By	mollipen	1
	Filed Under	Blog, Fashion
	Tags	Men vs. Women, Shopping

Last night while browsing around the shoe section of a local mall retailer, I had some fun observing the various people that were there, and their attitudes toward the experience. There were more than a couple great examples of the classic situation—a wife busily focused on mentally cataloging every item she came across on sales racks or shoe shelves, and a husband, somewhere close, leaning against a support column or sitting on a provided seat, a look in his eyes that would instantly tell you his only thought was the attempted calculation of when this might all be over.

While it may not be at the top of the list of things that men don’t understand about women, why shopping takes as long as it does has to be up there pretty high. Seeing this reminded me of a post I made a while back on NeoGAF about this situation, where I tried to help give guys some hint as to why the world works the way it does. The act of shopping for men’s clothing and women’s clothing is vastly different, and it’s a difference that can be very hard for guys to appreciate.

So, just for fun, here’s that post that I made a number of months ago. Not that I’m an expert on this topic or anything, it’s just something I’ve come to understand over the years.

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By the nature of how we’ve evolved, men’s clothing choices are far simpler and more limited. Men’s clothing is, really, almost utilitarian—you need boots for work, you need t-shirts for lounging around, you need a suit for going to a wedding. A guy goes to a store thinking “I need jeans” or “I need a shirt” or “I need socks”. Guys, for the most part, will go to a store that has clothing, find something there that works for them, and they’re done. Sometimes there might be an actual clothing item the guy is looking for—a sports jersey perhaps, a tie of a certain style and color—but the simplicity to men’s clothing means that wide array of options can be offered in a very limited amount of actual physical retail space. And, really—do guys typically care? No. You want jeans that fit you and that are comfortable, and if they fit those two criteria, that’s good enough.

Women’s clothing is such a different world that you can’t comprehend it unless you’ve tried shopping for it. Women’s clothing isn’t utilitarian like men’s is. I mean, sure, it still serves purposes, like keeping you covered or providing warmth or fitting situations, but it’s also about how it looks, how it fits, how it mixes with other pieces, etc. When you main clothing choices consist of “shirt + pants”, it’s very easy to never care much for what has to go with what. When a woman goes looking for an item, say a top, there’s color, size, how it fits, the details, how it can be combined with other items, and so on.

The problem is, when a woman walks into a clothing store, she has no idea what choices she’s going to be presented with. If a man need a grey t-shirt, nearly every store he could go to will have that. When a woman needs a grey top, she has no clue what the store is going to have in that regard, if they’ll have her size, if the style will be something she’ll like, if it’ll fit right, etc.

Think of it this way—let’s say that every single time you went to the grocery store, you had no idea what they were going to have there, or where everything was going to be located. So every time you need food, you have to look through every isle and every item to see if they even have anything close to what you’re wanting. If not, you then have to go to the next supermarket, which is set up in the exact same way.

So, women really have two choice when going clothes shopping: just browse everything to see what offerings are there at that point in time, or have an idea for what she wants and have to hit 10+ stores before she might find anything close to what she’s looking for.

And, to be fair, guys have things in which they’re this way as well. For a moment, let’s go to the idea (stereotypical or not) that guys love tools, while women don’t care. If a woman wants a screwdriver, she might go to the store, and as long as it’s the right kind, she’ll buy it. A man, meanwhile, might care about the maker, the quality, buying a solo screwdriver versus picking up a whole set, and so on.

It’s just whatever the priorities are to the person when they’re buying something.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 13th, 2011 at 8:11 pm and is filed under Blog, Fashion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.