What do I mean by that of course? Well it is simple in my opinion and it ties in with some other blog posts I have already made, particularly the ones where I am talking about technological characters, cross dressers, and women.
In our own period of time right now, and especially in the recent past, everything about the fashion style of the commoner , for a rather long time now, seems to have revolved almost completely around a sort of enforced "plainness" that mostly dominates men, believe it or not, but that also tends to, if you look closely, dominate women as well , depending upon where you are. What most people don't seem to understand about the current fashion culture of plainness that is rather enforced is that, the only reason it is socially and culturally "enforced", in my opinion, is because of cost. If commoners had more money, I believe, they would immediately embrace less plainness and more "bizarre" and/or unique styles when it comes to their fashion choices, and this is again, especially the case for men, most of whom currently insist on a very plain and very easy to maintain style.
It's my belief however that this is going to change quite dramatically as the years go on and our society continues to lean towards further technological progress. The transgendered "revolution"that is currently taking place with figures like Caitlyn Jenner as well as a show like RuPauls Drag Race is not going to stop there: It is going to leak out , eventually, more likely than not, to all aspects of the male culture. The more we veer from the agricultural and the necessity of manpower, the more we are going to veer towards men becoming "feminine". Again, in truth this has already largely happened in certain circles, depending where you are looking. The idea of the male metrosexual, which actually only really exists in the States (most people in continental Europe have no concept of the idea) is the perfect example of this loss of masculinity, once a certain level of comfort and elegance has been reached in a certain environment. Many men in Europe are known to wear fancy little scarves, even on summer nights, that my friends in the States find sort of "strange" and "womanly". In European cities of course the idea that the scarves are feminine or are seen as feminine doesn't seem to occur to the men. They don't think anything of it...
Hence, as I said before, the more money that a society has, and the less actual physicla labor that is necessary, the more feminine the citizens of said society become, almost literally by default. It could almost even be said that femininity is a result of boredom and not having anything else to do, in fact. This is of course exactly what ART is as well, and yet again, the Europeans seem to outshine young Americans when it comes to having an obsession with the arts, too. The 'hipster" that is known to live in Brooklyn could be said to just be nothing more than a sort of European wannabe -- whether or not they are even aware of it...
Ironically, guns, the beloved weapon of the currently "masculine" Americans, were largely what made men more feminine in our modern age, since they no longer had to rely on the heavy sword or the shield. Their arms got smaller.... which is certainly more womanly. There is no contest between the gunslinger and the swordsman in terms of who has the more masculine fighting style. This is sort of ironic of course since Americans, who seem to have this idea that they are the most masculine people who have ever lived, never actually had a true sword fighting culture.
Technology and innovation, to me then, always seems to lead to further feminization. Arguing against it , as Republicans do in our own time, is thus, in my mind, a very bad sign, and the mark of an impoverished population. Its the mark of the fool and the one who does not understand anything about either history or the future....
For example, I have noticed that the traditional image of the female in America's "Deep South", a region not known for having much money and also one that seems to have gotten rather trapped in an agricultural vortex that has no New York City equivalent, seems to often revolve around blue denim jeans, a rather simple and natural hairstyle, as well as the age old and now much beloved flannel shirt.
At first glance , this just seems, I suppose, like another style of clothing or preference to most eyes (it did to me), but when you take another look at it, you realize that the manner in which the traditional "Dixie girl" wears this particular outfit (especially with the way she ties the flannel up above the navel) is really nothing more than an almost desperate attempt to express femininity in an area/culture where femininity, unfortunately, isn't able to be constantly expressed and/or overly emphasized, as a result of the fact that, again , it takes a lot of money to express a feminine ideal through fashion....and these girls tend to not have that money. They also probably don't have the time or the resources or even, in truth, the know how. On the surface, the outfit is almost sold as though it's just a modest choice, but the reality is that this outfit isn't really a choice at all ,or at least, once upon a time, it wasn't. The truth about the origins of that outfit is that it was the direct result of the women, once upon a time, having no other way to express their womanhood. They literally had no other outfit. They were that poor.
