Clothing and Class War

I recently finished the book “White Trash: The 400 Year Old History of Class in America” by Nancy Isenberg. I thought her harsh, in some ways wrong on Thomas Jefferson. I perceived some general bias and anger, but the reasoning and multitudes of facts surely justify some degree of anger. There has been a history of abundant injustice.

I picked the read up because I had been pondering class war and the media’s obvious fear to talk about it, the enlarging economic schism, the powers that be and why there are all of these people about that just don’t understand and share many of my perspectives. I’ve been concerned.

Since I am how I am, I couldn’t help but mentally insert the historic role of the use of clothing during the read. Although there was quite a bit on that topic in her book, I’ve got my own predilections, my way of seeing the world and sorting out thoughts. 

Somehow briefly, I’d like to inform, sow seeds, or trigger reflection and awareness. I recommend the book. It brought to me many forgotten memories of my youth and some ingrained class distinctions. It opened a better understanding of my parent’s generation and why I was raised as I was, during that era, and the subsequent social upheaval within me and around me.

I doubt that anyone has lived in a truly classless society of equality and equity. I realize that clothing has had and continues to have a significant part in the structures and preservation of class. This needs to be talked about.

This is a site to promote body friendly social change, natural rights, and freedoms. Politically, all that I’ll be saying about this and briefly, is that there currently is grand scale evidence of a class war and for profit, from the top down, as one side of the spectrum likes to define themselves. Socially and economically, it only takes a relatively few to create class stratifications. The book is loaded with evidence of this dividing and conquering in the Americas. I see it as global. You don’t have to agree, but please, look around and always think for yourself.

Looking back into history, much of the class distinction and clothing requirements in our culture came from empire, mostly England’s, but generally European social structures. It is these European roots that had developed systems of control by the rich and religion.  For example, royalty used religion, claiming divine guidance and decree.  Even their social positions were purported to be of “divine right”.

The great status of particular fabrics, which enforced class distinctions, were also the tools of power. This wasn’t a new idea. Clothing evolved as a power tool from way back when better animal skins showed prowess. Practically, better cloths showed prosperity and those prosperous tend to attract and bond with the like. One extreme was that it was law with a penalty of death, that only royalty could wear the purple dye from the Tyrian mollusk.

Bad Boys:

Male dominated society covered and often safely hid their possessions, or displayed them to peers. One possession has been women. Clothing controlled them and protected the male’s interest. The burka hasn’t always been a relative extreme in history. The trophy wife has taken many forms, for example, it has been called “breeding.”

By the Victorian era, women were perceived to be frail and so needed care, couldn’t understand a manly world and so were sheltered. The reputation of women was low, less than, not as smart. They were just better at childcare. They supposedly had no orgasms, or sexual pleasure. They were encased in impractical structural forms of dress to create odd shapes and bodies hidden in frills.  Like children, prized gifts were ribbons. A woman was reduced to looking for status through her man’s actions only. They were excluded from the good ol’ boy’s club. The sisters were bound by paternal power and clothing style reflected and reinforced that.

Women were to know their “place” but they were not alone. Race, education, property ownership, all had importance in distinction, even to the point of the vote. Race had its cultural wrappings, as well as the obvious differences. Select white people ruled, while others strived to copy their style in a world not their own. Some dress was contained in the identity of one’s peers, or class.

Slavery, genocide, oppression, privilege, are outrageous, or frowned upon, today, but in other times and places, these seemed reasonable. When you grow up in a situation, it is as if it has always been like that and things changed slower in the past, a compounded misinformed perspective. Our judgmental presentism of the past must be put aside. In the future, this current textile obsession and many other accepted behaviors will likely be frowned upon. Rules about dress and exposure of body parts are just another taboo, or a more. They will be eventually be seen through and shed. Without a questioning contemplation, people get caught up in life, assume and then often get blindsided by their own behaviors, but from this comes change. Textile obsession has been and will continue to be eroded away. Hopefully, much of the associated social structures will erode, as well.

Hierarchy:

There can be a sense of safety and tribal identity with conformity. Likewise, people have used dress to claim their identification as a member of their class and hierarchical placement. Clothing has always been integral to these behaviors.

For example, uniforms delineate and delegate power in a military.  A subservient soldier’s first duty and training is to follow orders.  This is good for strategy in an army in war. A military unit must act quickly, on command, without question to be effective. However, this strategic training is also used for the safety of the rulers. It saves them from rebellion. These attitudes are a useful and orderly package. Station wrapped in a specific social uniform gives pride in one’s placement, which stabilizes the social order.

Unfortunately and negatively, there has always been a class that are the disposables of the powerful, who have fought rich men’s wars, been maimed and also died. They might also be the first to starve in times of stress. These have also been the ones to be the labor force and often used mercilessly. The book pointed out how they may even only be a self-conceived step above slavery, but they’ll see themselves as at least better than slaves and hold their position with pride. They have pride in a cultural more tribal identity. They dress the part, while their “betters” dress in theirs.

This in America was an old bad habit imported from Europe. Most of us are aware that where empire went, clothing followed and the same systems of control where placed in effect. By coercion, brute force, or sleight of hand, the same changes were accomplished. It was sometimes with good intentions, maybe misguided, but there was dominance established and this was followed by exploitation by the upper classes. They created and maintained lower classes.  Always, clothing or new style was introduced, establishing everyone’s placement in the new social order. Naked people across the world were forced, or fooled into clothes and then deemed lesser, soon finding themselves trapped.

