Rumor has it that Katie Holmes was the first celebrity woman of late to wear jeans that were — gasp! — not tight in the butt. At first, uncertainty swept the fashionistas: Is this sexy or does she look homeless? What does Tom have to say about it — might they actually be his jeans? Then stars picked up the trend left and right, as did clothing companies across the nation. The uncharacteristically loose-fitting jeans were named “Boyfriend Jeans,” close kin to the already popular “Boyfriend Sweaters.”

Recently, clothing companies have started to use “boyfriend” to market baggy clothes as sexy. But in doing so, they explicitly expose the underlying sexism of the fashion industry. Loose clothes are comfortable, so they should be easy to sell. But to make them fashionable, they have to be sexy. When it comes to women, sexy is overwhelmingly marketed as small, weak, vulnerable, available, and passive. So stores slap “boyfriend” on the front of “sweater” to fulfill those requirements, and the big sexy sweater is born.

I think baggy sweaters are comfy. I’ve had one in particular since fourth grade—the right arm is completely unraveled, but I can’t seem to throw it out due to its extreme comfy-ness. But according to the Gap, Victoria’s Secret, and others, my baggy sweater is not as cool as their baggy sweaters. Their baggy sweaters are hot — pun intended! — because they refer to a sexual relationship. If I wear what they call a “boyfriend sweater,” it means I have a boyfriend — or, more crudely, that I have sex. If I just wear a baggy sweater, it means I am a lame middle-schooler spending weekends doing science labs instead of out being sexual. The boyfriend label implicitly criticizes the baggy sweater that a girl likes for her own reasons, and glorifies the one that defines her in terms of men and sex.

Imagine the same tactic used to sell men’s clothes. What would a girlfriend sweater look like? Girlfriend jeans? Even when tighter men’s clothes are popular, they are never defined in relation to women. That implies dependency and weakness, characteristics which pop culture prefers to assign to women. The assumption that your boyfriend’s clothes are a lot bigger than yours also reinforces the idea that women are small (weak) and men are big (strong). It’s a subtle hint that if you are “big” and a woman, than there is something wrong with you. Boyfriend sweaters and jeans therefore are a sneak attack on body image as they simultaneously reinforce sexist notions that men are more powerful than women.

The idea that a woman looks sexy in a man’s clothes is not new. A woman in a tuxedo shirt or oversized men’s varsity gear instantly conjures images of hot sleep-overs. But the tuxedo shirt is only considered sexy when a woman wears it with nothing else — rather than wearing it with, say, a tuxedo. Wearing only the shirt makes her look vulnerable and sexually easy. It suggests someone else has already slept with her, so she probably wants more. And wearing this phantom sexual partner’s shirt shows she has been approved by at least one member of the male sex. She is both “taken” and sexually available, calling for some good ol’ fashioned male competition. It turns her into a passive object of men by asking, “Do you want to put your shirt on her next?”

Of course, if a woman wears men’s clothes simply because she wants to, that makes her manly. That’s one of the differences between sex kitten and “tomboy:” wearing something because you want to, or wearing it for men.

Beyond the implications of “boyfriend” as a marketing tactic, I wonder what exactly a woman is buying when she buys a boyfriend sweater or boyfriend jeans. She presumably does not have a boyfriend, or she would just borrow his clothes. She is, however, attracted to the appearance of having a boyfriend. The boyfriend clothes appeal to her because they are marketed as sexy — and if she wants to be sexy than she is probably looking for male attention. So it would seem she is using the appearance of having a boyfriend to attract a boyfriend. In this situation, “boyfriend” is an accessory worn by women. Instead of pertaining to a real relationship, as the term suggests, boyfriend clothing perpetuates an idea of women’s subordination to men, and also completely circumvents any real-life human relationship.

Baggy clothes are great, and wearing clothes that remind you of someone you love is even better. But using the idea of a boyfriend to sell clothes makes me want to vomit. It’s one of the most blatantly sexist trends to come out of the fashion industry of late —showing more clearly than ever that women’s clothes are only acceptable if they are sexy, and they are only sexy when they advertise a woman’s sexual accessibility to men. And it mutilates the idea of what a real live boyfriend is for — not to boost your sex appeal to others, but to build a close, special bond with someone else. If you want to share sweaters while you do it, that’s cool too.

Jane P. Riccobono is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at jriccobono@cornellsun.com. Crazy Jane appears alternate Wednesdays.