Suvudu Universe

This, and others, via many places including The Mary Sue

Stumbled across this set of photos last week (I have about forty drafts open at any given time, not a good habit perhaps), with cross-dressing Disney princesses ditching their skirts. And I thought they were cute. I can just see little Halloween costumes. But only little ones. Disney Princess is a under ten club, no exceptions.

But I doubt most little girls would want to dress up in boy clothes.

To be fair, I wouldn't have either when I was a kid.

But then I started thinking about my favorite fantasy characters, and their pants status.

I'm not an urban/paranormal reader. Stock characters, profanity used to ill-effect, and I've been over vampires since Buffy ended. But obviously, pants abound in that genre. Also, skintight leather and skimpy cover photos.

I'm coming from an epic background. Mostly because, when I was younger, I thought books under 800 pages weren't worth the money since I'd finish in a few hours anyway.

So think George R. R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Guy Gavriel Kay, Michelle West, Kate Elliott, Patrick Rothfuss (though no women come to mind save the obvious) , in mostly medieval type settings not in this world.


Women wear pants if they are:
- rebelling (Jordan)
- commoners (West, Martin, Elliott, Jordan)
- sexually active despite societal norms (Jordan)
- secondary characters (Jordan, West, Elliott, Martin)
- possessed of martial abilities (Kay, West, Jordan, Martin)
- foreign/barbaric (Elliott, Martin, West, Jordan)
- boyish/want to dress like a man (West, Jordan, Martin)
- rejecting their former life/status (West)
- part of an officially recognized order/organization (Jordan, Elliott)

I don't need to expand on what wearing a dress means. Though it's interesting to note that most main female characters in pants usually get dressed up at least once (often gracelessly).

In contrast, a man in robes/pants could be an aristocrat, commoner, servant, or monk, living his life, making a statement, doing some ass-kicking.

Male characters wear clothes. Not status.

It's like this set of clothing advertisements I saw where the men stood about wearing clothes and then women contorted their bodies into poses.

But, devil's advocate me says, these are historical settings, and historically, the woman in pants was not a common phenomenon.

However, freethinking me says, this is fantasy. You're already making up your own world. Take it one step farther.

One example of that, that I really love for its anthropological bits, is the sci-fi series Jaran by Kate Elliott (not used in the list above), with a medieval planet where matrilocal and matrifocal nomads live. In long tunics and trousers, but they're still pants in form.

That sense of barbarism lingers though.