Modern Man Can't Dress Himself
From the "Fr. Smith Says" department ...
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Few have commented on the power exerted by women over the ages by virtue of the old saying “clothes make the man”. This is less an issue of clothes making the man than of the woman making the clothes. From infancy, women dress men to suit their tastes. It is Mommy who chooses Junior’s jump suit. It is Mom who sewed his first pair of pants or brought him clothes shopping before kindergarten. It is fear of underwhelming the girls in the sophomore class that prompts Junior to have Big Sis show him which jeans to buy at the mall. His lovely bride picks out the wedding tux, vetoes the striped-and-polka-dotted tie he wanted to wear to the office, and burns those old jeans that are so yesterday’s cool. And she will have Grandma knit a new jump suit for Junior Junior just like the one in Junior’s baby pictures that make him look so adorable.
Feminists, however, are abdicating almost all of the power that women once wielded over the closet. Women do not sew. Women are at the mercy of designers and department stores when it comes to sizes and styles available for themselves, their children, and the men for whom they shop. Women dress like men – either looking like slobs in the home, or mimicking men in the corporate boardroom where they claim to want to bring a feminizing element to humanize business. Women dress not like ladies, but like ladies of the evening when it comes to socializing, and then wonder why men treat them like so much flesh whose only purpose is for the pleasure of men, free to discard any woman – girlfriend, wife, or mistress – when something fresher comes along.
When women did sew, they chose the fabrics, designs, colors, and styles of the clothing for everyone in the family. The one exception to this would be tailored men’s suits, which change their overall appearance about as often as the moon changes its mind about which side should face the earth. Now that women do not sew, they, and everyone else, must buy clothes. Clothes, as with all other consumables these days, are made to the order of mega-corporations. These corporations are dominated by men. These men decide what “decisions” are available for women to make when dressing themselves and dressing their men.
A slight tangent is necessary here. The kind of men making these choices are not the kind of men that would satisfy most women. The fashion “industry” is not noted for its emphasis on the masculine. This would not be remarkable were women to dominate fashion as they dominate nursing. What should concern more people than it does is the fact that America is being dressed by men whose primal urges tend in directions that healthy people would find disturbing, distasteful, and disoriented.
Here is a slightly different tangent to the tangent. The mega-corporations producing the clothes no longer sewn by women do so in most unwomanly ways. Slave labor makes production costs very low and profit margins very high, while doing little or nothing to reduce retail costs. A large proportion of the slaves laboring for these corporations are children. Women in America buy clothes for their children made by other women’s children whose monthly income would be insufficient to purchase a pair of shoes. The ability to make such purchases, rather than the necessity of providing such items herself, makes it possible for the American mother to be away from her family and at work (although this work is no longer in the American garment and textile industry, now virtually extinct). This is a reality she does not share with the Third World slave mothers because their children are just a few benches down in the same sweat shop, happy that the family has attained full employment.
Women are told that they should aspire to be mathematicians and scientists. In happier, healthier days of western civilization, a far higher proportion of women excelled at dressmaking and sewing – highly skilled arts – than their husbands were able to find success as rocket scientists or doctors. Women are encouraged to go into business and politics. They often pursue careers in business wherein they appeal to women’s homemaking skills; in politics they frequently emphasize the importance of the home and family; and in both instances they miss the irony that they no longer nurture their own nurturing skills and hire some other mother to mother their children. Women in the workplace and in government are supposedly the repositories of a mystical feminine key to universal beatitude. They discard the very things most readily recognizable as feminine – dress, homemaking skills, and empathy – in favor of participating in the very things that destroyed the traditional husband and father – unprincipled competition, displaced priorities, and exile from the home. Blurring the line between men and women has not brought a more feminine touch to commerce nor a stronger masculine presence in the home, but has dehumanized most aspects of modern public life and has all but crippled the modern family.
“Dressing for success” has come to mean that women wear pants-suits and that men have forgotten how to put – or keep – their pants on. Women now see men as competitors and men see women as threats. Women have ceased to look to men as providers and companions while men no longer seek wives for themselves or mothers for their children. Women are replacing men in office suites and the corridors of power and men have absented themselves from the home and the responsibilities of fatherhood. “Unisex” does not mean that sex roles are interchangeable; it means that one of the sexes, the female, has come to usurp the position of the other, the male, and the male has taken advantage of the situation to be as demanding as the female has become. Women are demanding a right to help rule the world. Men are demanding the right to live in a world without rules.
This is a world without real men or real women. Females now lack husbands, fathers, and helpmates, having instead bosses, employees, and clients. Males now lack wives, mothers, and helpmates, having instead one-night stands, mistresses, and old girlfriends. Children are thus taught never to grow up, continuing the childish insistence on having one’s own way in imitation of the females in their lives, or continuing the childish insistence on instant gratification in imitation of the males in their lives. Somehow, this does not seem what St. Paul had in mind in Galatians 3:26-29 or in Ephesians 5:22-24.
