Ask Mike: Blouse persecution
Hey Guys,
Consider for a moment, the shirt. Seemingly simple. Just a piece of clothing with buttons and thread. And yet an infinite number of problems can arise. One of the more popular questions has to do with dry cleaning. Specifically, why do women pay more to have a blouse dry cleaned than man do for dress shirts?
It is a question that folks have been pondering and getting angry about for years. Heck, Slate did an exposé on the injustice back in 1998. Since then, however, dry cleaners have spoken up. On a message board from Slate, two dry cleaners argue that the reason for the price difference is that the shirts are not often treated the same way. Women’s shirts (most of ‘em, anyway) are “dry cleaned.” Men’s shirts, on the other hand, are “laundered.”
Ah, but why? Again, according to the message board, women’s shirts have to be dry cleaned for two main reasons. One, they have “different blends of fabric.” And two, most blouses are too small to fit on the presses used for laundering shirts. A dry cleaner’s official site offers a FAQ on this very topic. Shirts that may be laundered (not dry cleaned) “are pressed using a machine and then touched up with an iron by hand.” Apparently small shirts will tear if they are machine pressed. Quoth Accent Cleaners: “Shirts and blouses are priced according to the amount of work it takes to finish an item.” It’s just that women’s shirts typically require more work.
Makes sense, but not everybody is buying it. There are a slew of questions within Yahoo! Answers on this very topic, and outraged blogs, like this one, are all over the Web.
What do you guys think about the great blouse vs. shirt debate? Have you encountered this problem at your local dry cleaner? Have you asked about their pricing policy? Please leave a comment, outraged or otherwise, below.
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One of the main reason a woman’s blouses cost more to commercially clean is they have all kinds of frills and laces and special buttons. Not only that but many are of special, high cost fabrics that the process is uncertain.They also are more critical than men. and create a high liability cost on the service.
All men require is that the shirt be cleaned, well starched for body and smartly pressed. Most men’s fabrics are simple and readily available. They usually don’t have all the frills and lace. If the above criteria are met, men don’t criticize as much.
The fact is that women’s blouses will not fit properly on the “buck” (shirt press) and must be hand finished. This requires an additional presser in every plant. I have seen the operation as my wife managed dry cleaning stores and plants for a time. Simply, there is more labor involved. More labor of course raises the cost.
“Specifically, why do women pay more to have a blouse dry cleaned than man do for dress shirts?”
Should be men =]
No debate. Some people feel like victims.
If more women wore all cotton or high cotton blends (which can be wet laundered) instead of synthetic fibers or silk (which must usually be dry cleaned), more cleaners would have smaller devices to iron them and the cost would drop.
It might also help if women had less makeup on their blouses. It is easier to remove makeup from cotton than most other fibers.
So, after all these years they can’t figure out how to make a press for smaller shirts so they have one for large shirts, one for small? And what about small men? Do they pay more because their shirts don’t fit the press? And can larger women pay the man’s price since their shirts can probably fit the press? Sounds fishy to me.
this is why men should pay for dinner.
Women have all kinds of costs to live that men just don t.
Pete s sake, seen the cost of makeup?And we need way more razors than you, we have much more surface to mow.
Not to mention that time of the month and birth control costs..
I have been throwing everything together into the washer for years. No one can tell the difference.
I can say for that for me to iron my wife’s blouse it can be more work than to iron my own shirts even though my shirts are much larger. Delicate fabrics, sometimes frilly parts, more shaped.
Mens shirts tend to be more or less square, and properly fitted womens tops, obviously, have more shapes.
Note we have no pressing machines at home, its all labour.
Women have breasts. Breasts require darts. Dart’s don’t press flat. Not pressing flat takes more time and won’t fit on the press.
Women’s fabrics more ofen require dry cleaning because regardless of the material used in the garment, the stitching is almost universally cotton thread. Garment one material, thread another = dissimilar shrink rates = can’t get wet = dry clean only = much more expensive.
A more appropriate comparison would be to compare a woman’s blouse to a man’s pleated dress shirt.
