Maybe status and power remain constant and it's expression randomly inverts from extreme shows to I'm too important and powerful to behave like that and back...
Great Male Renunciation
41–50 of 156 posts
Re: Great Male Renunciation
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are we though? I sure as heck can't afford to pay a staff of servants.
A relevant quote about the change of affordability of certain things from the late Agatha Christie looking back at her early years - "I couldn’t imagine being too poor to afford servants, nor so rich as to be able to afford a car." With respect to material culture - so also with respect to what clothing styles and fashions are possible - anybody who can afford a car is far richer than people who had servants a hundre…
Cars were an arguably overvalued novelty at the time.
The more fundamental question should be something like, do you need to work to put food on your table.
If yes, then you are not wealthy.
Re: Great Male Renunciation
#43Re: Great Male Renunciation
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. The bottom 1%’s clothing will always be more indicative of the average clothes of the time than the top 1%’s.
So what? TFA is not about the working class nor does it need to be. Why this fixation on comparing yourselves with the poor?
The article makes a lot of reference to class.
Wigs, stockings and heels were associated with being of the aristocrat class. Which, as the article states, could make one wearing such things a target.
Re: Great Male Renunciation
#45Re: Great Male Renunciation
#46Bright colors used to be a sign of quality, everything expensive had tons of colors. Industrial revolution changed that, now bright colors are associated with cheap toys instead because they are used to cover deficiencies in the production process. So it makes sense that people who care about quality moved away from colorful things.
I wonder how much of it had to do with the rise in pollution due to coal dust and soot?
Re: Great Male Renunciation
#47Just what % of the population actually wore those clothes back then? Are we comparing ourselves to what the 1% or 0.1% wore?
I don't think it matters quite so much how many; the question is more about what everyone wanted to be. What their aspirations were.
The point would be that a mainstream man in 1750 wanted to be wearing colorful frilly things with high heels, even if he couldn't afford any of it because he was just a servant. Whereas starting in the 1800's, that stopped being an aspiration, whether you had money or not.
Also, while this clothing wasn't accessible to servants and laborers, some of it would have been to the growing middle class that consisted of merchants, professors, lawyers, and so forth. Just look at paintings depicting coffeeshop culture in the 1700's:
https://www.sylviaprincebooks.com/blog-list/2021/coffee-hous...
And coffeehouses were not reserved for the 0.1%, not at all.
Re: Great Male Renunciation
#48Just what % of the population actually wore those clothes back then? Are we comparing ourselves to what the 1% or 0.1% wore?
In at least some periods servants wore their masters’ cast-offs. Additionally, many natural dyes are not necessarily that expensive. I understand that many mediæval artworks depict commoners in colourful clothing.
Re: Great Male Renunciation
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. The bottom 1%’s clothing will always be more indicative of the average clothes of the time than the top 1%’s.
So what? TFA is not about the working class nor does it need to be. Why this fixation on comparing yourselves with the poor?
Affliction Olympics.
Re: Great Male Renunciation
#50Just what % of the population actually wore those clothes back then? Are we comparing ourselves to what the 1% or 0.1% wore?
What percentage of the population are 'stars' or otherwise somehow fashion leaders these days and how do they drive trends in what we wear?