Dr Doran
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Lately I have been thinking about the roots of the negative attitude toward the suit in many parts of America, and toward dressing well in general. I am a historian by training, but not of the twentieth century (or "C20" as we call it). Still, my instinct is to look for large historical movements to explain things.
In addition, I live in Berkeley, California. Besides Santa Cruz, which is on the coast, this may be the city in which suits are held in the lowest esteem, as far as non-impoverished cities go in which the tertiary education level is high.
Here are the sources, as far as I can tell, of the malady of slob-snobbery, or the dislike of dressing decently coupled with the dislike of The Culture Formerly Known As High Culture:
1.) The Gay Issue. Many (Ostensibly) heterosexual men seem to assume that any man who makes any effort at all to make himself neat is either "sissy" or gay (or both, to the cretins who do not understand that sissies who lust for females exist, and non-sissy gays are legion and could probably kick their _ss). This disease is wider spread than one might think. My own brother, a brilliant Shakespeare scholar who got his degrees at UCLA (a very well-respected school, second only in the USA, GENERALLY speaking, to very top-tier schools like Berkeley, Chicago, Penn, Michigan, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia) and who plays Scrabble fearsomely, and who is not anyone upon whom uncharitable people would use the term "redneck," starts to use the G-word as soon as he sees me pick up a collar bar. He is an intelligent fellow; so I don't think that the gayfear is restricted only to American Neanderthals. Gays seem to have distinguished themselves in, perhaps, the 1980s by fastidiousness in dress; and surely, certain habits were considered overly fastidious in 5th century BC Athens, such as plucking one's body hair (particularly the armpits), to be equated with sissiness/lack of martial, masculine identity and presumed homosexual receptivity. Very odd now, though: one would think we've moved on a bit.
2.) The Class Issue. To be subdivided into:
i) The Union. On my kitchen table is the latest issue of SOLIDARITY, the Union newsletter. I respect Unions. However, a thread running through the rhetoric of the magazine is that the "Suits" are to be distrusted. They always lie and cheat The Working Man out of his wage. Is this accurate now? Perhaps in the 1930s. I am not certain.
ii) The Plumbers. Non-union working class individuals such as plumbers need to dress in durable clothes and cannot wear suits for fear of nasty substances ruining them. Contractors, also, who could wear suits, do not, as refraining from suit-wearing distinguishes them, in a manner that they find useful, from the "Suits" with whom they have to argue. It's an identity issue.
3.) Baby Boom/Late 1960s Counterculture/Hippies. Ubiquitous in my neck of the woods, and utterly incapable of critically examining the follies of their own generation. To them, they did no wrong. And one of the things that distinguished them was the refusal to visually fit in with a society that they saw as conformist, warlike, and zombie-ish. Unfortunately, any faint point that this form of protest had in 1968 is completely otiose by 2009, but persons born in the post-WW2 "baby boom" residing in Berkeley and elsewhere still have not recovered from this style and present themselves with a lack of flair that is painful to the eye: long gray leggings on women, long gray hair, tie-dyed shirts (surely a visual depiction of a migraine), long horrid gray beards on the men, a refusal to wear any shoe that is polished. Holy jeans. For them, the sorts of persons depicted in the TV show "Mad Men" was the ENEMY, and they had to define themselves as not that. Again, it's rather silly at this point in history. To me, this is the least relevant of the lot.
4.) Non-hippie counterculture. Very similar to the hippie "aesthetic" if one can sully this noble word. The hip-hoppers don't want to look like the white business man; the "alternative" rockers want to prove their authenticity; even vintage-loving Squirrel Nut Zippers sang a song on the seed catalog album whose chorus was "The Suits Are Picking Up The Bill." Persons in "suits" are rich, nameless, and faceless.
5.) We must not forget the simple Slob Factor. Dressing well is difficult for some men. They will attempt to lamely imply that dressing well is kind of gay (see #1) but they don't believe it most of the time; still, gayness is an excuse they can use to hide their aesthetic impoverishment. They just cannot hack it. They receive no pleasure from seeing someone whose pocket square complements his tie perfectly. They raise their eyebrows at wing tips. They just don't get it. I see this as becoming very strong after about 1968.
6.) For women: The "Slut" Factor. I dislike the word "slut" and never use it. People who have lots of friends can do what they want with their friends and it should be none of my business. However, many women I have talked to have stated that they fear dressing up lest they seem overly eager to impress men, lest they seem overly eager to sleep with men. Their girlfriends will insult them for being slutty in the same manner in which a man's (lame) friends presumably will think he is acting "gay" if he cares about his appearance.
7.) The "putting on airs" problem. Thankfully, only half of my family comes from a philistinish background to whom doing almost anything constitutes "putting on airs."
You've bought a convertible? - Oh my, you're putting on airs.
Going to college? - Who do you think you are? Are you putting on airs? Decided you don't believe in invisible beings? - Who are you to say that? You're putting on airs. NEXT THING YOU'LL SAY YOU'RE GOING TO WRITE A NOVEL.
If any member of my family said this, I'd probably resort to physical violence. I can easily see them saying this about wearing a fedora. Very sad, and grotesque. I cannot express my sympathy sufficiently to those who experience this problem.
