women might have their self-image of looking good (and special) harmed if they show up dressed exactly like another woman.
Since I don’t care as much about what I wear as most women (evidence: I own exactly one pair of shoes, typically wear no jewelry except a digital watch, and usually go at least several months between reluctant visits to clothing vendors), I can’t access a lot of this psychology via introspection. However, I suspect that when women dress up, the idea is to display a skill, at least as much as it is to display status. The skill is to create a unique, yet suitably mainstream-attractive look (or to hit some sweet spot of quirkiness). Showing up in duplicate outfits impugns the skills of both women (or more, if you wind up with a situation like that scene in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”). If you wear expensive things, most other people cannot afford those articles and you get an automatic “uniqueness” edge; this explains why people who can afford very expensive accessories deplore knockoffs.
I agree pretty much entirely; I didn’t want to get into the issue of displaying skill and taste, since it gets even more complex and my post seemed long enough.
I’m not sure about the distaste for knockoffs coming from a desire for “uniqueness.” I don’t think that rich women mind that other rich women have the same, say, Luis Vuitton bag; I think they mind when any woman who wants it can have a Luis Vuitton bag that looks like what they spent serious money on. It ceases to be a clear status symbol. It seems that the effect on signaling is greater than the effect on uniqueness.
However, I suspect that when women dress up, the idea is to display a skill, at least as much as it is to display status.
I’ve seen a different evolutionary explanation, which is that females’ gene propagation is best served by cultivating uniqueness, in order to convince a man that there is no one else like her. Whereas a man’s gene propagation is best served (if he’s not the leader of the group, that is) if all men appear to be the same.
The article I read about this discussed dancing as an example of this phenomenon, noting that in nearly every known culture, traditional dances done by females are either individual or emphasize individual characteristics, whereas dances done by men are synchronous group affairs in which they all try to look the same, in order to disguise their individual differences and conceal their relative skills.
There was also a bunch of stuff about scent, martial ability, and other signals being read in male/female dances, how certain male-female dance moves common to many cultures have the function of bringing a woman’s face past a man’s underarm so she can smell his genetic compatibility or lack thereof, how men’s skill at individual dance affects both their perceived desirability as sex partners by women and how likely they are to stray… even an explanation of why men are generally far more reluctant to dance or learn how to do so than women are, unless they are confident they’ll be highly skilled at it.
Anyway, the strong implication I got was that women would likely have evolved to have a negative reaction to looking the same as another woman, because it would make them appear more interchangeable, and thus less likely to sustain the commitment of a man through pregnancy and childbirth (vs. “losing” the man to her lookalike competitor).
Whatever form this reaction manifests in—whether as just a feeling of being gauche or unskilled, or as an elaborate theory of “objectification”, there would certainly be a strong evolutionary benefit to such an adaptation, and quite likely a bigger benefit than would come from merely displaying skill to other women. Of course, it might also be that skill at presentation also signals to other women, “I am a strong competitor, so don’t try to take ‘my’ man” (whether ‘my’ means the one they have, or the one they’re going after).
However, I suspect that when women dress up, the idea is to display a skill, at least as much as it is to display status.
In reality, the wealthier you are, the less personal skill is involved, to the point where red-carpet celebrities are dressed by couturiers (i.e. at x event so-and-so was dressed by Marc Jacobs). I suppose the less status you have, the more skill you need, but I think that skill is employed for the purpose of faking higher status.
You can still go very, very wrong despite spending a lot of money. Celebrities with couture designers are in kind of a special position, since no matter how bad they look, they have a significant power to define what counts as fashionable. Rich people who are not fashion icons can go very very wrong, even (and in some cases especially) if they buy whatever couture the celebrities were wearing.
Since I don’t care as much about what I wear as most women (evidence: I own exactly one pair of shoes, typically wear no jewelry except a digital watch, and usually go at least several months between reluctant visits to clothing vendors), I can’t access a lot of this psychology via introspection. However, I suspect that when women dress up, the idea is to display a skill, at least as much as it is to display status. The skill is to create a unique, yet suitably mainstream-attractive look (or to hit some sweet spot of quirkiness). Showing up in duplicate outfits impugns the skills of both women (or more, if you wind up with a situation like that scene in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”). If you wear expensive things, most other people cannot afford those articles and you get an automatic “uniqueness” edge; this explains why people who can afford very expensive accessories deplore knockoffs.
I agree pretty much entirely; I didn’t want to get into the issue of displaying skill and taste, since it gets even more complex and my post seemed long enough.
I’m not sure about the distaste for knockoffs coming from a desire for “uniqueness.” I don’t think that rich women mind that other rich women have the same, say, Luis Vuitton bag; I think they mind when any woman who wants it can have a Luis Vuitton bag that looks like what they spent serious money on. It ceases to be a clear status symbol. It seems that the effect on signaling is greater than the effect on uniqueness.
I’ve seen a different evolutionary explanation, which is that females’ gene propagation is best served by cultivating uniqueness, in order to convince a man that there is no one else like her. Whereas a man’s gene propagation is best served (if he’s not the leader of the group, that is) if all men appear to be the same.
The article I read about this discussed dancing as an example of this phenomenon, noting that in nearly every known culture, traditional dances done by females are either individual or emphasize individual characteristics, whereas dances done by men are synchronous group affairs in which they all try to look the same, in order to disguise their individual differences and conceal their relative skills.
There was also a bunch of stuff about scent, martial ability, and other signals being read in male/female dances, how certain male-female dance moves common to many cultures have the function of bringing a woman’s face past a man’s underarm so she can smell his genetic compatibility or lack thereof, how men’s skill at individual dance affects both their perceived desirability as sex partners by women and how likely they are to stray… even an explanation of why men are generally far more reluctant to dance or learn how to do so than women are, unless they are confident they’ll be highly skilled at it.
Anyway, the strong implication I got was that women would likely have evolved to have a negative reaction to looking the same as another woman, because it would make them appear more interchangeable, and thus less likely to sustain the commitment of a man through pregnancy and childbirth (vs. “losing” the man to her lookalike competitor).
Whatever form this reaction manifests in—whether as just a feeling of being gauche or unskilled, or as an elaborate theory of “objectification”, there would certainly be a strong evolutionary benefit to such an adaptation, and quite likely a bigger benefit than would come from merely displaying skill to other women. Of course, it might also be that skill at presentation also signals to other women, “I am a strong competitor, so don’t try to take ‘my’ man” (whether ‘my’ means the one they have, or the one they’re going after).
In reality, the wealthier you are, the less personal skill is involved, to the point where red-carpet celebrities are dressed by couturiers (i.e. at x event so-and-so was dressed by Marc Jacobs). I suppose the less status you have, the more skill you need, but I think that skill is employed for the purpose of faking higher status.
You can still go very, very wrong despite spending a lot of money. Celebrities with couture designers are in kind of a special position, since no matter how bad they look, they have a significant power to define what counts as fashionable. Rich people who are not fashion icons can go very very wrong, even (and in some cases especially) if they buy whatever couture the celebrities were wearing.