Sunday, June 29, 2008
Is the tube sexist?
I've decided it's time to restart my blog - so here goes.
I realised recently that the modern-style carriages on the tube must have been designed by men.
In the golden olden days, the seats on the tube all faced each other at right angles to the window like on a train, in groups of two people. Although tube trains on the Metropolitan, Victoria and District lines still have a few seats arranged this way, though, the typical seating plan on the tube is simply two long lines of seats along the length of the carriage.
Quite apart from anything else, I hate this way of sitting, because you have nowhere to look other than the row of people facing you, and they are all staring at you, too. It's like a panopticon, and the atmosphere that results is typical of the mass experience in modern life of having no privacy.
But my gripe today is that no woman would have invented this seating arrangment, either. Any woman who has sat on the tube in a skirt whose hem falls just above the knee (or higher) knows the irritation of having to keep her legs firmly together or strategically crossed to prevent the row of strangers facing her seeing the tops of her thighs.
If the seats were arranged in the traditional, old-fashioned way, you would be able to slant your legs so that the view up your skirt would be from an angle no-one could see. But in the modern tube carriage, your legs are seen from every angle to the right, left and centre.
On long journeys when you just want to sprawl with your legs hanging apart in an unladylike way, the need to keep them pressed together can genuinely be a massive pain.
Perhaps the problem is the average woman's body insecurity, which makes me, at least, want to cover as much of my thighs as possible in the harsh light of the underground. But even when as a teenager I had thighs as slim as cucumbers and wore miniskirts, I still had a self-conscious modesty which made me not want to flash my knickers to a carriage full of people.
Being on the tube must be so much more relaxing for men, whose trouser uniform, combined with an instinctive ability to take up space unashamedly, allows them to sit comfortably with their legs wide apart (not to mention their elbows halfway across the seats on either side of them, but that's a whole other annoyance).
So I say bring back the cosy old-style tube carriage seats, in which you can hide away from the world just a fraction. Either that, or let women sit with their legs open without getting a second glance - which, let's face it, is never going to happen.
I realised recently that the modern-style carriages on the tube must have been designed by men.
In the golden olden days, the seats on the tube all faced each other at right angles to the window like on a train, in groups of two people. Although tube trains on the Metropolitan, Victoria and District lines still have a few seats arranged this way, though, the typical seating plan on the tube is simply two long lines of seats along the length of the carriage.
Quite apart from anything else, I hate this way of sitting, because you have nowhere to look other than the row of people facing you, and they are all staring at you, too. It's like a panopticon, and the atmosphere that results is typical of the mass experience in modern life of having no privacy.
But my gripe today is that no woman would have invented this seating arrangment, either. Any woman who has sat on the tube in a skirt whose hem falls just above the knee (or higher) knows the irritation of having to keep her legs firmly together or strategically crossed to prevent the row of strangers facing her seeing the tops of her thighs.
If the seats were arranged in the traditional, old-fashioned way, you would be able to slant your legs so that the view up your skirt would be from an angle no-one could see. But in the modern tube carriage, your legs are seen from every angle to the right, left and centre.
On long journeys when you just want to sprawl with your legs hanging apart in an unladylike way, the need to keep them pressed together can genuinely be a massive pain.
Perhaps the problem is the average woman's body insecurity, which makes me, at least, want to cover as much of my thighs as possible in the harsh light of the underground. But even when as a teenager I had thighs as slim as cucumbers and wore miniskirts, I still had a self-conscious modesty which made me not want to flash my knickers to a carriage full of people.
Being on the tube must be so much more relaxing for men, whose trouser uniform, combined with an instinctive ability to take up space unashamedly, allows them to sit comfortably with their legs wide apart (not to mention their elbows halfway across the seats on either side of them, but that's a whole other annoyance).
So I say bring back the cosy old-style tube carriage seats, in which you can hide away from the world just a fraction. Either that, or let women sit with their legs open without getting a second glance - which, let's face it, is never going to happen.
