"We're just used to seeing women humiliated."

This phrase was describing why when women wear men's clothes, it's not a big deal, but when men dress as women (such as in comedic skits/movies), it's hilarious.

In one sense, I hated this. I'm still grappling with what femininity is and isn't, and the meaning and place of beauty. I don't like the idea that women being beautiful is proof they are being exploited and humiliated. Men and women have some innate differences, one of which seems to be that women are more beautiful and men are deeply moved by that beauty. That doesn't have to come from something nefarious.

However, I couldn't dispute that the difference between male and female dress codes is extreme and absolutely places a heavier burden on women. Some men will complain about it being hard to be jacked, but that's a distracting argument because it's not the standard we have for men. Most men are not very fit and it doesn't impede their success unless they go into a looks-based field like modeling, Under normal circumstances, nobody would say a word to men about how they need to change their appearance. If men have basic hygiene and dress decently, they'll be fine. (In fact, the only time I regularly hear about men dealing with serious pressure about their appearance is in the gay community....where the pressure is coming from other men.)

Women on the other hand are actually competing with standards that don't come from reality: even super models are getting photoshopped. Knowing it's fake doesn't help; the damage is done because our brains will always automatically compare. Real women have acne, pores, scars, hair, cellulite, all of which are omitted from the allegedly "perfect" images that grace the majority of advertisements and entertainment, leaving one to conclude that these traits are bad. The more images of altered women we see, the harder it is to recognize the beauty in natural women.

It's hard for real people to feel good about their natural bodies when most of us rarely see real anywhere but in the mirror, if even then. Not only are our friends using makeup and filters on social media, further skewing our sense of what women really look like, but selfie-mode on most cameras puts a filter on our faces automatically!

For women, we are assessed on every strand of our hair, our skin, and our shape (with styles ranging between heroin chic in the 90s to "thin-thick" by the 2010's, as though women's bodies should trend just as much as clothing styles). Our wardrobe is assessed, with very high standards including formal occasions calling for dangerous, unhealthy, excruciating heels, confining shapewear, revealing dresses which often restrict movement for fear of popping stitches or revealing more boobs or booty than intended. A woman dressed this way by necessity spends a significant amount of her bandwidth monitoring her appearance while most men are unlikely to be worrying about the state of their makeup, hair, and clothing, or if they look bloated after eating.

Even workout wear for women is primarily about displaying the body in a sexy way. I love Casey Ho and Blogilates, and really credit with her helping me find a way to exercise that helped me work around a permanent problem with my ankle. In so many ways, she is an inspiration as a business owner/founder, designer, fitness coach, and human being. I also know that her clothing line Popflex has been responsive to customer concerns about the need for diverse sizing, especially for women with larger breasts.

However, when I watched her Instagram post about her line of skorts, I was saddened. She points out how her skorts are "longer" so "there is no booty cheek hanging out after your run." She uses a ruler to show that it is four inches from the middle of the gusset to the hem, or approximately a 2.5" inseam after covering the crotch.

Deconstruct this for a minute. A 2.5-inch inseam is considered "longer" than....apparently the market average. A 2.5-inch inseam will absolutely roll up on the average woman's thighs because thighs are still widening that close to the groin. Think: basically every inch of the leg exposed, thighs chafing while running except for the rare woman with a thigh gap, and the little bit of inseam rolling up into the groin. At what level is a pair of shorts/skorts this length serving the woman wearing them?

Can you imagine men talking about how they love their teeny tiny shorts that just barely keep them from exposing themselves when they move? Try to imagine people getting teenage boys to wear a similar outfit. If I taught my teenage son to shave his legs and wear micro shorts, it would rightfully be considered child abuse. So what about when we do this to our daughters? To ourselves?

Take almost any outfit marketed to women and imagine it being worn by Jeff Bezos. It's absurd to imagine a bajillionaire wearing revealing clothes where nothing is really left to the imagination, and tottering around on heels. Throw in painting a face on top of his face (makeup) and removing all of his body hair south of his eyelashes. We know instinctively men wouldn't tolerate these demands being placed on them.

So why do we?