(no subject)

[cahn]

Some random scattered thoughts on finally having a smartphone:

Interestingly, my primary reaction has been to be really annoyed at the lack of pockets in women's clothes! Previously this didn't really bother me as much, because I didn't have anything I wanted to put in them enough to get more than a trifle annoyed about it. Now I always want to have the smartphone with me, and it is really annoying when I don't have a place to put it. (To be perfectly fair, it is not just because I am addicted to the smartphone. It's also that right now at work I am often working in two different locations in the building, one of which doesn't have a work phone or email, and so I do actually need my own phone with me in case D or E's school, for example, needs to reach me. Which has happened.)

Right now I am jamming it into my one pair of maternity jeans with pockets (maternity pants appear to be Even Worse than normal women's pants about pockets) and wearing fleece around a lot when not wearing those pants. I also bought a couple of maxi skirts (dual-use in that they are mostly wearable during pregnancy, but hopefully also will fit afterwards) with pockets to wear to church. My goal is that from now on, at least while I have a good job, I am only going to buy clothes with pockets from now on to the best of my ability. (In non-professional settings, having pockets is not quite as necessary for me, though still vastly preferable.) Such clothes do seem to exist here and there, although also appear to in general to be rather more expensive than clothes without pockets (or with useless pockets). I also don't know what to do about dress pants, which as far as I can tell don't come with anything but very small non-smartphone-friendly pockets, except maybe getting a pair custom tailored. (That being said, dress pants are probably not actually something I need to be super concerned about, as most of the times I would be wearing them I would be in situations where I am actually required not to take my phone with me and/or would also be wearing a blazer, which could have pockets.)

I mean… I understand that women's clothes are built to show off our nice curves and not to Put Things In. And, I mean, I like showing off my nice curves (such as they are), but… it also… seems kind of sexist that I should be wearing clothes for that reason, whereas as I pointed out to D (and he enthusiastically agreed), men would rise up in arms and refuse to buy a pair of pants (or jacket, or blazer) that didn't have pockets. Deep pockets. Lots of pockets. Plus which, it looks kind of stupid to be carrying around either a bag or a smartphone in my hand at work, and why is it that I have to look stupid and the men I work with don't? Bleah.

Other non-pocket-related smartphone items:

-I'm doing a LOT more texting. It is suddenly clear why everyone else likes texting so much. When I can see more than one text on my screen and scroll through the whole conversation, it's pretty nice.

-The thing that has made most difference to me is the calendar/tasking app. It's really nice to have all that in one place. Previously, it was too much trouble for me to keep a google calendar synced, partially because whenever I wanted to put something in the calendar I invariably didn't have the computer around, or the work firewall was being irritating again, or something. So I actually had a paper calendar I carried around, which was also not ideal. And I use the "tasks" checklist a lot.

-The other thing I'm using more than I'd expected is the camera. Not for taking pictures of E, as one might expect (though I have a couple of those). It turns out to be very useful when coaxing E not to pick flowers, or clean up a duplo building she's very proud of; we just take a picture of it, and then she can go on her way knowing that the picture is there forever. (…no, she has never yet actually requested to access the pictures. Just knowing it's there is enough, I guess!)

-The thing I am not using that I expected to use more of is the GPS/maps. Much of this is pure luck/timing; it just so happens that since Christmas I haven't been anywhere new.

-I'm pretty happy with the Android app selection so far. I don't need my phone to do much out of the ordinary, and so far everything I've wanted it to do has been pretty simple and there's been an app for it.

-Google has gone from knowing a scary amount about me to… knowing a really scary amount about me. Not sure I like this.

Comments

[cordialcount]

This is not a solution for everyone, but I had vehemently refused to carry a bag until my dumbphone-- I say this with affection, it was really dumb-- was stolen and I learned any screen large enough to read Maps on is too large to fit in the pocket of women's clothing. I now have a shoulder/crossbody bag that I put on and forget I'm wearing daily, along with a dependence on fifteen other things that I never thought I needed until I suddenly had a place to put them.

Careful with relying on blazers! In my experience, they are even less likely than dress pants to have functional pockets.

[genarti]

Same -- I never used to carry a purse, and now I have one nearly all the time. And that does have its advantages! I can carry around my phone and wallet and keys and e-reader and headphones and chapstick etc etc without having to shove all that stuff in the pockets of whatever pair of jeans I'm wearing that day.

