After nearly twenty years of teaching gender studies at a community college, I’ve got a little saying that elicits knowing smiles whenever I share it around campus: “sisterhood is easier in winter.” I’m referring to the reality that when the weather is cold (or as cold as it gets in Southern California) and my students are in sweaters and jeans, there’s considerably less intra-female hostility in my classrooms than when the weather turns warm.
I’ve seen it happen a hundred times. On a hot day, a young woman arrives late to class. She’s wearing short shorts or a miniskirt, perhaps with a sleeveless, low-cut top. Students turn to stare as she walks in, and on more than one occasion, I’ve heard low murmurs of feminine disapproval from the back of the classroom. Sometimes you can catch the sotto voce whispers: “Who does she think she is?” “What a slut.” Or my favorite, “This is school, not a nightclub.” A few of the male students seem on the verge of drooling. Some students watch me carefully, to see if I’m checking out their scantily-clad classmate. Meanwhile, the object of all the judgment sits stiffly, trying to pretend she’s impervious to all the animus coming her way.
A new Canadian study finds that it’s not just my students: many young women really are more likely to become judgmental about and hostile towards their female peers when those peers are wearing “sexier” clothing. As reported in the current edition of research journal Aggressive Behavior, researchers — using dozens of Toronto-area female college students as subjects — essentially replicated the experience I see so often in my classroom. When the subjects were exposed to a young conservatively dressed woman, they barely noticed her. But when the researchers’ confederate entered the room wearing revealing clothing, she drew intense hostility. The researchers rated the responses on a “bitchiness” scale.
One woman implied that the [woman] was dressed to have sex with one of her professors and another said that the confederate’s ‘‘boobs were about to pop out”. Importantly, all comments about the confederate were made after she left the room with one exception. One woman said ‘‘What the fuck is that?” directly to the [revealingly-dressed woman] after blatantly looking her up and down while showing disgust.
Presumably that last response topped the “bitchy” chart. Of course, a little of the investigators’ own “bitchiness” seems to slip through. Writing about the risks of having the subjects figure out that they were taking part in a study, the authors assure us that while other women often “dress provocatively in a university context,” serious “research assistants would likely not be dressed in such a sexy manner.” In other words: our deception worked because everyone knows only airheads wear miniskirts.
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