Textile Work Is Feminine

Athena and Arachne, about to weave it off. . .

Spinning, weaving, sewing, mending, laundering, embroidering, knitting, crochetting... What do these activities have in common?

One, they're all related to clothes. Two, that women are the ones who tend to be seen carrying them in fiction. Double if it's in an old-fashioned environment like Greece / Rome, the Middle Ages or even the Victorian England days. Tomboys and Rebellious Princesses will hate sewing. will be bad about it and may even bitch against women who do it better, while Girly Girls and House Wives will be better at the task. Poor women will use the trope to show that they're good at housekeeping or earn money for their families, wealthier ones will use it as a way to keep up with tradition. Children will sometimes be seen aiding their moms with heavier textile tasks like carding or spinning, and older girls will be encouraged to sew as well whether they want or not.

This is not without reason, actually. Textile work was more often than not carried by women whether in their households or in businesses, and up until the Industrial Revolution it was a very important for welfare in general. Said Revolution relied more on automation than workforce, so women started taking up other tasks instead. Nowadays, more modern media will relay either on having characters "but it's not cool to sew/knit, MOM!" or "hey, it's actually kinda fun, let's try it!"

It's not as uncommon as believed to see men doing such things, but with different spins. The guy will likely be teased and said to not be manly enough if he knows how to sew or knit, and will keep it as an Unmanly Secret.

Anime and Manga

• Ashita no Nadja
  • Nadja isn't too good at sewing at first, but improves with some coaching of Grandma Anna. She even spends a whole episode locked inside a room in a boat to Spain, furiously making a red Flamenco dress for her next dancing routines. Anna even tells her that many girls her age are already very good seamstresses.
  • The above-mentioned Grandma Anna is a skilled seamstress and hat-maker. She's skilled enough to have a rather well-paying hat making side-gig and to, later in the story, sew the "torso" of an otherwise fully torn gown into a new one in record time.
• Mako aka Nakama from Bokurano is an amateur seamstress, and her goal is to make uniforms for her fellow Zearth pilots before she has to pilot the robot itself and dies as a result.
• In Cardcaptor Sakura, Tomoyo Daidouji is a Child Prodigy seamstress. She almost exclusively makes clothes for Sakura to wear as she catches Card Clows, but still.
  • Sakura handles at least the basics of sewing, and makes either a yukata robe (manga) or a teddy bear (anime) for her soon-to-be boyfriend Syaoran.
• In the Rurouni Kenshin, prequel one-shot To Rule Flame, Yumi "Hanahomura" Komagata's best friend Hanabi is quite good at sewing and is seen sewing back the buttons of a shirt belonging to Houji Sadoshima, while singing happily. After poor Hanabi is bloodily murdered, Houji kinda repays the favor by shooting one of the culprits dead exactly on the spot where a chest button should go.
• Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics includes several of the stories mentioned in Fairy Tales. ie., their rendition of Snow White and Rose Red has a scene where the titular sisters help their mom to weave during the winter, and one can see Princess Elise from The Six Swans knitting the magical shirts.
• Genderflipped in Axis Powers Hetalia, where the ones who enjoy embroidery and knitting respectively are the very male England and Russia. The only girl seen with sewing tools is Ukraine, and that's just to fix her blouse's buttons since they keep popping out due to her Gag Boobs.
• Sakura Namiki has Yukiko's mother, whose hobby is embroidering. After the family loses their wealth, Mrs. Nakayama uses said skills to make landscape pictures and sell them to get extra cash.
• Played with in Kill la Kill where near all the people who make the Power Armor-like uniforms are male (and the best one was Ryuuko's father Soichirou Kiryuin aka Isshin Matoi), but one of the most skilled uniform makers is the very, very girly Nui Harime.
• At the very end of Tekken the Motion Picture, Jun Kazama is seen knitting under a tree.
• Subverted in Captain Tsubasa: Sanae sews the huge flag that she uses to cheer for Nankatsu - when she's at her most tomboyish stage.
• In Dr. Stone, Taiju's Love Interest Yuzuriha was in the sewing club at school. As she's de-petrified in a world that has been rendered into stone for millenia, her sewing skills are vital to Senku and Taiju's plans to restore it.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, before being demonized, Nezuko Kamado was a pretty decent seamstress; in a flashback, she's seen sewing her own kimonos and forfeiting the chance to get a new one from her eldest brother Tanjiro because she wants him to buy more food for the family. The Second Fanbook states that after the Final Battle, once she's back to be a human she grabbed Giyu Tomioka's very badly ripped haori and managed to all but re-make it almost from scratch, giving to back to him as thanks for having spared her at the beginning..
• In My Happy Marriage, the very girlish Miyo is pretty handy at needlework, and she's seen trying to repair her old work kimonos. Yurie sees this and tells Kiyoka about it, confirming his gut feeling about her being utterly neglected by her family.
  • One of the first gifts Miyo gives to Kiyoka is a lovely purple hair tie, made by hand by her using the very traditional kumihimo braiding method.
  • Mrs. Keiko is a very prim and proper woman who owns the Suzumiya Clothes Store, where Kiyoka commisions lovely kimonos for Miyo.

