I appreciate the insight; I don’t buy these products, so hearing from someone who does is helpful. I guess at the end of the day there still have to be forces pushing these companies not to add/enlarge pockets, because any economic model would say that corporations – who’d burn your house down if it saved them a nickel – know that this debate has been going on, have probably run countless trials, focus groups, etc., and would pounce on this the second they saw profit.
Purses do alleviate this burden on corporations a lot. If purses disappeared overnight, the children working in Southeast Asian jean sweatshops would be in for a bad, bad morning. (I’d also say I don’t think this is a conspiracy to sell purses, as the market’s barrier for entry is low enough and purses already commonplace enough that they’d only be hurting themselves.)
At minumum there’s always some tradeoff when you have pockets. I’d bet that, beyond the baseline material cost of making pockets, it costs more and more in labor to hide the pockets as the pants become more form-fitting and the pockets become larger.
So even if you could make something that’s form-fitting with normal pockets (assuming no noticeable trade-off in form), it’d probably cost more at a price women aren’t willing to pay in an age of expansive wardrobes and fast fashion.
That’s just a guess going off what you’ve said, which I believe – mostly, anyway, since it feels like larger pockets would always diminish form-fitting in at least some small way.
So first off, I want to say I really appreciate how respectful your comment is. I’ve voiced my opinion on this topic before and oftentimes guys get pretty freaking rude. I’ve seen some guys get really nasty with women voicing an opinion specifically about women’s pockets before. So I truly do appreciate you.
IMO, it is likely that fashion companies make too much money off of purses to add pockets. Why add a small amount of fabric for pennies when you could sell an entire accessory for $15+, and that’s a cheap purse, many can go for a significant amount more.
I also believe there is also an element of sexism that is baked in from over a century ago. Many of the comments that are “if women wanted them, they would have them” echo the same comments on flyers against pockets from the 1910s. A great book about this topic is Pockets An Intimate History of How We Keep Things by Hannah Carlson. She pulls a lot of examples from history about why women don’t have pockets and how long we have been asking why we don’t, she incudes an article from the NYT from 1899 asking that question. Another example is when women were fighting for our right to vote, the antis thought we could hide things in pockets like flyers or it was assumed we would use them for scandalous things like tobacco and our own money. Women also used to have pockets in skirts for a long time, but as we gained rights, purses were pushed in and pockets were pushed out.
To your second point, I don’t think it would cost that much and definitely not so much that women wouldn’t purchase them. Below is a picture of two pair of jeans I own. Both are thin in the thighs with flares at the bottom and cost roughly the same amount. The one on the right, the pocket barely goes up to my second knuckle, these are jeans that I can maybe clip my knife and keep a lighter in one pocket, but it’s likely the lighter will fall out. The one on the left, while not as large as men’s pockets, fits my entire hand, I can keep my phone, cash, or ID in those pockets without having to worry about them falling out. The amount of fabric between the two is not that much and the cost would not be too crazy.
Again, I super appreciate your very respectful comment 💚
I appreciate the insight; I don’t buy these products, so hearing from someone who does is helpful. I guess at the end of the day there still have to be forces pushing these companies not to add/enlarge pockets, because any economic model would say that corporations – who’d burn your house down if it saved them a nickel – know that this debate has been going on, have probably run countless trials, focus groups, etc., and would pounce on this the second they saw profit.
That’s just a guess going off what you’ve said, which I believe – mostly, anyway, since it feels like larger pockets would always diminish form-fitting in at least some small way.
So first off, I want to say I really appreciate how respectful your comment is. I’ve voiced my opinion on this topic before and oftentimes guys get pretty freaking rude. I’ve seen some guys get really nasty with women voicing an opinion specifically about women’s pockets before. So I truly do appreciate you.
IMO, it is likely that fashion companies make too much money off of purses to add pockets. Why add a small amount of fabric for pennies when you could sell an entire accessory for $15+, and that’s a cheap purse, many can go for a significant amount more.
I also believe there is also an element of sexism that is baked in from over a century ago. Many of the comments that are “if women wanted them, they would have them” echo the same comments on flyers against pockets from the 1910s. A great book about this topic is Pockets An Intimate History of How We Keep Things by Hannah Carlson. She pulls a lot of examples from history about why women don’t have pockets and how long we have been asking why we don’t, she incudes an article from the NYT from 1899 asking that question. Another example is when women were fighting for our right to vote, the antis thought we could hide things in pockets like flyers or it was assumed we would use them for scandalous things like tobacco and our own money. Women also used to have pockets in skirts for a long time, but as we gained rights, purses were pushed in and pockets were pushed out.
To your second point, I don’t think it would cost that much and definitely not so much that women wouldn’t purchase them. Below is a picture of two pair of jeans I own. Both are thin in the thighs with flares at the bottom and cost roughly the same amount. The one on the right, the pocket barely goes up to my second knuckle, these are jeans that I can maybe clip my knife and keep a lighter in one pocket, but it’s likely the lighter will fall out. The one on the left, while not as large as men’s pockets, fits my entire hand, I can keep my phone, cash, or ID in those pockets without having to worry about them falling out. The amount of fabric between the two is not that much and the cost would not be too crazy.