The male and female silhouette in contemporary fasion

When looking at a store like H&M, it's interesting to see what kind of representation of the male and female silhouette is given. The first thing that's noticeable when visiting H&M's online store, is the enormous similarity between the skirts that are sold. Practically all of them are what we call tubular skirts. Tubular skirts belong to the three fundamental skirt contours, the other two being the bell-shaped skirt and the back-fulness skirt. The bell-shaped skirt, as the name suggests, has the wearer standing in the middle of a bell. The back-fulness skirt has a straight front, but a back that protrudes. (Brooks Young, 2007). In the H&M store, we can find some examples of bell-shaped skirts, but they're outnumbered by tubular skirts, and back-fulness shirts are nowhere to be found. An example of a female silhouette in the H&M store looks like this:

The tubular skirt is the youngest type of skirt. More than both other types of skirt, this skirt follows the natural lines of the body. The other two types hide this shape. Maybe we could state that in today's society, it's seen as less provoking when a woman shows her natural forms than it used to be before. Another interesting thing about the skirt is that it is both short and long at the same time. The chiffon skirt reaches all the way to the ground, while the liner skirt ends above the knee. It's short enough to possibly be provoking, and yet covers her from her waist to her feet.

Equally interesting is the way the man is portrayed. For example, this is one of H&M's male models wearing clothes from the current collection:

While at this point, most of the men modeling for H&M are still being portrayed as reasonably masculine, it's not too difficult to notice there are, in fact, slightly feminine models and clothes being shown as well. The model above is wearing skinny jeans that show off his legs, and the top he's wearing has a very low neckline, giving him something that almost looks like cleavage. Physically, he seems quite slender as well, and his clothes emphasize this. They are clothes that I, as a girl, could get away with wearing without being asked if I bought them at the men's department. Clothes, as Philip Stubbes states, leave a "print of character" on whoever's wearing them, and cause others to deduce from these clothes what someone's character is like (Jones & Stallybrass, 2007). Therefore, wearing feminine clothes can do damage to a man's masculinity. Especially in earlier times, a man doing this could be seen as weak and vulnerable. The fact that brands like H&M choose to make feminine clothing available to men seems to suggest that feminine characteristics in men are becoming less of a big deal, and are even becoming fashionable.