With this kind of analysis I can make the wearing of a t-shirt, jeans and trainers all about the penis too.
If you’re obsessed with how clothes represent genitals and sexuality, you’re going to find all clothes represent genitals and sexuality to some degree. Why that collar around the neck? Why that hoodie concealing the precise shape of the torso? Why the bright white of those Jordan Airs?
I wear a tie occasionally, with a three piece suit, because if I don’t, I can’t get access to the nice bits of the racecourses I visit across the UK (when such things were of course allowed).
Wearing a tie today is not about penises, it’s not about power, it’s about conformity. It’s about not standing out, merging into the crowd, becoming a little more anonymous. Walk around the City of London on a busy workday (except in 2020), and the men merge into one, hardly distinguishable in their uniforms.
The tie looks like a penis the way a trouser leg does. It embodies power the way a hoodie does. Women wear them in some contexts (restaurant waitresses, front of house staff in theatres, etc.), and not to show off their non-existent penis.
[edit:] As an aside it also serves a practical purpose of hiding the button line of a shirt, and if you miss your mouth when eating your lunch it is easily replaceable. Despite the detractor’s wails it is not an entirely useless piece of cloth if you’re eating soup in a formal setting [/edit]
People mostly wear them because it’s expected of them and to conform, and this article while having all the hallmarks of an intelligent and thoughtful piece is just a love letter to the author’s internal anxieties. If you share those anxieties, perhaps talk to a therapist.
Well, the hoodie serves the dual function of representing the clitoral hood, as well as the foreskin of the penis. It's the first truly gender neutral uniform, and I for one would like to see it in the workplace more often.
You actually do not answer the main question. The fact that you personally ware a tie to conform to the norm does not explain how the norm came to be. Instead you talk in random directions, ending with a nice athominem attack against the author.
Some notes:
waitresses and front house staff are not in position of power, and it actually aligns with the thesis of the author which mentions that ties are sexualizing women.
You say that the tie hides the buttons of the shirt, but there is already such a solution for trousers and why not reuse the concept?
You say that ties are good when eating soup. However, they are not all that effective in their current form, not used for this purpose for the last few hundred years, and there is no sense carying it around through the entire day the way cutlery is not part of the men's office dress code as well.
Where I'd agree with you is in doubting the mental jump necessary to discover sexual symbolism in something which might be just a counterweight to otherwise boring exterior.
Don't some conforming uniformed people in the City carry around a pink newspaper to advertise their caste?
Waitresses and front house staff are wearing echoes of what the patrons of an establishment used to wear before the last clothing shift. After the next, will they all be in hoodies?
(I'm still waiting for the sexual interpretation of t-shirt and trainers? Hmm ... trainers do share gum soles with bordello creepers...)
I seem to remember a fairly well-known psychologist, who had a thesis, stating that pretty much everything we do, at any time, for any reason, can be boiled down to the desire to bump uglies; sometimes, with our parents.
Not sure I completely agree with him, but it's an entertaining way to look at the world.
It's especially entertaining when the surface meaning[1] of the conversation is only a cover for one's desire to bump uglies[2] with the conversee. The standard strategy is to make slips and see if, as for a TCP ACK, one's interlocutor slips[3] in return. This strategy, as attested from folk song[4] to Shakespeare, existed well before[5] the Viennese psychologist[6], but he provided intellectual deniability.
[1] TFA, for instance, is probably less well framed as a logical argument, and better as a poetic conceit, a shaggy dog story transmuting the apparent street rudeness of the title to intellectual respectability. (compare Ovid, Metamorphōseōn librī)
[2] In the sorts of bars which play both kinds of music, there is a convention that a lady only ever touches a gentleman's cowboy hat if she has (or hopes soon to have) touched his tie-substitute. Needless to say, in ambiguous situations this provides a sartorial haptic channel, in addition to the common verbal channel, for conversation (or territoriality).
> "Nègue pòté maïs dans so lapoche pou volé poule;—milatt pòté cordon dans so lapoche pou volé choual;—nhomme blanc pòté larzan dans so lapoche pou trompé fille.
> (Le nègre porte du maïs dans sa poche pour voler des poules;—le mulâtre porte un cordon dans sa poche pour voler des chevaux;—l’homme blanc porte de l’argent dans sa poche pour tromper les filles.)