Guy’s pay more for frilly shirts.
Prejudice? I think not.
Whining? Absolutely.
If this were truly a matter of dry cleaners taking advantage of women, surely there would be at least a few dry cleaners in areas of high competition (near commuter train stations, perhaps) that would equalize their price for women’s blouses to attract that business.
Since this doesn’t seem to be happening, I think we can assume that, for whatever assortment of reasons, dry cleaners can clean men’s shirts more cheaply, and they price the job accordingly.
Many of the assumptions of economists, such as Greenspan’s that investment banks can be trusted not to take risks so great that they might bankrupt themselves, have come under assault lately, but this one seems basic enough to hold.
I’m gonna have to go with the dry cleaners here… blouses are not plain ol’ shirts – they have “bells and whistles” (or buttons and frills) that regular shirts don’t have.
What ticks me off is that clubs can have ladies’ nights but men still have to pay…. so I guess that must be the universe’s way of making the dry cleaning issue even.
who cares, if you can afford to buy your clothes “dry clean only” then obviously it doesn’t matter. I don’t care how many “frills” my shirts have I have never had to get one dry cleaned. Buy your clothes at Walmart or Target, even Kohl’s. Throw in the washing machine. Problem solved.
why they do not have special smaller presses, then for “smaller” women’s clothing? Then, I have seen some women, they are in no way “smaller”. So, these bigger women, who do not wear silk, because they are not comfortable with their bodies, and who do wear cotton, why do they pay more, and they told them: it’s because your clothes are so big?
It is not merely a matter of the size of the shirt press as Tinka has suggested.. The front panels of a man’s shirt are flat and can be preseed easily by machine. The front panels of women’s blouses have darts by necessity and require hand finihing or will be very wrinkled coming off a machine press. Add the more fragile fabrics, the more difficult to replace buttons, and often lace or other adornmens and the labor involved with preparing the blouse is much more instensive.
If you want to destroy my sweater
Hold this thread as I walk away
Watch me unravel I’ll soon be naked
Lying on the floor, I’ve come undone
It is fishy and the people dismissing it are the kind of people who will justify away any inequality that benefits them. There must be some arcane reason why the inequality exists; oh no, it couldn’t be sexism. (These are the same people who think sexism is worse if it’s against men, or that racism is worse if it’s against whites. They don’t even recognize their privilege.)
And this is an old form of sexism. When I was in university in the mid-80s our consumer studies class bought two shirts, identical in every way, and resewed the buttonholes on one so the buttons went the other way. Both shirts went to ten different drycleaners. The difference in cost was on average $4.00 per shirt – for the same shirt!
Okay, I worked at a DC’s for many years.
Blouses usually have a tuck in the waist. Puckers on the shoulders, a lot of different things. If you put that on the press made for mens shirts it will buckle and not come out right. There will be wrinkles all over the place. Even if it is made of 100% cotton. It is all in how the blouse is made. IF a woman’s shirt has a man’s fit, it can and will be charged as a mans shirt and put on the shirt press. It is a matter of the style of the shirt, not which sides the buttons are on.
And if a man brings in a silk shirt he will get charged for DCing, not laundering.
That is how the store I worked at works.
try this simple test to answer your question.
tell your wife/girl friend you are doing the laundry for her today, throw her blouses in with your shirts.
after you recover from your injuries, you will learn that women are fussier abouth clothing.
to a guy, a shirt is a shirt. we have one dress shirt for work, funerals and dinner. then we have a casual shirt and that stained, torn one the wife keeps throwing out and we keep pulling back out of the trash.
our shirts can be machine washed with everything else.
