Why Is Western Fashion So Popular Around the World

Did you lot ever notice that the buttons on a shirt are on opposite sides for men and women? Curious to find out how World State of war II changed women'southward shaving habits? Ever thought about why men stopped wearing loftier heels? And what makes the 4th finger on our left mitt the "ring finger"?

These aren't but random happenings or frivolous decisions past style magazines. Sometimes, state of war or other serious considerations influenced how we wearing apparel. In fact, there is a fascinating history behind many modern fashion trends. Read on to get the scoop behind some of our more puzzling style choices.

ten Why Women Shave Their Legs

Women have not always shaved their legs. Indeed, under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who was a trendsetter of her time, women weren't expected to remove body hair. Instead, the fashion police force of that era dictated that women ought to remove eyebrows and pilus from their foreheads to make their faces appear longer. Just leg hair? No demand to shave.

So why did that change?

The simple respond is Globe War II. During the war, the The states experienced a stockings shortage every bit the authorities redirected the use of nylon from stockings to war parachutes. For women, the nylon shortage meant having to bare their legs in public. To be deemed socially adequate, women began to shave their legs. After the war, as skirts became shorter, the trend stuck around.^[ane]

ix Why Girls Wear Pink And Boys Clothing Blueish

We accept all been in that location. At a babe shower, the color of everything—from the tablecloths to the napkins—corresponds to the gender of the baby. Blue is for boys, and pinkish is for girls. But things were non e'er this way.

For centuries, children younger than six mostly wore flowing white dresses according to University of Maryland historian Jo B. Paoletti, who wrote Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America. "White cotton can exist bleached," she says, which made it a practical selection.

In the 1900s, colors began to be used as gender signifiers. Just the colors did not mean what they practice at present. For instance, a June 1918 article from a popular style magazine alleged:

"The by and large accepted rule is pink for the boys and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more than decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."^[2]

Withal, Paoletti says that these trends weren't particularly widespread.

Around 1985, that all inverse with the rise of prenatal testing, which allowed parents to determine the gender of the child. Equally expectant parents learned the sex of their babies, they began to shop for "daughter" or "boy" merchandise. Retailers noticed and individualized clothing to increase their sales.

For the virtually office, this tendency appears to have stuck. But Paoletti warns that it presents challenges for children who practise not conform to the colors assigned to their gender.

8 Why Women'south And Men's Buttons Are On Opposite Sides

Odds are you lot own a button-upwards shirt. Accept a look at which side the buttons are on. If you're a human, chances are the buttons are on the right. If y'all're a woman, you'll likely find your buttons on the left.

At that place's an interesting historical reason for this. Melanie M. Moore, who created women's blouse brand Elizabeth & Clarke, explains: "When buttons were invented in the 13th century, they were, like nearly new applied science, very expensive. [ . . . ] Wealthy women dorsum then did not dress themselves—their lady'south maid did. Since most people were correct-handed, this made it easier for someone continuing beyond from you to push button your dress."^[3]

As for men'due south shirts, style historian Chloe Chapin traces the fashion quirk to the armed services. "Access to a weapon . . . practically trumped everything," she says, noting that a firearm tucked inside a shirt would exist easier to reach from the ascendant side.

7 Why Men Stopped Wearing Loftier Heels

For generations, a pair of loftier heels has signaled feminine beauty. Merely before so, loftier heels were a staple in men'due south closets.

Elizabeth Semmelhack of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto says, "The high heel was worn for centuries throughout the Near East as a form of riding footwear. [ . . . ] When the soldier stood up in his stirrups, the heel helped him to secure his stance and so that he could shoot his bow and arrow more finer."^[4]

Well-nigh the 15th century, when Persian-European cultural substitution heightened, European aristocrats adopted high-heeled shoes as a symbol of their wealth. Co-ordinate to Semmelhack, elites have ever used impractical vesture to showcase their privileged condition.

Fast-forward to the Enlightenment era, which ostensibly brought with it an appreciation for the applied, and men began to renounce the impractical high heel. But sexism prohibited women from beingness viewed as rational beings. Semmelhack suggests that the desirability of women was so seen in terms of irrational way choices like the high heel.

6 Why We Paint Our Nails

If you thought the manicure was a new phenomenon, you would be wrong. Did you know that the earth's oldest manicure set, made from solid golden dating to 3200 BC, is over 5,000 years sometime? The ancient Babylonians, who created that set, were known to have loved caring for their nails.

Ming Dynasty elites were also fans of painted nails, using a mixture of egg whites, gelatin, and rubber to dye their nails cherry-red and black. In England, Elizabeth I, a fashion icon of her day, was widely admired for her manicured nails and cute hands.^[5]

Suzanne Shapiro, a researcher at The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, says that long fingernails are impractical for hard labor, and so they have tended to signal an aristocracy social condition.

