I have been traveling quite a bit recently around the country and I have been thinking about the change in attire that has taken place over the last few decades. The 1960’s brought us an unpretentious, anti-hierarchical ethos that came to be expressed in casual clothing and an indulgence in decoration for men, including long hair, facial hair and ear rings. It has been an interesting experiment for forty years or so. On the whole, honestly, I have concluded we are not doing ourselves any aesthetic favors.
The significance of attire
Does it matter? If in 2020, bearded and tattooed men with a BMI of 42 are commonly to be found strolling through airports wearing man thongs and butt chaps, should we care? Am I simply having a nostalgic moment for the “Mad Men” days of my youth where men in suits and ties would fly Pan Am to New York attended by sharp looking and “with it” stewardesses? Well, of course I am. But beyond my personal nostalgia let me make the case to you that this subject matters to us all.
How we dress is important because it is one of the most important ways in which we influence one another. Societies have always invested in buildings, obelisks, pyramids and totem poles because aesthetic symbols, like national anthems, are an important way to make a collective statement about our most important values. Aesthetic statements in architecture, art and attire communicate directly to the heart about what is important and how we should live. The formidable edifices of Berlin’s Reichstagsgebäude or Rome’s Coliseum served as local propaganda to reinforce the grandeur and permanence of those empires. The unpretentiousness of a New England chapel instills in parishioners values of simplicity and humility just as surely as the Pearl Tower in Shanghai reinforces values of modernity, efficiency and the unbridled ambition of modern Asia. As Walter Pater said: “All art ...aspires towards the condition of music”; I would argue that architecture and attire, in the directness of their communication, achieve it.
Attire and grooming are the democratic version of architecture. We do not communicate directly with each other much as a body politic. We drive in cars, listen to iPods, cast secret ballots and kind of keep to ourselves. We consume ideas spoken by people on TV or writers in newspapers (or blogs?) and we might discuss them with a few friends. But we don’t generally communicate with one another -- except with our personal aesthetic choices. Our choices in attire and presentation are political and cultural statements we make to each other every day. Collectively, they are significant because aesthetic statements are not just “I am” statements; they are also inevitably “you should” statements as well. People in societies have always learned from each other -- and taught each other -- in this way.
It has been shown in policework famously in New York in the Giuliani era (see book discussed here), that visible symbols in a society’s public spaces make a big difference. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and head of the New York City Transit Police William Bratton determined to reduce visible symbols of vandalism in the transit system, especially graffiti. Graffiti is a public statement that “the law is not in charge here.” It is an attack on the security and sense of order of citizens generally, and that is its point. Giuliani and Bratton’s campaign against graffiti is observed to have been very effective in substantially reducing crime in New York. The symbols of a society make a big difference to the people who live there and our personal presentation is one of the key ways we have the opportunity every day to influence those symbols.
How we dress
So what ideas are we Americans commonly communicating in our attire and presentation? I hope you will tolerate my frankness.
Firstly, I would observe that we are quite portly. Just eyeballing it, I think about 75% of us could lose at least 20-30 pounds. If you are 30 pounds overweight it suggests, intentionally or otherwise, that you think that society should value indulgence over discipline, ambition and industry. That is not something we should be suggesting to each other.
The second issue concerns the clothing. In this context I primarily address men over 30. The sports coat, collared shirt and, in appropriate situations, the tie were adopted over time because they make men look good. The general alternative to the collared shirt and sports shirt is the t-shirt. Its strength is its lack of pretention. But make no mistake, not one man in ten can carry off a t-shirt with dignity.
Long hair, facial hair, ear rings for men and tattoos -- you are trying too hard and lack self-confidence.
In this, my little Dante’s Inferno of modern men’s attire, the lowest rung of sartorial hell must be reserved for the sports costume, by which I refer to all possible combinations of billed caps, shirts with numbers on them, sports logos and other people’s names as well as large rubber-soled shoes. You know what I’m talking about. It is really horrible.
Wearing another man’s jersey says that you are his girlfriend. Do not wear another man’s jersey. Or, if you do, you should write, above his name, “I am,” then put an apostrophe on his name and below his name write “prison gf :).” Congratulations.
Wearing a baseball hat, which is quite common, is a way for men to dissociate themselves from any type of intellectual activity, i.e. it is a way of saying “I am not bright but I don’t care.” The rise of the baseball cap has been coincident with -- and I think related to -- the attacks on men by the forces of feminism for the past thirty years, including the many depictions of bumbling dads in primetime comedies. This has influenced men. Wearing a baseball hat when you go out in public is a way of surrendering to this attack and saying “you needn’t fear my oppression, ladies. I am not going to give you intellectual competition.” It is the dunce cap and the hair shirt of the battle of the sexes. I am not against the fair and judicious principles of feminism but I am against the anti-male rhetoric and anti-male strategies that come with it. It does not help society to don the dunce cap and cede all thinking to others. In fact, it is important you find some self-respect and resist this.
Implications
I think the explanation for the low standards of dress we have adopted is that morale is low in our society. After years of multicultural, victimization and feminist rhetoric, there is a state of disunity, unhappiness and low morale about the republic.
Americans are the people who built this nation, articulated enduring principles of freedom and government, conquered Hitler, conquered Hirohito, shaped the modern economy and met the challenge of the West with, in the words of Samuel Walter Foss, “Men to match my mountains.” That blood is still here in America. But the spirit of this proud people has been attacked for forty years. The aesthetic statements people are making are collectively a sort of surrender to the tireless critiques of the left, the European socialists, the victimization demagogues, Howard Zinn fans and generally all the hippies and vindictive fellow travelers who hate America for its mistakes more than they love it for its virtues or for the fact that it has brought more freedom and wealth and security -- more good -- to more people than any nation in history.
So that’s why I think it matters, and that is why I think that if we don’t pull our socks up for ourselves or our spouses or our kids, we should do it for our country.
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