First of all, "jeans and T-shirt" are not the only possibilities. Dressed to the nines also works ("Bond. James Bond.") Uniforms work.Pythos wrote:This is also a look associated with a thug, or gangsta. Why is such a look acceptable, but a guy in something other than jeans and t-shirt is not? This has always baffled me.
What all these "looks" have in common, including the "gangsta" look, is that they project a sense of wanting to exert power over others. For instance, expensive suits suggest lots of money and thus the power of being someone who runs things. Uniforms represent identification with an organization; police and military uniforms represent membership in a power-wielding organization. "Gangsta", like the James Dean look, project antisocial "power" -- the deliberate violation of social rules which suggests a willingness to violate laws as well.
And wanting power has always counted as acceptably "masculine."
Skirts, and most of the other clothing elements people talk about here (besides kilts) are associated with women, who, of course, are associated with weakness (and unmasculinity) in the public mind.
What I find interesting is that the "gansta" and related hip-hop fashions also look so juvenile, which seems to me to be the opposite of powerful. These are men who are still boys, who have outgrown or haven't grown into their clothes, who don't know how to keep their pants up, who still wear baseball caps and sports jerseys all the time, and probably still live with their mommies (like many real-life drug dealers.) I would think of this as the opposite of "powerful."
The "casual" look doesn't project power, either. If the hip-hoppers look like their permanently 14 years old, the Lands' End casual dressers look like they want to remain 23 forever. They don't want to take on adult responsibilities, either.
I wonder: where are the people who are going to run the world?
Maybe the drag queens! At least they're not afraid to stand for something.
-- AMM
