"She"
The creeping (and slightly creepy) anthropomorphism of women's clothing.
A sandal is “she.”
A top is “she.”
A frock from some farkakte little shop is “she” . . .(Apologies to Alan Jay Lerner, “The Parisians”)
What’s up with the pronouns? No, not the singular epicene they/them/their that people like to celebrate or deplore. I’m talking here about feminine pronouns applied to inanimate objects. And no, not ships, which have been called “she” and “her” for centuries, supposedly because a ship is a protective mother or goddess figure.
Nope, what has my attention here are skirts and shoes and even whole brands. Suddenly we’re calling them all she, as if they’re dolls or pets or BFFs.
Here are six of the many inanimate she-creatures I’ve spotted recently:
Some context for the next one: Mother is an Los Angeles-based denim brand, founded in 2010, that sells apparel for women and men. Mother is the brand name; there is no “herself.”
It’s not just civilians on social media doing this, either. Here’s some copy from AYR1 , a California brand of casual clothing:
Note that the pronouns come in only one gender: feminine. AYR, for example, sells men’s as well as women’s clothes, but I haven’t seen anything from the men’s side that’s a “he” — not even a shirt called The Captain (a snappy military-core number that could conceivably be addressed as Sir, Yes, Sir).
It’s true that some manufacturers and retailers give women’s names to women’s apparel and accessories: the Ana boot, the Colette pants, the Vanessa dress. But there’s a cognitive divide between giving a style a little personality and regarding it as a real live girl. (Besides, some women’s styles have men’s names, e.g., Tibi’s Liam Blazer. They can still be she. Weird!) And the occasional use of personal names doesn’t explain the cooing genderization of a whole range of goods and even, as we’ve seen, the buildings that house them.
This is, I’m quite certain, a recent development. I spent many years in retail marketing, writing copy for all sorts of products from diapers to slippers to women’s resort wear — oy, those cabana coordinates! — and each of the items I rhapsodized was clearly and firmly an it. Even a Banana Republic Amelia Earhart Jacket, named for the doomed aviatrix and remembered with great fondness: it, not she. We knew the difference between animate and inanimate, between the label of the thing and the thing itself.
Why the shift? What has caused consumers — let’s get real, women — to think of scraps of fabric and leather as female creatures? Is clothing-personification the last bastion of the gender binary?
I invite your observations and theories.
UPDATE! On Bluesky, lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower told me that his “younger informants” attribute the popularity of “she” to “its frequent use on RuPaul’s Drag Race.” I am embarrassed to admit that I’ve never watched the show, but it doesn’t surprise me that it would have sparked the trend. Black, gay, and drag slang has been enriching our vocabulary for decades.
The initials stand for All Year Round. The clothes are pretty great — I own two excellent pairs of AYR pants — but the copy can be a smidge too-too.
Excellent (as always) essay, Nancy!
Also: It's always fun to drop the little tidbit (no! not factoid!) that She Who Must Be Obeyed derives not from Rumpole but from Haggard and watch people's shocked faces.
I think there are a couple things at work. One is our fetishization of products, the (positive if problematic) feeling that our possessions, particularly in fashion, are our allies or even extensions of us. Hence the ladies calling the bags "she." It's a form of respect and adoration on one level. I could see myself thinking it was cute doing the same thing.
BUT whether we know it or not, we've been conditioned to think it's more natural to use "she" for objects because of our rich history of objectifying women, thinking of them as things to be owned and controlled, that exist for other people's benefit rather than independently. Hence the reason it would feel less natural, if not totally implausible, to hear a guy call his messenger bag "he."
Fascinating topic! Claps!