British culture dominated by a Pax Britannia had the greatest influence, spreading this game around the world. America was always a child of Britain’s influence, no matter how wild it was on its frontiers. The civilizing influences were imported from Britain and then enforced by America’s elites. In a class conscious society with ridiculously inequitable stratifications of wealth, most in the hands of a few, there was a faux royalty, which so many seemed to strive for.  The upwardly mobile, socially and financially lowers, trained for the day that they might pass for cultured uppers, guided by such as Emily Post. With wealth came rules and the trappings of class. As example, to eat, a fork and spoon was held properly, as one sat in a chair with a straight back and straight neck. The glass and silver are placed just so. Posture, as well as body coverings, were stiff, proper and unnatural into the realm of being unhealthy. The starched collar produced the posture of bearing. One just didn’t do some things, if one had class. Class means opportunity and position, privilege and more wealth. Class control requires a façade.

People simply had to first dress the part. For posterity, “Sunday go to meeting best” was displayed in death and in preserved photo memories.  Everyone was presented stiff and upright, as that early photo production technology required.

In a post-World War II era:

Uniforms for class designations and dominance at the workplace were taken as a matter of accomplishment, pride and control, just like in the military. After World War II, under the broad influence of a military experience, the uniform went corporate.  Men only wore dark blue, grey, or black. Upper management, owners, upper class, may have had an expensive pinstripe. It was odd in the early sixties to visit a city seeing hundreds of men in the same collared shirts, tight high water pants, strange little hats with small brims and a brief case in hand. It was off of the rack extreme conformity. So obvious and prevalent was it, that later in the decade, it was universally recognized as something to rebel against. “Oh baby, they were so uptight!”

Along with this was a specific woman consumer’s fashion, which was generally dictated by Parisian designers. They kept fashion theirs and profited from it, in control of fashion season, by fashion season.

So in the post war era, like the military, conformity in detail was enforced harshly and with penalties. The notion of the nuclear family was given to us, commuting in and out of suburbia, all very uniform, creating conditions of acceptance and privilege. It might be argued to have been the best world ever to be offered, up until that time. The middle class grew, as well as its influence. Still, people would dress up in blazers and fashionable pencil skirts and white gloves for casual events, just to impress others in their social circles.

The later 60’s began a great social upheaval in dress, equality, environmental concerns and various liberations, including individuality. Skinny-dipping and clothing without social constraints became “cool.”

Alas, eventually, something happened, which was a lot about class and upward mobility. Yuppie became vernacular. The bras returned, along with much more exaggerated shoulder pads of power.

Tribal confines:

People have always adapted to the conformity of tribes. This human behavioral influence has just blossomed into a grander and then grander scale.

Identity and fashion depend upon your peers. When children reach puberty and middle school they begin to try out adult scenarios. They begin to experiment, distinguishing themselves with more of an identity other than being a child for various reasons. But at the new beginning, they don’t realize and blur the notion that just dressing the part, doesn’t make you the part. A role in life has more complexity.  So, where did they get this? It’s likely, from our basic human social structures.  They watch how clothing is different for classes and the pressure of social subgroups and recognize the status surrounding themselves. Amongst this are designer labels. Within these changing maturing bodies, what do these factors mean? They get addicted to clothing. They are trapped in the persona that clothing creates and clothing that creates the persona. The games begin.

How different it would be if clothing were to be reduced in importance? What if humanity could see through the clothing to the more essential human being’s worth?  Wouldn’t there be more value in merit and cooperation. There might be less competition, games of power, or oppression. There might be more equality and less stress. Could you see disintegration of consumerism, more individual thinking, with healthy questioning of authority, free thinking, self-empowerment, confidence and creativity? The stifling of all of this is produced and enforced by the class/clothing culture that is accepted without thought starting from birth. It is assumed that society is as if it has always been the way it is and a right and natural thing to be.  

We may never evolve without certain people looking for self-advantage. Some might argue that that competition is a good thing in some ways, but how different would life and the Earth be, if we could become more self-aware of these social values that clothing presents and molds us into? The only way to become aware of these influences is to break molds. Extremely effective, is to be nude in many situations. In mass, we need to accept the fact that being with any other of our own species without covering is good and healthy. Then, all of the subtle trappings can be seen for what they are. There is a sense of liberation to drop the trappings and see the value of who is hidden within those trappings.

Sure the first of wars were probably fought nude. Sure naked people painted themselves for battle. Sure there has always been a few who got greedy. Sure, some used power to keep their power from being taken by others up the chain. Have there always been those that claimed their blood better than the rest?  Always there has been ethnocentrism. Sure, generations rebel and forget the lessons that the previous learned. Sure, someone will find greed and then corrupt, or even cancel cooperation. But clothing has always been a perpetuating part, a tool of these structures and their establishment. It creates imbalance and stresses the world and its people. We need to strip each emperor of his new clothes, before he becomes emperor, at an early and a fundamental time of their life and social influence. We need to instill the essential being, the one that the lack of clothing and nature gives us and before institutions absorb us so overwhelmingly into the totalitarian tribe.

Clothing is the thread that helps to bind us in so many ways, but I would hope to destroy that very fabric of society. We haven’t arranged a perfect world, but I’m supposing that the leap into those waters and evolution would be a more comprehensive experience, if we just did it naked.

It’s often been said that social nudity dissolves social barriers. I’d say that clothing creates social barriers. Nudity is the default, the natural state.

I’ve thought of clothing as costuming all of my life. Sometimes, I used it as a disguise to infiltrate, to learn, to get position toward something that I desired. It is universally a social construct, but I have never fooled myself into believing that costuming and role was the actual, real me. It is fun to dress up, to be festive, it is comfortable at times using coverings to stay warm. But, I have always felt more honest and authentic without clothing.

Without clothing, there is a liberation from confinements of many kinds of behaviors and class. Most often, I’ve discovered that I’ve not been totally alone in recognizing and knowing the façade.

P.S.

Blooper!

I am on the forum of FreeRangeNaturism.com often, if you would like to converse.

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