys’ style into your own. Everything’s got to be oversized. Many celebs have made this trend hyper fashionable. From Hailey Baldwin to Ariana Grande, they both often look like they raided their man’s closet and picked out the largest piece of clothing they could find. Oversized jackets, sweatshirts, tee shirts, and flannels. For decades, women have been fed the lie that, in order to be perceived as sexy, they need to wear skin-tight clothes. But jokes on them because the truth is that whatever you feel confident in is sexy. So if you like teeny, tiny tanks, great! If you like wearing oversized tees with your distressed boyfriend-style jeans, perfect! Either way, you’re fighting the patriarchy with your style–either by dressing so cute you distract them from their evil intentions or by dressing like them in hopes that one day you’ll be able to infiltrate their underground lairs without them noticing.
There are certain brands that are undeniably male. But women can (and do) look just as good (if not better) in these brands than the guys who wear them. A lot of brands were originally for men: Vans, Supreme, Thrasher. But now these brands cater to women as much as to men. The fashion world is changing; women can wear anything that men can, and brands are beginning to understand that. That’s why there are pink Stan Smiths instead of just blue, green, and red. And while that might seem like a small step for female fashion freedom, it’s a step. Women are taking out the patriarchy one male-dominated brand at a time.
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