Submitted by Martin Regnen on Sat, 11/08/2008 - 16:11.
The progress of democracy in recent centuries has been accompanied by a general degeneration of society's standards in areas as widespread as leadership, art, behavior and appearance. Although some of these trends are difficult to oppose on even the smallest of scales, appearance is one area in which an individual can still make a stand by merely refusing to dress like a pre-adolescent. Sure, it's not terribly important in the grand scheme of things, but anything which annoys hippies and nerds is worthwhile. Especially when someone asks why you're dressed up and you retort that it symbolizes your opposition to political freedoms.
I didn't even learn to tie a necktie until I was in my 30s and realized that dressing better has an upside quite accidentally. After I started lifting weights and quickly going up through the sizes, I started wearing some not-so-crappy stuff (long-sleeve shirts with buttons etc.) to work just because "saving" it for better occasions no longer made sense. Much of my life is spent on muddy construction sites so I'm obviously not going to wear a suit, leather-soled shoes and a long wool overcoat to work but I can still look more serious and mature than most computer programmers, and I can wear a coat and tie for evenings out, weekends, concerts etc.
I had started writing a longer essay about the decline of a society in which it is normal for grown men (and even grown women in some subcultures) to dress like prepubescent boys, but I realized that somebody else has already done a better job than I could.
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I have to agree here. Since
I have to agree here. Since I myself don't have the extra money right now to spend on a nice suit and tie I won't be a hypocrite, to be fair though, I don't really have an occupation and rarely partake of any activities that facilitate suit wearing. I have nothing at all against wearing an untucked T shirt and jeans out in public, but there's a big trend for men young who have no idea how to actually fucking wear their clothes. It's not even a status thing, many people who wear hundred dollar pants can't seem to afford to either get them in the right size or put on a damn belt.
It really shouldn't be a lot to ask of any post-pubescent male to be able to wear the right size shirt, tie your shoes the right way and pull up your pants.
C.S. Lewis made reference to this behavior
An excerpt from "Screwtape Proposes a Toast"
And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: "Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I -- it must be a vile, upstage, la-di-da affectation. Here's a fellow who says he doesn't like hot dogs -- thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here's a man who hasn't turned on the jukebox -- he's one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they'd be like me. They've no business to be different. It's undemocratic."
Now, this useful phenomenon is in itself by no means new. Under the name of Envy it has been known to humans for thousands of years. But hitherto they always regarded it as the most odious, and also the most comical, of vices. Those who were aware of feeling it felt it with shame; those who were not gave it no quarter in others. The delightful novelty of the present situation is that you can sanction it -- make it respectable and even laudable -- by the incantatory use of the word democratic.
Under the influence of this incantation those who are in any or every way inferior can labour more wholeheartedly and successfully than ever before to pull down everyone else to their own level. But that is not all. Under the same influence, those who come, or could come, nearer to a full humanity, actually draw back from fear of being undemocratic. I am credibly informed that young humans now sometimes suppress an incipient taste for classical music or good literature because it might prevent their Being Like Folks; that people who would really wish to be -- and are offered the Grace which would enable them to be -- honest, chaste, or temperate refuse it. To accept might make them Different, might offend against the Way of Life, take them out of Togetherness, impair their Integration with the Group. They might (horror of horrors!) become individuals.
All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: “O God, make me a normal twentieth century girl!” Thanks to our labours, this will mean increasingly: “Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite.”