Guys with long hair

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^ Let's be careful that we don't go into the territory of personal attacks, please.

Magz:

Nope, my parents are not particularly snobbish – they just know advertising gimmicks when they see them.

Mr. Ferris:

I hardly see how I could be being influenced by the advertisers of the fifties – I can’t remember the last time I saw a 1950s advertisement. Personally, I don’t see it as a temporal or generational question: the issue here is the need for consistent, more-or-less cross-generational standards in dress that, among other things, enable one to predict certain things about the “other” which it would otherwise be cumbersome to obtain.

The generations which emerged subsequent to the cultural “revolution” which took place in the west in the decades immediately following the second world war – which revolution was itself, by the way, engineered by the very bourgeoisie it was ostensibly a revolution against – were and are the first in the history of civilisation where instructions weren’t passed down from father to son and mother to daughter on the general topic of how to dress and under what circumstances. This sounds like a good thing on the fallacious assumption, which is the alpha and omega of cultural liberalism (I would say Marxism), that we can all be Nietzschean übermenschen who decide every aspect of their destinies for themselves, but the truth is that very few people (I would suggest none, including myself) are capable of shouldering the immense psychological burden entailed by complete self-determination. I suggest that a generation such as mine whose members are notorious for running to their parents at the first suggestion of a life challenge is probably less able than any other. The inevitable (and pre-calculated) result here is that everybody loses out in being forced to take up a largely unwelcome burden – except the businessmen and their faithful advertisers who now, by stealth (as was always planned), take up the role which was once filled by the young man or woman’s parent, and make a fortune out of it.

Make no mistake about it – those who shout about how they’re being “individuals” because they dress scruffily are guilty of precisely the same conformism as Mormon types who put on knitted sweaters and ankle-length skirts because they’ve been told it’s what “good” Mormons do – the former have just deceived themselves into thinking it was their own decision, because it was effected by the advertisers at an as it were subliminal level, rather than by virtue of conscious acceptance of a position which was consciously presented.

The need is for default standards in matters such as dress, speech, cuisine and so forth, which are determined by a slowly evolving tradition which, by its nature, doesn’t change much (although it may change a little) from one generation to the next. This way, those (by far the majority) who haven’t the psychological courage, or interest, or motivation, or taste, to determine their own position on such matters, have something to fall back on, while those who do have those things (by far the minority), will still be extended tolerance. What we cannot accept is the businessmen’s model whereby demand for new “styles” is created factitiously to fill a need for sales. This is the model which emerged in the first few decades of the twentieth century as the last stages of the industrial revolution and the inventions which came with it enabled a small number of venture capitalists to obtain sums of money which only the Shah of Iran could previously have possessed. This, coupled with the emergence of a science of demand creation, or “public relations”, as developed by Edward Bernays and co, following on from the ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, enabled a small nouveau riche clique to obtain almost complete control of the direction “fashion”, among other things would take. Our present world, where demand can be created for the most patently ugly and degrading fashions, is the logical conclusion of this.

Now I’m not saying that the suit and tie, or the clean-shaven and short-haired look has to be the objective, predetermined default fashion – all I’m arguing for is the need for such a default, on the question of fashion along with every other one which isn’t solely one of personal taste. Since the last form of dress for the adult male in the western world which had been a product of cross-generational tradition, was the suit and tie, it makes sense that it should be this, but every culture has or had its own sartorial tradition – we still see the remnants of such traditions in the sari of India and the headband of the Saudis, and no one tradition is any “better” than any other.

I can't help thinking that the only reason anybody might object to such a modest, rational and necessary suggestion as the one I’ve presented here is that they fear that they personally won't be able to meet the expectations of such a tradition, nor achieve true self determination - I suggest to such people that they're probably doing themselves an injustice in assuming themselves so impotent. But this is unfortunately a far broader problem for our civilisation - particularly in the west: the deterioration in the quality of the education system, particularly in the Anglophone west, where schools are little more than giant children’s homes run by social workers, along with the absence of one or both of the parents from the household (usually the father), along with the prevalence of mind-numbing drugs, creates a state of what Emile Durkheim called “anomie”, which is where a lack of social norms and expectations has created a pathological and ever-present sense of powerlessness, low self-esteem and, in the end, existential dread. This is precisely the reason why values must be handed from generation to generation.

^^ Nicely said. A tidy default standard is good. But having a base also allows for some freedoms. When I was employed in my career I either wore a uniform or business dress, as did my colleagues. It is possible to dress conservatively and be very eye-catching and attractive. Now that I’ve retired from that, I’ve added a few extra piercings to my ears and have had pink, purple and blue streaks in my hair. My (adult) son is a little less conservative, but knows to dress well when it matters. Of course, once in his younger years he coloured his hair bright scarlet!

Prometheus18, we had this conversation before.
Abrupt shifts in fashion have been present in history. The 18th century -> Regency transition is quite a strong example.
I live away from anglophone school systems and people around me wear suits only occasionally, unless their work dress code is very strict. Thus, I wouldn't claim any connection of the two. The main reason for not wearing a suit every day is comfort, not complex ideologies.

Just for some visual illustration:
1770s:

1790s:

There is nothing new about lack of cross-generational continuity in fashion standards.

Magz:
The difference is that radical changes in fashion in history occurred as a result of natural contingencies which weren’t the doing of any one man or corporation or group of corporations. Today, there are people whose sole job it is to sit in an office all day and determine the means by which the public can be directed towards buying such and such kinds of clothes. The changed also didn’t occur with the same degree of frequency as today – a vanquished nation may have been forced, or felt forced, to adopt the customs of its conqueror, but there was never a time when radically new fashions were introduced every few years; this is psychologically exhausting. Any fashion that did emerge was also (almost) universally agreed upon within any one milieu and was not contrary to objective considerations such as dignity, modesty, symmetry and so forth.

It’s also telling that your stated objection to the suit is the difficulty entailed in wearing one. It’s no doubt true, and this is part of its virtue – the difficulty involved in keeping a suit in good order is a means of conveying competence to others, particularly in a business environment, and the resulting knowledge one has of his competence in being able to wear a suit well is a great boon to self esteem. Further, to walk down a high street in a major city surrounded by people visibly competent and self-controlled feeds one’s faith in the “other” previously mentioned. To walk down a street populated by the self-neglecting is a blow to this faith and, in the final analysis, is rather oppressive of one.

Mr. Ferris: I have a penchant for speaking in circumlocutions involving lots of nested clauses which even I struggle to find the working memory capacity to understand upon rereading, so I understand if such a long message is too much for you.

I don’t think the photographs you refer to were solely of gentlemen from the fifties, although they mostly dated to the earlier part of last century – this is for the reason, stated in the part of my post that you didn’t read, that this was the last time when men were really taught how to dress well.

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I’m impressed by the tailoring! It’s not easy to get the lines of plaids properly matched up like that! Inexpensive clothing, stripes and plaids are usually out of kilter.

Yes, but how many Aspies have worn properly fitted suit on a date? Or any social gathering?

With Aspies having sensory issues and dressing for comfort, perhaps a more realistic goal would be to find clothes that are both appropriate and properly sized.

This thread makes me want dreadlocks.

My hair just passed my shoulders. I could use a trim but I'm not getting rid of it.

I don't preach conformity to anyone, it bored me so I stopped conforming.

I don't plan on encouraging others to judge books by their covers.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

Most male fashion sites stress the importance of buying pants with the exact same fabric as used in the rest of the suit, just like the plaid example provided. I think this is a good example of the arbitrary rules you find in fashion.