The simple tying up of the flannel above the navel then, to express a feminine ideal, as small as it might seem, is something that I have always found particularly intriguing as a direct result of this, because what we actually have here is, again, an agricultural area that was so void of femininity and elegance et cetera., that the women, apparently, didn't even really have their own shirts to play around with. They literally had to put on the mans shirt, because it was the only one available, and then twist it around to purposely mark it as something feminine. They also did this when it came to the "manly" cowboy jeans as well: They grabbed them, took some scissors, and cut them up as high as they could, thereby making an entire outfit through which to express themselves and their womanhood. .
One might of course, at this point, try to explain that many Dixie girls are famous for wearing those long and beautiful white dresses...."they don't just wear flannels and blue jeans"; but the truth is that those girls were, one imagines, the wealthy ones and the daughters of landowners . The girls who invented the flannel outfit with the cut offs, whoever they were and whenever they "invented" it, were instead the working class girls who came from the families of laborers who probably couldn't afford a nice white dress, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't have wanted to wear it all the time, because, like anything else thats nice, they didn't want to ruin it -- and their lifestyle as poor girls living in a rather muddy environment, would have ruined it, and fast.... .
Now, though I understand that the flannel shirt and the denim cut offs thing might sound like an odd thing to examine, I think the main reason I am so fascinated by the outfit is because, to me, it just goes to show that, no matter what one does, or even how poor one is, femininity always, still, somehow finds a way to jump out and express itself, even when you'd think it really has no business being there. Again, in my opinion, it's a sort of "add on" that pops up when things are going well, and quite frankly, I am firmly of the belief that the more femininity is expressed, the healthier a society seems to, in fact, be. This comes through even in the Dixie culture where masculinity is endlessly obsessed over, since nobody seems to be enjoying themselves more in that culture, than when the Dixie girls finally get to come out and play in those tied up flannels and cut off jean shorts. They pop up the moment it is relaxation time. They pop up when the work is done and the rewards of that work are supposed to be enjoyed. They pop up after things have 'progressed'.
In our own time period, of course, this idea of femininity being the mark of progress and societal advancement is, believe it or not, almost a bit "revolutionary" since we are currently living, in many ways, with the exact opposite idea. In the time in which we are living now, femininity is thought to be the mark not of intellectualism or social advancement , but rather downright stupidity, and simplicity, and a sort of infantilism. The girls who are "unusually" feminine in our own time period and who use boat loads of makeup and accessories and who keep many dresses or skirts et cetera, are understood, on some level, as being elegant (since their lifestyle costs a fortune) -- but they're also seen as complete fools, ironically, for the exact same reason. This means to say that, in our current time, the woman who goes out of her way to be as elegant as possible around the clock, or even the effeminate man of course, is seen as a fool because they're considered someone who is spending all of their money on the wrong things. In other words, it's almost as though our culture, as a whole, has not yet grown wealthy enough to accept this figure yet. The "prima donna" sort of urbanized city woman looks, to many of us, more or less like royalty. And so, naturally, we commoners and even the intellectuals tend revolt against them, and reject them.
My idea with this, however, is that, if you look at it, it would seem to me that, in many ways, the style that is considered "royal" in one age, then tends to quickly become the style that is "common" in the next. For example, in the 1600s, most people who were able to take regular baths or sleep on truly comfortable "feather beds", were in fact merely the royals, and the peasants would have slept on uncomfortable straw and probably only taken a bath once a year. In other words, they would hav ebeen incredibly dirty...and dirt is, of course, yet another trait that is intricately tied in with the idea of masculinity even these days. At the same time as this, of course, in our own time, no one wuold ever try to argue that a man who takes a bath every day to wash off the dirty is no longer a man or is trying to be a woman, et cetera. No one would ever say that because it doesn't have any basis and it sounds ridiculous. This is, in truth, very much going to eventually - if not soon - be the case when it comes to certain styles of elegant clothing that are now considered solely for women, or of course for the makeup. In this time period, it's considered a womanly thing, and the second a man makes himself up with cosmetics he is, essentially, immediately deemed as "wanting to be a woman".
In the future, this won't be the case... in literally the exact same way that wanting to take a bath daily and use soap does not mean you want to be a woman ....
notes -----
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