to a woman, you have the dressy blouse, the spring blouse,the show cleavage blouse, the no cleavage blouse, the show cleavage blouse but if you put it on backwards it is a show no cleavage blouse,the winter blouse, raining blouse, first date blouse, wedding blouse, funeral blouse, that time of moth blouse, just before that time of month blouse, just after that time of month blouse, the fat blouse, the skinny blouse, buttons down the back i cant reach blouse, padded shoulders that must be removed before dry cleaning blouse,dress blouse, work blouse, clean the house blouse, go to the store blouse, hide the tattoo blouse, show the tattoo blouse, when i was pregnant blouse, after i was pregnant blouse, breast feeding blouse, wont be breast feeding this child blouse, the blouse with lace, the blouse with leather, the blouse with hand painted flowers, the silk blouse, the swede blouse.
all of which need to be cleaned differently.
many of thier blouses are so complicated they dont even have a cleaning instructions tag.
also, women have a sense of smell like a bloodhound. the dry cleaner’s cat could pee on our shirt, and we would not notice.
use one drop too much of a cleaning product on a womans blouse and she will smell it from the parking lot.
that is why.
no, i am not a dry cleaner, but i have been seriously injured by girl friends because i tried to wash their clothes.
I have the ultimate solution for this problem. I don’t get things dry cleaned and I tend to avoid things that are dry clean only.
Dry cleaning is a special service, a luxury occurrence, that (for the most part) is entirely optional. So for the stage I am in life, T-shirts and hoodies make great day to day wear and if I want something nice, I make sure it’s hand wash only instead.
The frills and other trim reason I’ll accept. Otherwise, if women are charged more because their shirts are too small to iron by machine, does it also cost more to clean or launder boys’ shirts than men’s? And women more critical than men? In the home I grew up in, the only items of washable clothing that got sent to the laundry instead of washed and ironed at home were my father’s dress shirts!
A couple of my “blouses” are actually men’s shirts, in the smallest size I could find. Do you suppose if I sent them out to a laundry, it would charge more if someone found out who wore them? : )
There might be some points to the drycleaners’ arguments. However, I think it’s sexist. I’ve noticed that products marketed to men (shampoo, deoderant, razors shaving cream) often cost less than similar products marketed to women and sometimes the sizes differ as well.
My husband and I buy cotton button downs that can be thrown in the wash with everything else, including our daughter’s dirty diapers. I have some dry-clean only clothes that I don’t wear often simply because dry-cleaning is a hassle and because I have a 17-m-o daughter.
Tinka made a good point about smaller men. What about larger women? Should they be paying the same price as smaller women if their shirts are big enough to fit into the press? Eh. I think it is about how they can make more money.
Prices are set by supply and demand, not cost of production. Even if both shirts cost the same to be cleaned, prices will be set according to what men and women are willing to pay for the service.
The dry cleaners comment doesn’t account for boy’s shirts.
Also Why isit that sailors wear a blouse, and some women a shirt?
Mike I think you look fabolous in a blouse!
Men’s dress shirts are washed with soap and water, starched and ironed. Women’s blouses are cleaned with cleaning solution. More expensive.
Personally I throw everything into the wash and say to heck with it. You’d be amazed what doesn’t get destroyed by good old fashioned cold water and a bit of tide in the gentle cycle.
P.S. Hi everyone… you know you missed my satirical wit. :>
This is another ridiculous claim – along with “women earn $xx for every dollar earned by men” that gets people who don’t have their facts all in a huff. The assumption here – that the Secret Dry Cleaner Boys Club got together with a plot to oppress women – is beyond stupid. Brooks Brothers introduced the buttondown collared men’s shirt to the USA in 1818. If you had such a shirt still around, you could still wear it to work and nobody would be the wiser. Not so for women’s blouses… It’s about economies of scale, gang. Week after week, year after year, decade after decade, men walk into dry cleaners all over the country and deposit THOUSANDS of the SAME style of shirt. Given that, it’s easy to create a machine which can press vast quantities of these shirts easily and grind them out. That means it costs less to clean a man’s shirt. Women’s blouses change rapidly with fashion, have wildly varying necklines and colors, are decorated differently, and have different methods of tying/buttoning/attaching. It has nothing to do with the fact that they’re female and everything to do with the fact that they require unique, special treatment and care. This became such a stink in California that they changed the names – now they are called Standard shirt and Fancy shirt, or some such thing. Curt Pringle, the only member of the California State Legislature who actually had any experience in dry cleaning, explained it as I did. So congratulations, ladies, you now pay more for a “special” shirt than a man does for a “standard” shirt. Victory at last! BTW, when do men get to pay the same rates for car insurance as women?
