Judging

In "The Handmaid's Tale" the two main characters of the book go to a "club" that has been secretly created in the society. At the club all of the men are in suits and all of the women are dressed in "outfits with feathers and glister, cut high up the thighs, low over the breasts" (246). We discussed in my English class if the women wearing the outfits make them empowering or if it is degrading. I think that in today's society wearing outfits like this can both me empowering and degrading depending on the context of the outfit and the women's reasoning for wearing it. For example, if you are wearing lingerie for your partner as a sensual gesture then some might say that the woman is in power, and is controlling the situation creating a scenario for her and her partner. Where as if you are wearing an outfit like that at a club some might find the woman very slutty or attention seeking, and others might just think she got really dressed up for the occasion and is comfortable enough with herself to wear such a promiscuous outfit out on the town. Although, in my opinion it always tends to be the woman judging and saying how she is such a slut rather than the men. In our society today, girls dress up for girls and we are always judging each other and making each other feel bad or not good enough. You would think that it would be the other way around and the men would be the ones judging and us girls would stand up for one another and try to defend each other. I wish the world were actually like this and it wasn't such a "girl eat girl" world. I mean don't get me wrong of course there are the men in the club that are judging what the girl is wearing and could be calling her even worse names than other girls do, but it is more of a common aspect between girls to bash on each other rather than men bagging on girls.
In the Handmaid's Tale almost all of the judging within the book comes with in the females. Mainly between the Marthas, Wives, and Handmaid's. Offred says "Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's the lack of love we die from" and "there's nobody here I can love, all the people I could love are dead or elsewhere" (113.) After reading this passage it made me think about how clearly most of the women in the book feel the same way, and seek to have that attention that they once had when life was "normal". However, even though they are all feeling the same and are going through the same thing they don't help each other out and instead take on the role they are assigned and judge each other based on their political role and the color of the dress they are wearing.
In the perfect world, since all of these women are assigned their roles and don't have much choice in who they become, you would think that it would either be each girl of herself or everyone girl for every girl. All of them know that they are only doing what they are told, and if it were up to them they would turn things around immediately.  However, there is nothing that they can do but abide by the rules and fulfill their duties.