The standard lack of useful pockets remains really annoying, though. Ugh.

[cahn]

Yes, I do carry around a purse :) I used to use it for diapers/underwear and wipes for E., and now it just has Random Stuff (ha, including e-reader as well) in it. But sometimes I just want to carry around my phone and keys without having to lug the whole thing around! :)

[cordialcount]

Where is our Plucky Entrepreneurial Protagonist making clothing that fits dfab body shapes without woeful lack of real pockets, world?

[cahn]

Your dumbphone was stolen? Wow, that's low. I used to joke that the good thing about having a non-smartphone was that no one would even think about stealing it. (And in fact I lost it twice and it was returned to me both times!)

I do carry a bag around quite a lot of the time (I started when E. was a toddler, as she didn't need enough stuff to justify an entire diaper bag any more but one still needed wipes, a diaper, etc.) but I've noticed that it's not super common around here. Bah.

So they are annoyingly expensive, but there seem to be one or two blazers on the market that have inside pockets (TravelSmith and J. Crew; I haven't actually tried either of them out yet). The cheap ones at the local Sears seem to have pockets that might be able to handle a phone -- it's hard to tell because they're all sewn shut. And then there are the midlist blazers, most of which have FAKE POCKETS, which... why??

[cordialcount]

I have a Jcrew blazer (I bought it at 15% of its tag price, thank you bad database and/or pricing system management) and it does indeed have an inside pocket! Although it's not a big pocket and it's sideways, so something like the new iThings would still be a risk.

My laptop had been left on the same table the phone was taken from many times without theft, so... /o\ Someone must have wanted that particular style of phone, I guess. Maybe another person poor on pockets.

If you don't mind me asking, you're in California? I've lived in the Bay Area and LA area, and 90% of women I saw in daily life carry bags/purses of some sort. I used to feel out of place with driver's license/credit card/house key shoved in one pants pocket and dumbphone in the other.

[cahn]

Oh, sideways? Bleah. It was advertised on the webpage as a "ticket" pocket, but I wouldn't put a ticket in sideways either!

I am in California, and I should unpack that statement a little. When I'm out in public, yeah, I do see almost all women generally carrying bags or purses. When I'm dropping the kid off at Fancy Preschool, or at work (which admittedly has, like, five women, so my sample size is not huge), they don't tend to carry bags or purses at all. But I still want to take my phone with me at work sometimes! :)

[(Anonymous)]

My phone lives in an inside pocket of my shoulder bag because when I put it in my pocket there is a far greater risk of it getting stolen, sat on or falling out (frequently on the bathroom floor when I go to the loo and every time I heave a massive sigh of relief that it didn't land in the toilet). This means I carry a bag far more often than I did before I had a smartphone. My best thing for it is the coat with an inside pocket with a button fastener but it is not yet warm enough to be wearing that.

[antisoppist]

Sorry! Anonymous was me. What has happened to the commenting box that warns you if you haven't logged in?

[cahn]

Women's pant pockets suck! The two times I lost my non-smartphone (which was, happily, returned to me both times), and multiple times when it just fell out in the car or something, were all because it fell out of my inferior shallow pockets. (I do have cargo pants with large deep pockets, and it's never fallen out of those.)

My fleece jackets have nice pockets -- they're zip-up, and even though I don't usually zip them up the zipper sort of makes them angle in a way where things don't fall out.

[janewilliams20]

I feel for you on the subject of pockets. I will buy skirts and trousers without pockets if I'm pushed, but usually I refuse (and tell the assistant offering said trousers why I'm refusing). On the bright side, fitting a pocket into the seam of a fairly loose skirt really isn't all that hard.

[cahn]

Yeah, I gotta learn how to sew :) I've seen multiple tutorials for it, and it doesn't look hard, but...

I'm encouraged that loose swishy skirts with lots of room for pockets are coming back in fashion! I wonder how much of this has to do with people who want pockets attached to them... because loose swishy skirts really do have room for them (whereas skin-tight pants, not so much).

[janewilliams20]

Ah. Sewing is something I've been doing since I was... four? Five? I'm probably not the best judge of whether it would be hard for a complete beginner. Still, you're used to making things with your hands, so I expect you'll be fine.