Dressing down
Wearing good clothes or dressing 'up' to go out (socially), has never made intuitive sense to me - and I've finally worked out why! - or at least, how to articulate why...
It's because my idea of having fun requires the ability to get dirty (not the obligation to stay clean) and the freedom not to worry about what you look like.
Being image conscious is something that going out has in common with work (professionally speaking) and, for me at least, high school. Why do people feel the need to bring elements of these oppressive cultures into informal social settings?
I believe the answer is for the creation of social order, after all, that is the purpose of all dress codes - to separate the wheat from the chaff. School uniforms mark out the lowly student masses from the pseudo free dressed teachers and tie wearing principal. White shirts distinguish the 'clean' superior professional class from the dirty blue shirted working class. One can even guess the cost of a prostitute from the quality of their dress.
So there is a political point here too. Even in social settings to dress up to any extent is to acknowledge the social hierarchy and claim a place in it. Thus to deliberately not dress up or to dress below one's station is a statement that you refuse to buy into the system or at least deliberately place yourself (in solidarity with those) at the bottom of the ladder and therefore in opposition to the hierarchy.
This is a statement of (my) anarchist principles which to temporarily discard even for an evening is to betray altogether.
It's because my idea of having fun requires the ability to get dirty (not the obligation to stay clean) and the freedom not to worry about what you look like.
Being image conscious is something that going out has in common with work (professionally speaking) and, for me at least, high school. Why do people feel the need to bring elements of these oppressive cultures into informal social settings?
I believe the answer is for the creation of social order, after all, that is the purpose of all dress codes - to separate the wheat from the chaff. School uniforms mark out the lowly student masses from the pseudo free dressed teachers and tie wearing principal. White shirts distinguish the 'clean' superior professional class from the dirty blue shirted working class. One can even guess the cost of a prostitute from the quality of their dress.
So there is a political point here too. Even in social settings to dress up to any extent is to acknowledge the social hierarchy and claim a place in it. Thus to deliberately not dress up or to dress below one's station is a statement that you refuse to buy into the system or at least deliberately place yourself (in solidarity with those) at the bottom of the ladder and therefore in opposition to the hierarchy.
This is a statement of (my) anarchist principles which to temporarily discard even for an evening is to betray altogether.
posted by James Tonson | 3:55 pm
|
0 comments