> The negro carries corn in his pocket to [help him to] steal chickens; the mulatto carries a rope in his pocket to steal horses; the white man carries money in his pocket to deceive girls."
[6] the opposite mating strategy is the Freudian Crash-and-Burn:
And yet it is the one piece of clothing where people get to display a small amount of distinctive style. So I think there is still something to be elucidated. If one gave a shit. Which one does not.
In what world? Shoes, belt buckle, cuff links, lapel pins, watches, and style and cut of the rest of the outfit allow "a small amount of distinctive style". Ignoring, of course, all the less formal, distinctive style choices.
Depending upon matrimonial status, fit might be an important addition to the list.
My wife (as she is now) noticed, while we were dating, that the stripes on my shirts matched at the seams. I don't care about such details myself, but what are we to do when women are such visual creatures?
> If hiding something is a way of declaring it a form of power, then hiding the male genitals is a way of declaring masculinity itself a form of power.
This really was the high of the article for me. Exactly what combination would be needed for the author to declare that male clothing is neutral on masculine power?
Genitals exposed -> Aggressive declaration of masculine power.
Genitals hidden -> Passive aggressive declaration of masculine power.
I'm going to guess that genitals hinted-at-but-in-a-careful-balanced-way is going to be calculatedly aggressive declaration of male power. The author makes some excellent points about status and clothing, but the throwaway lines on the patriarchy are wonderfully monomaniacal.
and at some point I learned of a russian berry or floret with a spherical form that was white while immature but turned red when ripe, which had made me wonder about traditional peasant costume colour codings.
[1] and their promises of sweet nothings? (for which "hunter green" floral dresses might be recommended: as with slobber from fifteen hand hunters, it's a colour well suited to hiding grass stains.) Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24130589
Given that article has whole paragraph of speculation how power is expressed in feudal vs bureaucratic society, outside of genitals, which is consistent for each period, you ignoring that context is unfair.
The sorta serious bulk of article is about men who aspire to be powerful and little bit about women who aspire the same, so yeah, different periods go aboit it differently.
I think this kind of Freudian viewpoint about the purpose of all sorts of things began to fall out of fashion at the turn of the century (with the dying off of committed Freudians from the last century), and it sounds sort of ludicrous now - much like if someone started spouting off theories based on phrenology.
It reminds me of some book I was reading in the 80s that started off in the intro with the theory that rockets were shaped the way they were because men were obsessed with their penises and as such spaceflight was metaphorically mankind's rape of the cosmos (threw the book away as too ludicrously stupid to continue with so don't remember anything past that).
I am of course still somewhat sympathetic to a little less obsessive view that ties may function as phallic symbols, given that there is a difference between design and engineering - a rocket is shaped the way it is because of its engineering purpose, but a tie seems to have no purpose other than design (although I suppose the cravat and pre-modern ties had other purposes.)
- I didn't think this observation should be an edit on the original comment.
The hunting stock (a more direct descendant of the cravat?) is said to have emergency uses (sling, tourniquet, etc.). That noted, I've practically used my belt numerous times, but never my neckwear.
Well, hardly ever. At "The Oasis" (an infamous fictional dive), men's gimme caps slowly slide backwards on their heads until everyone knows the evening has sufficiently advanced to sing songs. At black tie affairs the growing prevalence of rakishly worn unknotted bow ties provides exactly the same signal.
> Well, hardly ever. At "The Oasis" (an infamous fictional dive), men's gimme caps slowly slide backwards on their heads until everyone knows the evening has sufficiently advanced to sing songs. At black tie affairs the growing prevalence of rakishly worn unknotted bow ties provides exactly the same signal.
I'm sorry, but I don't really understand anything at all in that paragraph. That's not a criticism of your way of writing, I'm not a native speaker, I'm just completely lost here.
What's a dive? What are gimme caps? is the singing songs part literal or is an euphemism, and if it's the former why do people need to signal discreetly that they're ready to sing? What's a black tie fair?
a dive is a place of low repute where hard liquor is available, I don't know what a gimme cap is - some sort of cap I suppose - and as the men at this dive get progressively more drunk they sort of lose control of their caps which slide backwards, of course they are not using it to signal they are ready to sing, it is amusing, observing these people with their caps all back you might think they had given the signal they were ready to sing as they all start singing, but instead they are singing for the same reason their caps are back - because they are drunk.