Fairy Tales

• Many, many fairy tales feature women who are good at sewing or said to be:
  • In Snow White, Snow's mother the Good Queen makes the wish of having a baby girl with black hair, white skin and red lips when she prickles her finger while doing some embroidering on a snowy day.
  • In The Six Swans, the Wicked Stepmother weaponizes this when she sews magical shirts to enchant her stepchildren and turn them into swans. The Princess must use her own knitting / sewing skills to knit other magical shirts and undo the spell. She's still sewing when she's about to be burned at the stake, then the swans arrive and she manages to de-enchant them - though one shirt was incomplete, so the younger prince is stuck with a human arm and a swan wing. Similar tales like Twelve Wild Ducks and Wild Swans also use this trope as a device.
  • In Rumpelstiltskin, the girl's problems begin when her dad boasts about how she's so good at spinning, she can spin hay and transform it into gold. The titular dwarf is a Gender Inverted Trope, offering her to do the work for her but only if she gives him her firstborn child in exchange.
  • In the aforementioned Snow White and Rose Red, there are mentions about the girls and their mom spinning wool.
  • Sleeping Beauty stated that, due to a curse, the Princess would die if she prickled her finger with the tip of a spindle at age 16. (Though the Fairy Godmother managed to spin things around.) The King and Queen tried to avert it via banning and destroying spindles across the realm, but the Evil Fairy managed to sneak one inside and, under the guise of an old lady, tricked the Princess into helping her with her wool spinning, thus getting her to prick her finger after all. . .

Film

• Disney Animated Canon:
  • Tangled: Two of Rapunzel's many hobbies are sewinga and knitting, which she shares with two members of a certain band of thieves.
  • Brave: Queen Elinor tries to teach Merida how to sew. And fails.

Literature

• Many Historical Fiction novels will feature "rebellious" young women who will often bitch about having to sew "like the other girls". Others will have ladies doing needlework whether as a hobby or as a business, and sometimes are doing so in crucial scenes.
• In The Bible, the Proverbs heavily praise women who can sew well enough to have their own textile businesses. Unlike what both modern feminists and conservative Christians believe, it wasn't to tell women "you gotta Stay in the Kitchen and do nothing else!" but to tell men "Look, gentlemen! Your ladies are hard-workers! Cherish them! Show them off! You must NOT be less than them!"
• Exploited in Odyssey, where Penelope uses her weaving for a cloth supposed to be used at her still-living father-in-law's funeral to keep her suitors at bay.
• In Jane Eyre, the girls at the Boarding School of Horrors have to repair their own clothes and barely can do so due to bad supplies. Still, Jane becomes pretty decent at needlework and her former nanny Bessy is VERY pleased when she finds out.
• Sallie from My Dear Enemy meets a Rare Male Example: the titular "Enemy", Dr. Robin "Sandy" McRae, who learned to do so in his natal Scotland.
• Lucy Addlington's Historical Fiction book The Red Ribbon is about a group of girls imprisoned in Birchwood Camp (actually, Auschwitz) in World War II, who sew clothes for the wives of the Nazi officers for survival.