****************
Few have commented on the power exerted by women over the ages by virtue of the old saying “clothes make the man”. This is less an issue of clothes making the man than of the woman making the clothes. From infancy, women dress men to suit their tastes. It is Mommy who chooses Junior’s jump suit. It is Mom who sewed his first pair of pants or brought him clothes shopping before kindergarten. It is fear of underwhelming the girls in the sophomore class that prompts Junior to have Big Sis show him which jeans to buy at the mall. His lovely bride picks out the wedding tux, vetoes the striped-and-polka-dotted tie he wanted to wear to the office, and burns those old jeans that are so yesterday’s cool. And she will have Grandma knit a new jump suit for Junior Junior just like the one in Junior’s baby pictures that make him look so adorable.
Feminists, however, are abdicating almost all of the power that women once wielded over the closet. Women do not sew. Women are at the mercy of designers and department stores when it comes to sizes and styles available for themselves, their children, and the men for whom they shop. Women dress like men – either looking like slobs in the home, or mimicking men in the corporate boardroom where they claim to want to bring a feminizing element to humanize business. Women dress not like ladies, but like ladies of the evening when it comes to socializing, and then wonder why men treat them like so much flesh whose only purpose is for the pleasure of men, free to discard any woman – girlfriend, wife, or mistress – when something fresher comes along.
When women did sew, they chose the fabrics, designs, colors, and styles of the clothing for everyone in the family. The one exception to this would be tailored men’s suits, which change their overall appearance about as often as the moon changes its mind about which side should face the earth. Now that women do not sew, they, and everyone else, must buy clothes. Clothes, as with all other consumables these days, are made to the order of mega-corporations. These corporations are dominated by men. These men decide what “decisions” are available for women to make when dressing themselves and dressing their men.
A slight tangent is necessary here. The kind of men making these choices are not the kind of men that would satisfy most women. The fashion “industry” is not noted for its emphasis on the masculine. This would not be remarkable were women to dominate fashion as they dominate nursing. What should concern more people than it does is the fact that America is being dressed by men whose primal urges tend in directions that healthy people would find disturbing, distasteful, and disoriented.
Here is a slightly different tangent to the tangent. The mega-corporations producing the clothes no longer sewn by women do so in most unwomanly ways. Slave labor makes production costs very low and profit margins very high, while doing little or nothing to reduce retail costs. A large proportion of the slaves laboring for these corporations are children. Women in America buy clothes for their children made by other women’s children whose monthly income would be insufficient to purchase a pair of shoes. The ability to make such purchases, rather than the necessity of providing such items herself, makes it possible for the American mother to be away from her family and at work (although this work is no longer in the American garment and textile industry, now virtually extinct). This is a reality she does not share with the Third World slave mothers because their children are just a few benches down in the same sweat shop, happy that the family has attained full employment.
Women are told that they should aspire to be mathematicians and scientists. In happier, healthier days of western civilization, a far higher proportion of women excelled at dressmaking and sewing – highly skilled arts – than their husbands were able to find success as rocket scientists or doctors. Women are encouraged to go into business and politics. They often pursue careers in business wherein they appeal to women’s homemaking skills; in politics they frequently emphasize the importance of the home and family; and in both instances they miss the irony that they no longer nurture their own nurturing skills and hire some other mother to mother their children. Women in the workplace and in government are supposedly the repositories of a mystical feminine key to universal beatitude. They discard the very things most readily recognizable as feminine – dress, homemaking skills, and empathy – in favor of participating in the very things that destroyed the traditional husband and father – unprincipled competition, displaced priorities, and exile from the home. Blurring the line between men and women has not brought a more feminine touch to commerce nor a stronger masculine presence in the home, but has dehumanized most aspects of modern public life and has all but crippled the modern family.
“Dressing for success” has come to mean that women wear pants-suits and that men have forgotten how to put – or keep – their pants on. Women now see men as competitors and men see women as threats. Women have ceased to look to men as providers and companions while men no longer seek wives for themselves or mothers for their children. Women are replacing men in office suites and the corridors of power and men have absented themselves from the home and the responsibilities of fatherhood. “Unisex” does not mean that sex roles are interchangeable; it means that one of the sexes, the female, has come to usurp the position of the other, the male, and the male has taken advantage of the situation to be as demanding as the female has become. Women are demanding a right to help rule the world. Men are demanding the right to live in a world without rules.
This is a world without real men or real women. Females now lack husbands, fathers, and helpmates, having instead bosses, employees, and clients. Males now lack wives, mothers, and helpmates, having instead one-night stands, mistresses, and old girlfriends. Children are thus taught never to grow up, continuing the childish insistence on having one’s own way in imitation of the females in their lives, or continuing the childish insistence on instant gratification in imitation of the males in their lives. Somehow, this does not seem what St. Paul had in mind in Galatians 3:26-29 or in Ephesians 5:22-24.
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