A girl in a miniskirt cannot go unnoticed. This item of women’s wardrobe, which first appeared in the distant 60s and became a symbol of women’s freedom, still excites and causes heated debate. So, what does the girl want to say when putting on a miniskirt, and what message do others see in this outfit?
“Provocation is the instigation of someone to take actions that can lead to dire consequences for him,” says Ozhegova’s dictionary. Who would have thought that a skirt that didn’t seem to have enough fabric could have such a strong impact! Like hair and makeup, like words and deeds, clothing is one of the means of self-expression, it shows what drives us. By choosing things that emphasize the dignity of the figure, we can make it clear that we want to attract attention to ourselves, arouse desire, stir up interest. But we may well not want this! Here’s the rub. Although we manage our messages ourselves, we inevitably become the object of other people’s projections and fantasies, including erotic ones. And not only men.
“The idea of a short skirt as a weapon of seduction is cultivated by those who are close to the patriarchal view of the relationship between men and women,” explains psychotherapist and sexologist Dmitry Isaev. — In this system, a man is the subject (initiator) of relationships, and a woman is an object that attracts men, and this is probably his main value. At the same time, clothes or makeup are considered in isolation from a specific person, his personality and, from the point of view of the viewer, signal the availability of a woman, her readiness to become a victim. ».
In this case, it turns out that men are just males, driven by instincts and unable to control themselves, since one skirt is enough to deprive them of self-control?
“The fact is that calmly accepting our sexuality is difficult for all of us: both men and women,” explains psychoanalyst Catherine Blanc. — What, if not about the fear of the power of desire, says the desire of men to shift responsibility for their own sexual impulses to women? And isn’t the willingness of women to self-censor the same thing? The woman agrees to suppress her desire and consider the miniskirt as an unacceptable form of clothing, so that someone does not condemn her, and above all, so that she herself does not consider herself guilty.
“And yet, in the context of modern culture, talking about this ordinary element of European fashion as an erotic signal is as absurd as discussing whether women in some African tribes expose their breasts for the purpose of provocation,” notes Dmitry Isaev. “In our time, it’s not clothes at all, but such emotional and behavioral signals as a smile, a look, a tilt of the head, a gesture indicate a woman’s refusal or readiness to communicate with a man. In the process of socialization, we learn to recognize these nonverbal cues and respond appropriately to them. The inability to read them and the unwillingness to see the other person as a person is a sign of a propensity for sexual violence and an inability to build partnerships.