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Unit 12
Clothes Make
the Man
—
Uneasy
Anne Hollander
1.
The last decade has made
a large number of men more uneasy about what to
wear
than
they
might
ever
have
believed
possible.
The
idea
that
one
might
agonize
over
whether
to
grow
sideburns
or
wear
trousers
of
a
radically
different
shape
had
never
occurred to a whole generation. Before
the mid '60s whether to wear a tie was the most
dramatic
sartorial
problem:
everything
else
was
a
subtle
matter
of
surface
variation.
Women have been so accustomed to
dealing with extreme fashion for so long that they
automatically
brace
themselves
for
whatever
is
coming
next,
including
their
own
willingness
to
resist
or
conform
and
all
the
probable
masculine
responses.
Men
in
modern
times
have
only
lately
felt
any
pressure
to
pay
that
kind
of
attention.
All
the
delicate shades of
significance expressed by the small range of
possible alternatives used
to be
absorbing enough: Double- or single-breasted cut?
Sports jacket and slacks or a suit?
Shoes
with
plain
or
wing
tip?
The
choices
men
had
had
to
make
never
looked
very
momentous
to
a
feminine
eye
accustomed
to
a
huge
range
of
personally
acceptable
possibilities, but they always had an
absolute and enormous meaning in the world of men,
an identifying stamp usually
incomprehensible to female judgment.
A hat with a tiny bit
of
nearly
invisible
feather
was
separated
as
by
an
ocean
from
a
hat
with
none,
and
white-
on-white shirts, almost imperceptibly complex in
weave, were totally shunned by
those
men who favored white oxford-cloth shirts. Women
might remain mystified by the
ferocity
with
which
men
felt
and
supported
these
tiny
differences,
and
perhaps
they
might pity such narrow sartorial vision
attaching so much importance to half an inch of
padding in the shoulders or an inch of
trouser cuff.
2.
But
men
knew
how
lucky
they
were.
It
was
never
very
hard
to
dress
the
part
of
oneself.
Even
imaginative
wives
and
mothers
could
eventually
be
trained
to
reject
all
seductive
but
incorrect
choices
with
respect
to
tie
fabric
and
collar
shape
that
might
connote the wrong
flavor of spiritual outlook, the wrong level of
education, or the wrong
sort
of
male
bonding.
It
was
a
well
ordered
world,
the
double
standard
flourished
without
hindrance,
and
no
man
who
stuck
to
the
rules
ever
needed
to
suspect
that
he
might
look ridiculous.
3.
Into this stable system the width-of-
tie question erupted in the early '60s. Suddenly,
and
for
the
first
time
in
centuries,
the
rate
of
change
in
masculine
fashion
accelerated
with
disconcerting
violence,
throwing
a
new
light
on
all
the
steady
old
arrangements.
Women looked
on with secret satisfaction, as it became obvious
that during the next few
years men
might think they could resist the changes, but
they would find it impossible to
ignore
them.
In
fact
to
the
discomfiture
of
many,
the
very
look
of
having
ignored
the
changes
suddenly
became
a
distinct
and
highly
conspicuous
way
of
dressing,
and
everyone
ran
for
cover.
Paying
no
attention
whatever
to
nipped-in
waistlines,
vivid
turtlenecks, long hair with sideburns,
and bell-bottom trousers could not guarantee any
comfy anonymity, but rather stamped one
as a convinced follower of the old order -- thus
adding three or four dangerous new
meanings to all the formerly reliable signals. A
look
in the mirror suddenly revealed
man to himself wearing his obvious chains and
shackles,
hopelessly unliberated.
4.
In general,
men of all ages turn out not to want to give up
the habit of fixing on a
suitable self-
image and then carefully tending it, instead of
taking up all the new options.
It
seems
too
much
of
a
strain
to
dress
for
all
that
complex
multiple
role-playing,
like
women.
The
creative use
of male
plumage for
sexual
display,
after
all,
has
had
a
very
thin time for centuries: the whole
habit became the special prerogative of certain
clearly
defined groups, ever since the
overriding purpose of male dress had been
established as
that
of
precise
identification.
No
stepping
over
the
boundaries
was
thinkable
--
ruffled
evening
shirts
were
for
them,
not
me;
and
the
fear
of
the
wrong
associations
was
the
strongest male emotion
about clothes, not the smallest part being fear of
association with
the wrong sex.
5.
The
difference between men's and women's clothes used
to be an easy matter from
every point
of view, all the more so when the same tailors
made both. When long ago all
elegant
people
wore
brightly
colored
satin,
lace,
and
curls,
nobody
had
any
trouble
sorting
out
the
sexes
or
worrying
whether
certain
small
elements
were
sexually
appropriate.
So
universal was the skirted female shape and the
bifurcated male one that
a woman in
men's clothes was completely disguised, and long
hair or gaudy trimmings
were
never
the issue.
It was the 19th century, which produced
the
look
of the
different
sexes coming from
different planets, that lasted such a very long
time. It also gave men
official
exemption
from
fashion
risk,
and
official
sanction
to
laugh
at
women
for
perpetually incurring it.
6.
Women
apparently
love
the
risk,
of
course,
and
ignore
the
laughter.
Men
secretly
hate it and dread
the very possibility of a smile. Most of them find
it impossible to leap
backward
across
the
traditional
centuries
into
a
comfortable
renaissance
zest
for
these
dangers, since life is hard enough now
anyway.
Moreover, along with fashion came the
pitiless exposure of masculine
narcissism and vanity, so long submerged and
undiscussed.
Men
had
lost
the
habit
of
having
their
concern
with
personal
appearance
show
as