Mythology

• Classical Mythology has many, many, MANY cases:
  • The life of humans is determined by the Fates spinning, weaving and cutting their life threads.
  • Pictured above: There are MANY versions of a tale where the seamstress / weaver Arachne and the Goddess Athena end up in a weaving contest, which finishes with Arachne dying (generally by her own hand) and Athena transforming her into a spider. These versions include:
    • Athena loses the challenge and throws a tantrum that includes hitting Arachne across the face with her weaving tools. Arachne cannot stand the humiliation and kills herself, so a remorseful Athena makes her into a spider.
    • Arachne is an arrogant bitch that boasts about being a better weaver than the goddesses themselves. Athena gets pissed off and challenges her. Arachne loses and kills herself. Athena makes her a spider.
    • Arachne makes her Blasphemous Boast and then an old woman (Athena in disguise) tells her to stop being a stuck-up bitch. Arachne doesn't listen, Athena reveals herself, the weave-off happens, Arachne loses and dies, Athena "spider-fies" her.
    • The tapestry that Arachne weaves depicts the bad behavior of the Gods, and Athena gets even more pissed off at Arachne than she already was. Arachne either kills herself or this time is transformed into a spider while still alive as punishment.
  • The whole deal with the Rape of Lucretia happened when the high-ranked Roman lady Lucretia was caught and raped by Tarquin, son of the last King of Rome, after he snuck on her when she was sewing. She committed suicide out of shame, and her relatives were pissed off enough at the royals that they started a civil war and overthrew them, leading to the Roman Republic.
  • According to some Greek old myths and also the Metamorphoses by Ovid, Princess Philomela of Athens was first raped by her brother-in-law King Thereus of Thracia, then had her tongue mutilated and was locked away so she wouldn't tell her sister Queen Procne about it. Philomela used her embroidery skills to sew a tapestry depicting her Break the Cutie ordeals, then had a servant sneak it to Procne. Needless to say, things went From Bad to Worse FAST.
• In Chinese/Korean/Japanese lore, the Qixi Festival / Chilseok / Tanabata legends have the Weaver Princess (Zhinu / Jiknyeo / Orihime), a great spinner and seamstress who spends almost all the time in textile work. When she marries the Cow Herder (Niulang / Gyeonwu  / Hikoboshi ), they both neglect their duties and her father punishes them by turning them into literally Star-Crossed Lovers.

Theatre

• Wagner's The Flying Dutchman has an early scene where the girls from Daland's hometown are all spinning wool together. Save for Daland's daughter / the Dutchman's soon-to-be Love Interest, the local Strange Girl Senta, who's instead taking a LONG Longing Look at a portrait supposed to depict the Dutchman himself.

Video Games

• Fire Emblem has many cases across its games:
  • Awakening: Cherche is a Ninja Maid and becomes more or less the one in charge of sewing and knitting-related issues in the Shepherds. Her son Gerome inherited his mother's sewing skills.
    • The Female Avatar knows the basics as well, and she thanks Priam for training her by fixing his cape and washing his clothes.
    • Gaius is pretty good at knitting and sewing too (plus baking and jewelry making), and Frederick's Battle Butler skills include knitting (he even offers his potential kids to make them jackets with "Papa's Pride and Joy" stitched on the back!). Both men can be among Gerome's fathers, unsurprisingly.
  • Fates: the Action Fashionista Oboro is the daughter of a murdered tailor who was very famous in Hoshido, and her biggest dream is to rebuild her parents' shop. She gets said dream fulfilled as long as she lives to the end, and many of her supports involve her sewing and fashion deals. A JPN-exclusive DLC stage states that, out of her prospects children, Rhajat and Asugi are also good at sewing and clothes making.
    • The other Action Fashionista in the cast is Prince Forrest... who's actually a very girly guy.
    • As a part of her Team Mom deals, Princess Camilla of Nohr is an excellent seamstress. In the Golden Path she tries to bond with her Hoshidan counterpart Princess Hinoka via teaching her to sew.
    • The Crown of Nibelung manga implies that the Female Avatar is quite good at making dresses.
  • Three Houses: Bernadetta von Varley's rather girlish hobbies include knitting and sewing.
  • Heroes: One of Ethlyn's Castle quotes has her noticing that the Summoner's cape is damaged and offering to sew it back up for him/her.
• In Persona 4, Kanji Tatsumi's mother runs a pretty successful textile shop. Kanji himself is very skilled at anything related to needlework, and in fact is very passionate about it, but sadly that's one of the reasons he's bullied for - people think he's unmanly or gay for having "girly" hobbies.
• Kaho Nagira from Crescendo is seen sewing a shirt at some point.
• In The King of Fighters '98, one of the possible pictures seen in the endings includes a girl smiling as she sews a black jacket. The girl is Kyo Kusanagi's girlfriend Yuki, and logically the jacket belongs to him.
• Momiji's Informed Ability in Ninja Gaiden is that she is into knitting.

Western Animation

• It's no coincidence that, in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the Mane Six pony who makes her living as a fashion designer is the very girly Lovable Alpha Bitch Rarity.
• In Gravity Falls, Mabel Pines adores knitting and especially loves making sweaters.