We Are What We Wear?

I've been thinking some more about this thing of why kids, and others, wear what we do. (Not thinking for three whole days since the last entry here, I grant you -- I just wasn't in the mood to deal with my recalcitrant e-connection, which has been giving me trouble.)

For example, I still have a whole section of my closet taken over by clothes I probably will never wear again, because they're my city clothes. My author-appearances clothes, which at the time I bought them I had assumed I'd have use for at least once a year for some time to come. My entry into retirement really did take me by surprise, and there sits the proof; but I keep those clothes well back in the closet where at least I don't have to look at them every time I open the door.

A friend offered, in response to my question Why do the kids dress the way they do, the suggestion that peer pressure and celebrity example has a lot to do with it. Given the clannishness of teens, which is an unavoidable part of growing up, I'm sure she's right.

But there's a deeper answer, and that's the one I'm after, the one I've been pondering ... even if I can never verify it. It's a cultural answer, just like the clothes I now wear myself are a cultural thing, and a sort of protective coloration thing. I live where I live now and so I want to look like it. I do not wear the smart black blazer over everything anymore, the way I did most days when I lived in San Francisco. In fact, I had more than one black blazer -- a linen one for summer that I clung to for years in spite of the fact that it wrinkled if you so much as breathed on it, and not just one but two winter ones, one of higher quality than the other. I still have "the other", but the linen one and the good wool one have gone to the thrift store, where slowly, slowly I am sure all the rest of my city clothes will go when I can bear to part with them.

Where I live now is a rural, geographically isolated place, and the majority of people who've lived here a long time by choice are very happy with both the ruralness and the isolation. There's a phrase to describe it: "Behind the Redwood Curtain." We here on the North Coast do not feel connected to the rest of California, and we like it that way. Except when we need money to fix the roads and such, at which time we are forced to recognize that the rest of CA doesn't much notice we're here ... but I digress. The way most people around here dress reflects the isolationist attitude. We wear jeans and t-shirts in the summer, and jeans and sweatshirts in the winter. We do not wear raincoats in the rain, we just get wet -- though the oldest among us will sometimes stoop to opening an umbrella. Only female clerks in banks and retail stores wear dresses. I thought we'd become subject to a bad influence when the anchors on the local tv newscast started wearing blazers. I'm not kidding about any of this. A "well-dressed" person is invariably a tourist, and will be treated like one.

So how does that apply to my ponderous ponderings over the kids among us, the boys with their voluminous black garb and the girls with way too much skin and cleavage on a daily basis? It applies in the sense that, just as there's a reason for my adapting to the jeans-and-t-shirt outfits, there must be a reason for the girls going mostly naked, at least above the waist, while the boys cover themselves to the point of ridiculousness. The boys are hiding their masculinity. They are even hampering themselves from freedom of movement in those things they put on. Can you imagine if Billy the Kid had had to pull off a fast draw in such an outfit? And while the boys are hiding, the girls are flaunting. After centuries of repression the girl-women are saying "You can look but if you touch I'll cry rape and you'll be sorry!"

That's the Inner Curmudgeon's interpretation. And I'm sticking with it.

Next up, if my e-connection allows: The Muslim angle on the above.