A black tie affair is a very fancy party of some sort, where people must dress up to attend, but as they get drunk at this fancy place their bow ties become unknotted and they show they are ready to sing, just as the people with the pushed back caps at the much less fancy dive do.
I agree that there was a big fall-off about that time, basically I attribute it to - Freud died in 1939, all the big writers that were into his ideas as the perfect key to "character" were no longer as important in the 80s, and so as often happen with intellectual ideas that do not have any proof behind them they began to get sort of tarnished.
I choose 2000 however as the point where the ideas become sort of ludicrous, there were still plenty of people who had been brought up believing these ideas were facts in the 80s alive and in positions of power, by 2000 they have begun to retire and die off and in various ways not exert any great intellectual power. In 1980 if your boy child wet the bed you might still end up having someone tell you seriously it's because he is entering in the phallic phase of personality development, in 2000 maybe one of your crazy old relatives at Thanksgiving will try that.
Some of Freud's ideas still seem to hold sway however, for example the general point of the Oedipus Complex idea which I think has stayed a bit more because of having made a firmer place for itself in literary criticism.
Of course the problem with theories that explain the world is they never really die out, hence flat-earthers and hence this article.
> The fly (which is invisible) is a bourgeois innovation, much unlike earlier aristocratic styles, such as the European codpiece, that often drew explicit attention to the genital region. This is the one part of the male body whose contours are entirely effaced. If hiding something is a way of declaring it a form of power, then hiding the male genitals is a way of declaring masculinity itself a form of power
tangential recommendation: if you might enjoy somewhat dark historical fiction & the politics of working with and around the above aristocratic codpiece-wearer, with frequently witty banter, Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy may be for you: https://www.goodreads.com/series/75450-thomas-cromwell-trilo...
The tie as we know it, was a streamlined version of the cravat. Which was popularised in Europe during The Thirty Years War (1618–1648), by Croatian mercenaries.
That knowledge has always pleased me, when I’ve had to wear a tie. That it’s descended from these swashbuckling, brightly attired, mercs.
- puffy renaissance hips? originally from the padding worn under the faulds/culet[2]. (anticipating the rise of plate carrier lower class cosplay in 2020?)
[1] did Kadyrov go from short beard to long beard for religious reasons, or because he's now secure enough as a Border March Lord that he can play statesman instead of soldier? or something else?
[2] "Yours, if you talk of tales, and so farewell."
Great info! I'll be mentally playing action movie montage music when I suit up for my meetings, get my hair-cut, or put on comically large hipped renassance pants, going forward.
For me, wearing a tie is about beautiful symmetry: when the tie is exactly centered with a neat knoth, a series of elegant angles are created under the wearer's face. There is something very architectural about that.
By the way, a women wearing a neck tie to complete her business suit can be very attractive for me (a powerful encroachment on "male" attire), so the tie really can be universal.
I really don't understand the angst. Wear whatever the hell you want.
Too true! Doing whatever you want is the ultimate symbol of power. I’ve been reading about Mohammed bin Salman a lot lately, I think he is pretty much the picture of power both in the means to do anything and the restraint not too.
He should do something on the "Silicon Valley Tuxedo" aka blue jeans, loafers, a sports coat, stripey or tattersall button down collar shirt open at the neck.
Also; something needs to be done about fleece vests.
I think if you make a load of simplified sweeping generalisations about clothing and it's symbolic role in our culture you can come to some pretty banal yet fashionable conclusions. Oh look mens clothes are about power, womens clothes are like they are due to men exerting sexual power over women. Women don't have agency in our history, men are trying to show off their penises as an expression of power. Its all so predictable and boring. The dickhead joke is pretty good though.
I read the full article and this doesn't seem to have any focus. It vaguely mentions some interesting tid bits but doesn't articulate on them or back them up properly.
To me the appeal is similar to, dunno, maybe a basketball trick? The technique is interesting, not the end result and not adherence to the official rules of the game.
I love uniforms. If everyone has the same kind of clothing, it's easier to interact. People consciously look out for brands, specific clothing, and make up their mind on what the person is like before ever interacting with them. It signifies equality to me.