If the problem is the fabric, the frills, or the size of the shirts, base the price on that – NOT the sex of the customer. That should be obvious.
Basing the price on an assumption that women are ‘more critical’ is insanely offensive!
Well said, Tinka3000. Also, nowadays it is becoming more and more common for men to wear fabrics other than 100% or high-cotton blends. That places are still charging more for a woman’s shirt (who even calls them blouses?) is just plain ridiculous.
This reminds me of an argument I had with a hairstylist. They had fixed separate prices for men and women’s trims, but they tried to charge my boyfriend as a woman because of his long glam-rock hair. Eventually they had to give up or admit that they used false advertising!
As for the blouse issue, thank God I don’t wear anything dressy enough to require dry-cleaning! No fuss, no muss.
Prices are determined by how much work is required to clean the garment (i.e chemicals and time pressing) Its not fair if the dry cleaners have to put in more work for a blouse than they would have for a more simple mans shirt for the same price. I know that it doesn’t sound fair to the customer, ( i know, i work at a dry cleaners and i hear about it all the time) but the dry cleaners need to correctly reimbursed for their time.
p.s i price the clothes at a dry cleaners and i always try to be fair. But if its fancy silk blouse i cant really pass it off as a mens business shirt.
Just want to say that in a world of turmoil, your article on dry cleaning is a fresh air of journalism. Good for you. P.S. I myself delved in the art of spotting and pressing and also, alas, steaming! oh my! It’s called— BLUE COLLAR (a)
Mike, Et Alii:
Apparently, you have no military training or experience.
In each of the Armed Forces of the United States, the uniform shirt is always referred to as a “blouse”, the uniform coat is always called a “jacket”, and the uniform pants are always designated “trousers”.
A “hat” must have a brim completely encircling it, such as a “ranger hat”, “boonie hat”, “campaign hat”, or “cavalry stetson”, otherwise, it is not a “hat, but a “cap”.
(It really irks me to hear folks talking about a “baseball hat”, for no such thing exists!)
That is traditional military terminology, regardless of sex, for as you well know, the Armed Forces originally were male institutions.
So, how are blouses discriminated against at a commercial cleaning establishment?
You should see how much work and expense are involved in correctly wearing a military uniform!
Thank you.
John Robert Mallernee
Armed Forces Retirement Home
Washington, D.C. 20011-8400
so,what about t-shirts?my t shirts are charged 2 dollars to dry clean them,my husband pays a dollar for his.why?they are both identical cotton t shirts(we dry clean our favorites so they dont wear out as fast or shrink).there are no “buttons or frills” on mine.i am still overcharged-unless he drops off the shirts.then,he’s charged a dollar for mine and his.as for size differences-we wear the same size t.
Womens clothes sometimes take a lot of care but I rarely believe in a dry cleaner there a waste of money and car travel time and expenses if you can just do it yourself cheaper unless its something I wouldn’t want to wash myself like a fancy dress like if I would like to clean my prom dress and wear it to a wedding, or if I bought the fancy dress second hand and I like to clean second hand clothes before wearing them or theres leather, I can only do so much for leather upkeep. I usually hand wash or wash such special items on a very short gentle cycle and if its a synthetic fiber I may feel its nessecary to hang dry the item or with bras I put one cup inside out and have it in the other take a pillow case standard white for light colors and a darker case for darker colors and tie it and then I put that in another bag, and wash them on gentle cycle with a few other similar items like maybe a few like colored shirts, and then if I want them to dry faster I put them in the dryer like that on regular or medium heat for one cycle (you may want a half cycle our dryer takes a long time to dry) and take the still damp bra out of the case and hang it to dry the rest of the way. There’s dryell for most dry clean only stuff too.
