A very strong memory from my school days is that of Mr. Ravindran sir, my chemistry teacher. He was a tall man, with a big mustache. It was clear that he was somebody that you wouldn’t want to mess with. He would run his chemistry classes like a military drill. Among the myriad things that would annoy him, his pet peeve were boys who would stand up to answer his questions with hands in their trouser pockets. The tirade of screaming that would be thrown at these boys could be heard echoing miles from the classroom. His perception of these boys with hands in their pocket was that they were laid-back, disrespecting him and in turn the hierarchy and the power a school teacher commands over a student.
In hindsight, it’s perplexing that by the simple gesture of putting hands in their pocket, a lanky teenager was hurting the ego of a well-built middle age man. Such is the power dynamics of a simple pocket.
Why am I writing about pockets? Even though they may seem irrelevant and taken for granted by men, women have been deprived of its benefits for years.
Why is the case of missing pockets even a problem?
Imagine this scenario,
Person 1: Hey man, want to see a movie?
Person 2, male: Give me 2 minutes.
Wears Jeans, stuffs his pocket with his wallet, keys and a phone, wears shoes and leave.
And now, imagine this:
Person 1: Hey girl, want to see a movie?
Person 2, female: Give me 2 minutes.
Wears her jeans.
Tries to put her phone in her pocket, Fails.
Tries to put her car keys in her pocket, Fails.
Tries to put a 500 rupee note in her pocket, Fails.
Decides to take THE sling bag.
Is able to fit all this in, but it’s bright red in color, which looks ugly with the a green olive top.
Decides to wear a black top, but she remembers that it’s not washed.
Calls her friend up, and cancels the plans.
The point? Not having a pocket limits freedom.
Pocket in women clothing is non-existent, and in a few outlier cases if present is too small to be of any functional use. The solution suggested to this problem is to carry a purse. But purses are an additional expenditure and are easy targets for thieves.
Women are often subject to “Pink Tax” wherein products meant for the female gender are priced higher – be it pink bicycles for young girls or unisex gym wear colored pink.
So, what does this discrimination mean?
Men’s clothing is designed for utility; women’s clothing is designed for beauty.
If men are the ones who are busy doing things, and women are busy being looked at, why do they need pockets?
Pockets are sexist, for sure. But pockets are also by and large political. How, you may ask? And the answer to that lies in history.
Before the French Revolution, women used to carry tied on, large pockets till mid-18th century. The transition from these large pockets to tiny hand held purses was entwined in the fears of the French revolution. Women’s pockets were private spaces, and in a public space, in the time of a revolution was a scary thought.
The less a woman could carry, the less freedom they had.
The less freedom women had, the less threat they were.
The less threat they were, the more irrelevant they became.
Limiting space in a pocket translated to limiting a woman’s space in this world. She had to rely on a man to travel, because she couldn’t possibly have all the things she needed in a small hand-held cloth bag.
This patriarchal fear continues to this day. The owners of large retail clothing lines, a majority of them men, are either blissfully unaware of the growing need for a pocket in women’s clothes or dismiss this key consumer need as an outlier – would women want to let go of figure hugging jeans and wear baggy pants with pockets?
Men are not ready to replace the image of demure, shy, well-mannered “ladies” with that of lady-brats who stand and talk with hands in their pockets.
We are not asking for pockets anymore, we are demanding.
I demand the freedom of having a pocket big enough to carry my phone, my car keys and money.
This is my independence.
This is my vision for a care-free life.
This is my right.
This is me wishing, I had a pocket back in school, so that I too could stand up in front of Mr. Ravindran and feel the power.