48 Comments
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Theodric's avatar

38 year old straight male here. Have to say, lot of these were pretty bad. Clearly I don’t know anything about fashion (and fashion is not for straight men).

I don’t know, a lot just had something… off. Outfit 1 feels kinda like pedo bait, it’s going for sexy but also an 8 year old girl’s idea of a rainbow princess.

I love the look of a woman in well-tailored business attire, but both outfit 2 and 20 are very poorly fitted (20 in particular looks like a Halloween gangster costume).

I know it’s trendy but some of these just have weird lines - on 19 you’ve got the high hemline, high waist, long sleeves, on a model that is already very slim and tall and shot from a little below, and she looks like she’s 90% legs. I understand that I might be straying too close to “preferred body type” vs. “Preferred fashion style” but I honestly find that look unflattering - a longer slightly more form fitting skirt or pants would make that top look better to me. Incidentally that one also hits the “pedo bait” trigger for me with the soft pink and school uniform styling.

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Cartoons Hate Her's avatar

I don’t read the top one as little-girly at all, but thinking all of the outfits suck is fine lol. These aren’t supposed to necessarily be stylish I just wanted to see how different people reacted to them. I probably only like about 15% of them

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Theodric's avatar

Ha, I feel a little better that I’m not supposed to like all of them.

I have a 2 year old daughter and #1 looks like a princess costume on one of her dolls - the puffy skirt and shoulders, the cotton candy colors - but with the high hemline and bare legs the look is also clearly going for very sexy. I think it’s that combination of trying to be both a little girl’s and a man’s fantasy woman that is off putting. I’m not on the Sabrina Carpenter hate train but I feel like that look is hitting those same buttons.

Where do you think an adult woman would be wearing that?

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Cartoons Hate Her's avatar

I feel like I follow a lot of women who are into the hyper-feminine poofy baroque stuff so a dress like that for them is very “female gaze” (if there is such a thing) which is why I included it, especially because some of the criticisms they get is specifically what you mention- but they don’t see it that way (neither do I, but it’s not my style either.)

As for where they’d wear it, either parties or to take photos for instagram lmao

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Theodric's avatar

Fair enough. I don’t want to overstate it, the model is clearly an adult woman and I’m not saying someone who is into that is literally a pedo or trolling for them. For me it’s just a not quite harmonious mix of whimsy and slutty.

Maybe “cosplay” is what I’m going for? Yeah, it seems very costumey or “theme night”. There is probably a scenario where it’s very hot but 99% of the time it’s going to stand out in an awkward way. I think I rated it similarly to the Ren Faire dress and the all black lacy goth chick.

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LastBlueDog's avatar

I also rated the first one very low because it felt uncomfortably little girlish. I would avoid speaking with a woman wearing that.

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Joe's avatar

I think it looks like doll clothing because most events today aren't suited for women to dress in such a feminine and attention-grabbing way without also being sexualized. The only place we see it is in children's dolls and stories, where we still culturally attempt to turn down the sexuality. If we had more formal occasions as a culture that were not oriented around sexuality, we'd probably see more of that kind of dress on adult women.

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Theodric's avatar

I don’t think you’d see that kind of dress - you’d see a ball gown or other formal evening wear, and it wouldn’t be in pastel rainbow colors. It *definitely* wouldn’t end several inches above the knee.

You *might* see something like that at one of the formal red carpet events where some women take a deliberately provocative/extravagant/costumey approach. But even at, say, the Oscars, the “best dressed” are wearing looks that are longer and more modern and mature.

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Sol's avatar
Feb 23Edited

Most of the outfits are either awful or outfits for older women.

Maybe you should have added a question about where we are from? ( edit: as in some of the outfits feel gaudy in a uniquely American way)

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Daniel J's avatar

Why are most of these outfits so terrible 😂 There was like one genuinely hot one

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LastBlueDog's avatar

Agreed. Even the ones that looked they were supposed to be ‘the hot ones’ somehow did not come off as attractive.

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Rick's avatar

"rate from 1-10, with 10 being the MOST visually appealing (or sexually attractive)"

These can be mutually exclusive, like an outfit with good use of patterns and colors but inspires nothing in terms of sexual attractiveness. How do we vote then?

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Cartoons Hate Her's avatar

Yeah I was trying to reconcile that. I’d say to average those two numbers.

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Theodric's avatar

Yeah I had that too. #3 for example is a good outfit if you’re going to be shin deep in a creek in the fall, and she probably looks about as good as one can in that scenario. I feel like I’d get along with the sort of woman who would wear that. (I’m a bit of a sucker for the “upscale hunting lodge” vibe.) But it’s not really “sexy”.

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Mewdy Bloo's avatar

I tried to rate them base on whether I’d wear them.

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breanna's avatar

I'm glad there was an age question 😂 my generation and trends definitely impacted some of my ratings...although some of these outfits completely ate 💯

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Ventriloquist Kevin Driscoll's avatar

We're just a bunch of dummies in Boston, but our 40" Ventriloquist Puppet Jessica claims to like ALL of them!

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cj's avatar

i loved this task, always happy to do such a survey

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assssssss's avatar

Damn. That survey had some real stinker outfits!!!

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Grant11955's avatar

I’d like to do it. Straight white male over 60.

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Tom Whittington's avatar

Was this supposed to be accepting responses for like 12 hours? I got so excited about an opportunity to be catty for the greater good...

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Cyncaine's avatar

Aw, man! I went to take the survey, but it’s “no longer accepting responses.” Guess l missed the train.

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Michelle's avatar

I enjoyed this quiz immensely. As a gay woman into fashion I struggled a bit on how to rate these, because some outfits I thought were cute but I was not sexually attracted to them at all, and some I would never consider wearing but could see myself finding attractive on another woman. A lot of them I just felt like “this is fine, I have no overpowering feelings”, but maybe I should have been meaner!

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ThinkPieceOfPie's avatar

I didn't over think it. I just thought, if I were at a party, would I want to meet her? Some of these were for parties I probably wouldn't go to, but I just rolled with it. Fun!

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Rose's avatar

Curious about what you'll be doing with this data! I found myself rating the less revealing, more slouchy and comfortable outfits much higher because the fabrics looked richer/more luxurious and the silhouettes and styles were more trendy (or at least were more timeless) compared to the more revealing outfits, which, to my mind, mainly looked very dated and cheap.

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Anu's avatar

I found this survey hard to fill out because most of the time when I appreciate an outfit it’s not because it’s sexually or visually appealing per se - and I say that as a woman who is attracted to women. So the survey felt like it was conflating two things - would you find this outfit sexually attractive/ do you like this as an outfit i.e. would you wear it or like it if other women wore it. Which feels very different to me. Like I might like an outfit in, say, a porn scenario but would feel very differently if a woman actually wore it in real life.

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Lisa C's avatar

A lot of these were very attractive to my lesbian gaze, especially the sweatpantsy looks, but #13 immediately makes me think of a 14 y/o and is a complete turnoff. Other than that I mostly liked the looks!

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Laura's avatar

As a professional statistician, I am READY to deep dive into these results! Lets' get some descriptive statistics up in here with a sprinkling of subgroup comparisons. 🤓 Let me know if I can help 😆🙃

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Or Goldreich's avatar

I'd be curious to use PCA to see how many main preference archetypes exist among the survey's answerers.

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Laura's avatar

😆 totally!

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