I also tend to think about the dry clean factor when I buy my clothes too I don’t like hard to care for clothes for example I usually wear sports bras because its just so annoying to care for a regular one, but I like having them for certain occassions because a sports bra wont work under everything. I don’t avoid all dry clean clothes, I mean I wear some for special occasions, but cotton clothing is like my best friend, its easy to care for cotton so I wear it almost every day.
Blah blah blah. Women pay more for everything except – and rightly so, since men cause and get into exponentially more accidents – car insurance. We pay more for health care – because, unfortunately, we happened by chance to be born with a uterus. And we don’t even get PAID equal wages yet. Hello. But it’s definitely not gender discrimination. No sir.
Blouses have “frills”? Yeah, right, I’m sure they spend an hour carefully cleaning each “frill” and sequin by hand and it’s SO MUCH MORE work. What a load. Many women’s shirts and suits are just like men’s. And I’m sure it would just kill somebody to manufacture a smaller press so each dry cleaner could buy one or two for their woman customers.
Just another reason I use home dry-cleaning kits.
Why bother arguing about this. You know what will happen if people make a big deal about it. Dry cleaners will raise the price of men’s shirts to match the price of women’s shirts. And everybody will lose. Except the dry cleaner.
I think it because its easier to manipulate women in buying decisions. Not trying to be sexist, but the subject is quite sexist. Most car salesmen try to speed up the buying process with women to get the sale done. Women are more prone to feelings than men and go by feelings. If the price on blouses are higher, then women are more likely to spen the extra $4.00 than complain about it.
Guys, trying to argue with a woman is useless
Women, dont instigate a fight.
I nearly died laughing reading this out.
Yes, I think there is a nationwide conspiracy. All the dry cleaners out there are working together to discriminate against women. Obviously, that’s it. (yes, those sentences were dripping with sarcasm)
Come on…really? If a blouse requires more work to clean than a standard man’s shirt does, then certainly the blouse should cost more to clean.
Maybe there isn’t a clear enough definition on what, precisely, distinguishes a blouse from a shirt. My guess is that dry cleaners distinguish between the two as womens’ and mens’ clothing for convenience.
It’s not a gender issue — if a woman wears a man’s shirt, or wants her blouse “laundered” rather than “dry cleaned,” then she should be sure to specify that to the cleaner. If it is impossible to clean in this way (won’t fit on the press, or whatever), then the cleaner will tell you that. Otherwise, you should pay for whatever service you ask for. And if you don’t ask specifically, you should pay for whatever service is performed, and remember to be clear in the future.
Serena: I’m not sure what you mean by expecting people that can afford to buy clothes dry clean only. Dry clean only clothes are not that much more expensive. Many clothes of mine which are dry clean only were inexpensive (thrift), I just happen to like the material and cut of the garment. I am certain that I am not wealthy or well off, why is there a stereotype about people who can afford to buy dry clean only clothing? Some people also need certain materials and looks for work. It is also possible to purchase dryel bags which allow from home dry cleaning.
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I personally have NEVER taken a single garment to the dry cleaners. If a piece of clothing states “Dry Clean Only” I simply wash it, alone, at times in a zipper pillow case, on delicate, low agitate, cycle. I have never used the dry clean products, either. I will tumble it in the dryer for a minute or so, then remove and allow to air dry, either by laying it out or simply hang it on a dryer. Most important, I haven’t ruined one piece of clothing yet.No matter what the fabric.
There was also a story on either Inside Edition or 20/20 some time back that gave us an inside scoop on how our fine fabrics are cared for at the dry cleaners, and guess what…? They throw yours along with others in a giant machine and wash it no differently then we would at home. This particular cleaners charged the same price for all, and had nothing but satisfied customers.They had never lost a article of clothing or customer with this practice of laundering. I happen to be one of the rare people that love to do laundry, and I am not exactly recommending my way of cleaning unless you are going to give it the proper attention I do.
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I know I am like 3 blog behind but I have to say it. Does no one watch corner gas? There was any episode about this.