The minimalism of uniform makes it possible to notice the subtle differences. That's what a tie is for. It's to differentiate yourself but not too much.
I noticed more ideological leaks forming in the article the further I read. Of course Foucault is always the great give away. The trite little attacks on men at the end seal the deal.
Roenxi has already made a better point of it than I could elsewhere in this thread [0]. So please see his comment.
But here’s another little snipe:
> ...some idea that women produce naturally (they bear children) and that men produce culturally (they create society). Stated outright, this is an obvious lie—pretty much everywhere you go you can find women doing most of the work of producing society too.
It’s a small thing, that makes me feel petulant to make a scene about, once it’s isolated; but there are a few of them, along with Roenxi’s point, that add up to inform the view of the article as a whole.
Interesting you pick on any mention of Foucault as giving away ideological leanings, since, incidentally, Graeber was not a big fan.
From "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology":
> Academics love Michel Foucault’s argument that identifies knowledge and power, and insists that brute force is no longer a major factor in social control. They love it because it flatters them: the perfect formula for people who like to think of themselves as political radicals even though all they do is write essays likely to be read by a few dozen other people in an institutional environment. Of course, if any of these academics were to walk into their university library to consult some volume of Foucault without having remembered to bring a valid ID, and decided to enter the stacks anyway,they would soon discover that brute force is really not so far away as they like to imagine—a man with a big stick, trained in exactly how hard to hit people with it, would rapidly appear to eject them.
> Consider the hegemonic role, in US social theory, of Max Weber in the 1950s and 1960s, and of Michel Foucault since the 1970s. Their popularity, no doubt, had much to do with the ease with which each could be adopted as a kind of anti-Marx, their theories put forth (usually in crudely simplified form) to argue that power is not simply or primarily a matter of the control of production but rather a pervasive, multifaceted, and unavoidable feature of any social life ... Foucault was more subversive, but in a way that made bureaucratic power more effective, not less. In his work on asylums, clinics, prisons, and the rest, bodies, subjects—even truth itself—all become the products of administrative discourses. Through concepts like governmentality and biopower, state bureaucracies end up shaping the parameters of human existence in ways far more intimate than anything Weber might have imagined.
> Foucault’s ascendancy, in turn, was precisely within those fields of academic endeavor that both became the haven for former radicals, and were almost completely divorced from any access to political power—or, increasingly, from any influence on social movements as well. This gave Foucault’s emphasis on the “power/knowledge” nexus—the assertion that forms of knowledge are always also forms of social power, indeed, the most important forms of social power—a particular appeal.
At some point between 2006 and 2015, he must have decided that Foucalt was accurate enough on the subject of exercising power in society, to quote him so unquestioningly in this article.
Unless, of course, there's a distinction between the subset of "power" that this article deals with, and those he previously criticised Foucalt on, that make all four passages congruent with each other.
If you’re obsessed with how clothes represent genitals and sexuality, you’re going to find all clothes represent genitals and sexuality to some degree. Why that collar around the neck? Why that hoodie concealing the precise shape of the torso? Why the bright white of those Jordan Airs?
I wear a tie occasionally, with a three piece suit, because if I don’t, I can’t get access to the nice bits of the racecourses I visit across the UK (when such things were of course allowed).
Wearing a tie today is not about penises, it’s not about power, it’s about conformity. It’s about not standing out, merging into the crowd, becoming a little more anonymous. Walk around the City of London on a busy workday (except in 2020), and the men merge into one, hardly distinguishable in their uniforms.
The tie looks like a penis the way a trouser leg does. It embodies power the way a hoodie does. Women wear them in some contexts (restaurant waitresses, front of house staff in theatres, etc.), and not to show off their non-existent penis.
[edit:] As an aside it also serves a practical purpose of hiding the button line of a shirt, and if you miss your mouth when eating your lunch it is easily replaceable. Despite the detractor’s wails it is not an entirely useless piece of cloth if you’re eating soup in a formal setting [/edit]
People mostly wear them because it’s expected of them and to conform, and this article while having all the hallmarks of an intelligent and thoughtful piece is just a love letter to the author’s internal anxieties. If you share those anxieties, perhaps talk to a therapist.