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Notes -
I'm not sure.
I was Evangelical as a teenage girl, so I got the teenage girl side of the conversation, where the advice was usually not to wear low cut tops unless you're, um, courting or something, but it was not well followed outside the very conservative homeschool groups I also participated in. As an adult, I've been Orthodox Christian, where they emphasize that flowy skirts and scarves and blouses are beautiful and dignified and fun to wear. I strongly prefer this approach. Female office wear is generally not very fun or beautiful, and I suppose the woman feels a bit better about her appearance in the low cut top than other options. It doesn't work super well on most figures, aesthetically, to do something like tucking a button up into trousers, because it just looks kind of drab. When I have to go into work in jeans and my official work t-shirt that's in a color that looks bad on me, I feel kind of irritable and like I don't want anyone to look at me all day. I don't know what women are supposed to wear in offices lately, but I'm pretty sure it includes a bra, anyway.
I think more women would choose to be modest if the options were better. If you want modest stuff, it generally is either childish or tent-like or otherwise just ugly. I want to be modest enough to not attract sexual attention.
Tin-foil hat conspiracy: This is self-evidently true but is expressed by objectively ugly clothes / styles currently being in fashion.
It started with their weird 1970s extra large glasses. One of the hallmarks right now are the giant, boxy, usually light wash jeans that are in no way flattering to either waist or hips. My (again tin foil hat) theory is that this is a way to get back to "neutral" non-sexually signaling clothing without capitulating to "traditional" styles. The entire "normcore" aesthetic has to be this, right? There's no way these styles can be considered ... good looking ... right?
I've thought the same thing, like ugly Zoomer fashion is just young women trying to act out a sexual counter-revolution without having to dress up like it's the 1950s.
But then I remember that young men have moustaches and mullets now, and I don't believe for a second that they are trying to desexualise themselves. Fashion is just arbitrary and weird (which, I suppose, seems pretty obvious when I look back at how some of my more fashionable friends dressed when we were teenagers).
I don't see it as young men trying to sexualize themselves. As with pretty much all male fashion outside of the military, the objective is to attract young women.
If young women are dressing in line with a retro-counter-sexual revolution, it would stand to reason that a male response would be to also dress in a "retro" manner. Perhaps they're missing the point and only picking up on "what was cool in the 1970s and 1980s is cool again." Still, this seems like a straightforward movement-response dynamic.
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