These are the pressures and forces that I see conspiring to keep sartorial excellence among men of this (American) culture as low as it has been. These are the factors that I see resulting in the sartorial atom bomb we now daily witness. I welcome your comments.
In addition, I live in Berkeley, California. Besides Santa Cruz, which is on the coast, this may be the city in which suits are held in the lowest esteem, as far as non-impoverished cities go in which the tertiary education level is high.
Here are the sources, as far as I can tell, of the malady of slob-snobbery, or the dislike of dressing decently coupled with the dislike of The Culture Formerly Known As High Culture:
1.) The Gay Issue. Many (Ostensibly) heterosexual men seem to assume that any man who makes any effort at all to make himself neat is either "sissy" or gay (or both, to the cretins who do not understand that sissies who lust for females exist, and non-sissy gays are legion and could probably kick their _ss). This disease is wider spread than one might think. My own brother, a brilliant Shakespeare scholar who got his degrees at UCLA (a very well-respected school, second only in the USA, GENERALLY speaking, to very top-tier schools like Berkeley, Chicago, Penn, Michigan, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia) and who plays Scrabble fearsomely, and who is not anyone upon whom uncharitable people would use the term "redneck," starts to use the G-word as soon as he sees me pick up a collar bar. He is an intelligent fellow; so I don't think that the gayfear is restricted only to American Neanderthals. Gays seem to have distinguished themselves in, perhaps, the 1980s by fastidiousness in dress; and surely, certain habits were considered overly fastidious in 5th century BC Athens, such as plucking one's body hair (particularly the armpits), to be equated with sissiness/lack of martial, masculine identity and presumed homosexual receptivity. Very odd now, though: one would think we've moved on a bit.
2.) The Class Issue. To be subdivided into:
i) The Union. On my kitchen table is the latest issue of SOLIDARITY, the Union newsletter. I respect Unions. However, a thread running through the rhetoric of the magazine is that the "Suits" are to be distrusted. They always lie and cheat The Working Man out of his wage. Is this accurate now? Perhaps in the 1930s. I am not certain.
ii) The Plumbers. Non-union working class individuals such as plumbers need to dress in durable clothes and cannot wear suits for fear of nasty substances ruining them. Contractors, also, who could wear suits, do not, as refraining from suit-wearing distinguishes them, in a manner that they find useful, from the "Suits" with whom they have to argue. It's an identity issue.
3.) Baby Boom/Late 1960s Counterculture/Hippies. Ubiquitous in my neck of the woods, and utterly incapable of critically examining the follies of their own generation. To them, they did no wrong. And one of the things that distinguished them was the refusal to visually fit in with a society that they saw as conformist, warlike, and zombie-ish. Unfortunately, any faint point that this form of protest had in 1968 is completely otiose by 2009, but persons born in the post-WW2 "baby boom" residing in Berkeley and elsewhere still have not recovered from this style and present themselves with a lack of flair that is painful to the eye: long gray leggings on women, long gray hair, tie-dyed shirts (surely a visual depiction of a migraine), long horrid gray beards on the men, a refusal to wear any shoe that is polished. Holy jeans. For them, the sorts of persons depicted in the TV show "Mad Men" was the ENEMY, and they had to define themselves as not that. Again, it's rather silly at this point in history. To me, this is the least relevant of the lot.
4.) Non-hippie counterculture. Very similar to the hippie "aesthetic" if one can sully this noble word. The hip-hoppers don't want to look like the white business man; the "alternative" rockers want to prove their authenticity; even vintage-loving Squirrel Nut Zippers sang a song on the seed catalog album whose chorus was "The Suits Are Picking Up The Bill." Persons in "suits" are rich, nameless, and faceless.
5.) We must not forget the simple Slob Factor. Dressing well is difficult for some men. They will attempt to lamely imply that dressing well is kind of gay (see #1) but they don't believe it most of the time; still, gayness is an excuse they can use to hide their aesthetic impoverishment. They just cannot hack it. They receive no pleasure from seeing someone whose pocket square complements his tie perfectly. They raise their eyebrows at wing tips. They just don't get it. I see this as becoming very strong after about 1968.
6.) For women: The "Slut" Factor. I dislike the word "slut" and never use it. People who have lots of friends can do what they want with their friends and it should be none of my business. However, many women I have talked to have stated that they fear dressing up lest they seem overly eager to impress men, lest they seem overly eager to sleep with men. Their girlfriends will insult them for being slutty in the same manner in which a man's (lame) friends presumably will think he is acting "gay" if he cares about his appearance.
7.) The "putting on airs" problem. Thankfully, only half of my family comes from a philistinish background to whom doing almost anything constitutes "putting on airs."
You've bought a convertible? - Oh my, you're putting on airs.
Going to college? - Who do you think you are? Are you putting on airs? Decided you don't believe in invisible beings? - Who are you to say that? You're putting on airs. NEXT THING YOU'LL SAY YOU'RE GOING TO WRITE A NOVEL.
If any member of my family said this, I'd probably resort to physical violence. I can easily see them saying this about wearing a fedora. Very sad, and grotesque. I cannot express my sympathy sufficiently to those who experience this problem.
These are the pressures and forces that I see conspiring to keep sartorial excellence among men of this (American) culture as low as it has been. These are the factors that I see resulting in the sartorial atom bomb we now daily witness. I welcome your comments.