But Shapiro admits that nail trends come and become. During the 1920s and '30s, the French manicure was in. However, during the 1960s, women preferred a more natural look and rarely painted their nails.

5 Why Long Hair Became A Thing For Women

While hair trends have fallen in and out of fashion, one thing across cultures and millennia has remained fairly abiding: the expectation that women would have long pilus. We've seen it from the depiction of a long-haired Aphrodite to St. Paul's alphabetic character to the Corinthians, in which he wrote, "If a woman has long hair, information technology is a glory to her."

Kurt Stenn, author of Pilus: A Human being History, says that women virtually always accept longer hair than men. Merely why?

According to Stenn, a former professor of pathology and dermatology at Yale, hair is highly chatty. Information technology sends messages almost sexuality, religious beliefs, and power. In particular, he believes that long hair tin can communicate wellness and wealth.

"To accept long hair, you have to be good for you," Stenn says. "Yous take to eat well, have no diseases, no infectious organisms, you lot have to have proficient rest and exercise." He adds, "To take long hair, y'all have to take your needs in life taken intendance of, which implies you have the wealth to exercise information technology."^[6]

four Why Some People Sag Their Pants

In 2014, the Ocala, Florida, city council passed an ordinance banning the exercise of sagging (wearing 1'south pants below the waistline or, in some cases, the buttocks) on city-owned holding. An offender would receive a $500 fine or six months in jail.

Similar bans take surfaced from New Jersey to Tennessee. The rationale behind this sort of legislation unremarkably goes something like this: Sagging represents a dangerous lack of self-respect and an comprehend of gang civilisation. It is a symbol of moral decline.

But how did sagging originate?

According to University of Massachusetts historian Tanisha C. Ford, the origins of sagging tin't be definitively traced. Simply there are ii leading theories. The get-go is that inmates, prohibited from wearing belts in prison, often sagged their uniforms. And so they connected the style after returning habitation. The second theory is that convicts wore their pants depression every bit a means of letting other prisoners know they were sexually bachelor.^[7]

3 Why We Wear Wedding Bands On The 'Ring Finger'

"With this band, I thee midweek." The ring is slipped onto the fourth finger of the left hand, and at that place you have information technology—a bride and groom! But have you ever asked yourself why we slip our nuptials bands onto the "ring finger"?

The tradition can exist traced back to Roman times. The Romans believed that a vein ran directly from the heart to the ring finger. They named it the vena amoris ("vein of dear"). Naturally, they thought it'd be fitting to identify one's wedding ring on that finger. Quite romantic!

By the style, modern science has proven that all fingers have a vein connectedness to our hearts.^[8]

ii Why Men Wear Ties

Ties. They don't keep united states of america warm, aren't practical, and are ofttimes uncomfortable. So why do men wear them?

Almost neckwear historians agree that the necktie grew in prominence around the time of the 30 Years' State of war in the 1600s. To fight the war, King Louis 13 employed Croatian mercenaries who wore a slice of material around their necks.

While these early neckties were largely functional—they tied the tops of their jackets—King Louis XIII liked them as sartorial adornments. Indeed, he made these early neckties mandatory apparel for formal gatherings and named them afterwards the Croation mercenaries: cravate. To this day, that means necktie in France.

Curiously, Croatia celebrates national Cravat 24-hour interval every October 18. In 2003, they commemorated the vacation by tying an 808-meter (2,650 ft) necktie around the historic Roman amphitheater in Pula.^[9]

1 Why Women Shave Their Armpits

Women and men have had armpit hair for millennia. So why do roughly 95 per centum of women shave or wax their underarms? Who woke upward ane day and decided that women with armpit hair are unsightly?

Well, we can thank a 1915 Harper's Boutique advertisement for that. Earlier then, women with bushy pits were the norm. But the advertizing told women that modern dancing and sleeveless dresses were the next big thing and that "objectionable hair" was out. The advertizement featured a photograph of a young woman in a sleeveless dress. Her arms were arched over her head, revealing perfectly clear armpits.

Within a few years and afterwards an onslaught of advertisements promoting the trend, hairless armpits were a thing and natural hair was something embarrassing. Indeed, a 2013 Arizona State University study measured disgust triggered by women with armpit pilus. It yielded responses similar: "I think women who don't shave are a little gross."^[ten]

Just natural, hairy pits might be making a improvement. One recent report found that one in four millennial women practise not shave or wax their pits.

Oscar is a Master of Public Policy student at the University of Oxford. He is originally from Los Angeles, California.

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