ladidalynnie:

laureninspace:

Every time I staff an anime convention, I am given a men’s size small t-shirt, which I am required to wear one or all of the days. Usually, I try to dress it up with a skirt and layers (that also helps if I have to wear the shirt more than once). 

But until I read Geek Feminism’s wiki on conference t-shirts, I never realized what a big deal this was. While I know that staffing cons means I’ll have to spend another weekend wearing unflattering clothing, I didn’t think about how the male staffers aren’t worrying about this one bit. While I look sloppy and unprofessional in my ill fitting shirt, men look great. In the end, I’ll look less authoritative, be less likely to be asked for help from convention attendees, and be less likely to be promoted to a higher position.

Women’s inequality is so deeply ingrained in our culture that most of the time I hardly notice it. It’s weird how it comes out in something small, like t-shirts. 

While I think it’s too drastic in calling it a “feminist” issue, it is one based on ignorance and enforcing stereotypes on “geek girls”, assuming they would pick comfort over style. I attended AFO 2011 and I witnessed a lot of dealer booths having anime, video game, pop culture,etc. shirts but in men’s sizes. Others were “unisex/one size fits all” but because of that, it makes me think the shirts were tailored in a lazy way. Needless to say, did not purchase any of them (even if I wanted to make it work because of how awesome/funny/creative the designs were, the sizing matter bothered me). Even in Hot Topic, slowly but surely you see women’s t-shirt sizes with popular characters and shows, so why aren’t anime apparel companies and conventions taking notice? FUNimation apparel department, I’m looking at you!

I don’t think I’m being drastic when I call this a feminist issue. If it’s about equality between men and women, it’s about feminism. However, in no way do I think sexism is to blame. As I mentioned on my Wordpress blog, I am one of the people who was responsible for getting the t-shirt order done for Anime USA in 2010. It’s very important to us, in fact, to make sure everybody gets their size — that’s why we order size S through XXXXXL. But it never occurred to me to get women’s sizes too! 

I think it just shows that the idea of men’s bodies being the norm and women’s bodies being somehow deviant is deeply ingrained in our culture.