Passage Three

If women are mercilessly exploited (剥削) year after year, they are only themselves to blame. Because they tremble at the thought of being seen in public in clothes that are out of fashion, they are always taken advantage of by the designers and the big stores. Clothes which have been worn only a few times have to be put aside because of the change of fashion. When you come to think of it, only a woman is capable of standing in front of a wardrobe (衣柜) packed full of clothes and announcing sadly that she has nothing to wear. Changing fashions are nothing more than the intentional creation of waste. Many women spend vast sums of money each year to replace clothes that have hardly been worn. Women who cannot afford to throw away clothing in this way, waste hours of their time altering the dresses they have. Skirts are lengthened or shortened; necklines are lowered or raised, and so on. No one can claim that the fashion industry contributes anything really important to society. Fashion desihners are rarely concerned with vital things like warmth, comfort and durability (耐用). They are only interested in outward appearance and they take advantage of the fact that women will put up with any amount of discomfort, as long as they look fight. There can hardly be a man who hasn’t at some time in his life smiled at the sight of a woman shaking in a thin dress on a winter day, delicately picking her way through deep snow in high-heeled shoes. When comparing men and women in the matter of fashion the conclusions to be drawn are obvious. Do the constantly changing fashion of women’s clothes, one wonders, reflect basic qualities of inconstancy and instability Men are too clever to let themselves be treated by fashion designers. Do their unchanging styles of dress reflect basic qualifies of stabililty and feasibility That’s for you to decide.

To the writer, the fact that women alter their old-fashion dress is seen as （）.