It hasn’t gone unnoticed to many of our readers: smartphones are getting bigger and bigger these days. In less than six years, the size of Apple phones has increased from 12 cm (iPhone 5S) to 15 cm (iPhone XS). However, not everyone understands the volume of these recent phones in the same way.
During a conversation, we realized that a gap was crossing the editorial office. On the one hand, the men who manage to put their smartphones in their jeans pockets calmly. On the other hand, women cannot carry a smartphone in their pants pockets. How can such a discrepancy in practice be explained?
Do you carry your smartphone in your pants pocket?
In a survey published last year in 2018, 82% of men surveyed put their smartphone in the front pocket of their pants; this percentage is only 12% for women.
Such a discrepancy is surprising. Although the number of men interviewed is much higher than the number of women, more than 200 women still participated in our survey. Only about twenty ensure that they prefer the front pocket of their pants. So where does such a difference come from?
Pocket size, the main reason given for women
More than half of the women (60.9%) who answered “no” cited the reason “because my pockets are too small.” “Because of the fashion industry, it is already difficult for women to find pants with pockets large enough to fit their hands in, so let’s not talk about a smartphone! “said one respondent, ironically.
In the comments, the answers on this subject are overwhelming: “I almost only have female pants, where the pockets are pathetic! But I like to keep my phone in my front pocket when I can,” says one person who prefers not to embarrass herself. “I only put my smartphone in my pocket since I put on men’s pants. The pants in the women’s department didn’t have enough pockets,” says another.
Where does such a difference come from?
In August 2018, The Pudding measured pocket sizes in approximately 20 stores in the United States. The result is clear: the pockets of men’s pants are on average 48% deeper than those of women (and 6% wider). It goes from 23 cm high (men) against only 14 cm for women. As a reminder, the latest generation iPhone XS is now 15 cm tall.
Could people bothered by this problem merely go to the “men’s” department? Beyond the fact that this amounts to ignoring this unjustified difference, there is another physical problem: the majority of so-called “men’s” cuts are created for straight hips, and therefore make the suit much less easy to wear for people with different morphologies.
