The problems with Masc Frame content...
Lemme open with: Feminine or "girly" or outright "made for women" clothing on guys is fine. It's a totally fine thing. My OC/selfsim/whatever wears several feminine pieces regularly. One of his iconic looks is a full skirt. I regularly get upset fem frame items don't work right on him because I want to use them. It's totally cool.
That said, please, when we've been begging for ten years for masc frame sims to get more and better clothing and styles, can we stop with the masc frame items that are decidedly feminine in design?
I used to track this stuff, religiously. I counted pieces every single time a pack came out and kept a direct comparison of how many pieces fem frame had versus masc frame. And for the bulk of Sims 4's lifespan, it was nearly 2:1 on everything. Hairs, tops, bottoms, full body, shoes. The full body catalog for fem frame is probably 4:1 if not more at this point. The gap elsewhere has gotten smaller, but it's still a problem.
But especially we seem to keep facing the problem of masc frame content...being less masculine in design in general. (Again- that in itself is not a problem. The problem is we are aching for more masc frame content, and keep getting it in a format that doesn't solve that issue.)
The sweet allure kit has masc pieces but they're girly in design. Frilly and with little bows and such. Culturally feminine signifiers. There's several full-on dresses that were recently released, tagged as masculine, found in the masculine catalog, and valid for randomization onto masc-frame sims. These are not masculine items. They should not be tagged this way. And do not get me started on the Modern Menswear kit- the 4th set in the ENTIRE HISTORY of The Sims as a series to have more items for men than women...........which was expressly described as "breaking gender norms", features multiple skirts, and otherwise has an unusual and high-end style created by a designer whose M.O. is questioning masculine design.
Our one chance to get a kit for men- I haven't counted them, but we all know there are many kits that are expressly "for women", whether they have a piece or two for men or not- and even then, it was built around challenging gender norms, and thus, was not truly a masc item kit for masc frame sims who need more masc styles. That sucks so bad, when fem frame CONTINUES to get decidedly feminine items.
If EA had released a "Modern Womenswear" Kit and it had straight cut jeans, steel toed boots, and button down shirts- everyone would riot, because we all know those are not what you think of when you think "clothes for women". But they make a "Menswear" kit with several skirts and cozy high-fashion sweaters and because it presents itself as "breaking gender norms" we're obligated to praise it for being progressive and not be upset with it for ignoring the actual issue of mens content in the sims.
It's hard to have this conversation because if you're not acting in good faith, or even just simply confused by the tone or intent of the phrasing, the above paragraph could read as being actively opposed to non-binary or trans identities or the very concept of gender non-conformity. That is ABSOLUTELY NOT THE CASE- the issue is that men, and masculine leaning clothing and styles, and traditionally masculine pieces, that read as "mens clothes for men", are and always have been lacking in this game. (And while controversial, I do think they intentionally used "We're breaking gender norms with this one" as a deflection of criticism because it's a bad look and difficult conversation to say "I wish you hadn't broken gender norms with this one" lol)
When men BARELY have basics- we just got the very first half-tucked kinda-wrinkly t-shirt in the game, probably the most basic stereotypical men's shirt you can imagine, in businesses and hobbies- why are we STILL getting content that includes things like THIS?
The men need so much menswear, who is out here clamoring for THIS? This isn't menswear! And that's fine, in a vacuum, but we aren't in a vacuum- we're in a limited-number-of-options virtual doll game where the options continue to be limited *because* we get things like this instead.
I'm glad it is no longer Sims 2 times and we get more items in every single pack than that game got for men over 4 full years, but can we PLEASE give the guys some more love? We could go 3 straight years with no new pieces for the girls and they'd still be outdoing us.
(And please, don't tell me "This is how it is in real life too". There may well be a larger market for womens fashion IRL than mens fashion, but there's millions of pieces for both- and we do not have millions of pieces in the sims 4, so we have yet to exhaust all our options and there's nothing forcing the devs to maintain a higher ratio of fem content to masc content.)
