Feminism and going Androgynous

Women are crossing the so called gender lines, and wearing brogues and tailored pants, boyfriend-{insert item} has been selling quite well these days, it's quite a lot of things going on---women with style has been crossing the line for some time (think Patti Smith) but now it has become a lot more common.

Being a fan of the more boyish look (I sadly don't have much womanly figure so it works for me better than those items of clothing meant for the well endowed) I'm thrilled with the direction, in part also because this move has led to the embrace of actually walkable shoes, not the insane stilettos that costs more than a month worth of rent and that which I suspect one cannot walk beyond a block of a street before hailing a cab in utter pain (to be sure, it is speculation, I will never spend that much on a heel----the male fascination with that curve that gets created by the Louboutin is in my eyes little different than the Chinese foot binding practice where historical records show how these men loved the feet the smaller and bound it was--it was a sign of luxury to have women who will never have feet that can walk beyond a certain amount of distance, she was not capable of doing physical labor, and it just seems to be about making sure that the women is bound, confined and tucked away securely within the domain of the male gaze--sorry, I digress, but, that's the image that flashes through whenever one of my male friend turn his heads and check out a lady in those insane heels). It's just all that much more wearable, practical and in the literal sense, effortlessly chic. I find it most attractive when women is comfortable in the item she wears---it is easy to tell when the clothe is wearing the women than the other way around, and same with the brand name bags---if the women owns the look, you know it in a glance.

So with the trend of more tailored masculine look becoming wide spread, I thought to myself: what happened to feminism? Well, it is yet abstract, and I do not expertise in the genre, but as far as what I recall it used to be the power suit that women had to don in order to look competitive in the workforce and that era is passé for many---one can wear a sheath dress or pencil skirt or wide legged pants nowadays, the identity no longer can constrain the choice of wear although whenever a media first focuses on what a female politician wear instead of what she believes in, many are quick to point the inherent bias there. The new tailored look is not the equivalent of the power suit, it's based on a choice from a palette of available other choices (or at least it is not the need to compete with men which is solely dictating the choice of wear), so, my question is, are we "there" then? in terms of the emancipatory goal of feminism? We're digging into our boyfriend or husband's wear (or the stores are characterizing that as the way to go), mixing and matching, we wear a dress with vibrant prints when we feel like it, and wear a trouser when we want to don the crisp look while men are quite not able to wear skirts and stilettos (although I offer that option to my male friends and ask them to teeter around in that thing for awhile for the hell of it).

It's something that comes up when journalists compare Palin to Hillary, the issue seems to be lurking out there (well, although we don't see female politicians stealing their blazer from their husband yet), but what would those who objected to the power suit today say?