For nine months out of the year, I wear a tie six out of seven days of the week. I wore a tie daily for two consecutive years when I served my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I was sick of ties by the end of it. Despite hating ties, I'm in a career that has an expectation of wearing them. Such is my life. I hate ties for a couple of reasons, the least of which is that they're uncomfortable. While there are reasons why uncomfortable clothes should be worn (formal dances, weddings, and Halloween all make sense), surely ties can go away as a piece of fashion. There's a health reason not to want ties: They're swimming with bacteria and pathogens, which makes sense: They're not designed to be cleaned, and peeing in a urinal causes microscopic (and, sometimes, not-so-microscopic) splash-back. They're touched by hands--never the cleanest thing on a man's body--and rarely does a person think to wash his hands before tying a tie. They're also old-fashioned. I'm not one to dismiss something just because it's old---or new, for that matter--but preserving things that no longer serve (or ever served?) a useful purpose simply because that's what we've always done isn't a strong enough reason for us to keep using it. While there are some superficial changes to what's been "in style" in the last hundred years or so, the point is that wearing a suit and a tie has been the go-to male standard for a long, long time. These minute changes--cut of the suit, color of the clothing, shape of the collar--aren't enough. I want neckties to go the way of straw hats. Lastly, the fact that it's a brightly colored arrow pointing to a man's crotch* is really uncomfortable once you realize that's what a tie is doing, and since you just finished reading that sentence, you, too, will now always think of ties in this way. You're welcome. But this essay isn't about ties and why they are horrible and need to go away. It's actually about the times when I don't have to wear them. It's about the other portion of my wardrobe, what I wear after work and on weekends. I'm talking about my graphic tees. Now, If you'd asked me a few years ago if I thought fashion were significant, I would have snorted and shaken my head. And I still don't think fashion is the most important thing in the world. However, I've since changed my mind on its inherent superficiality. While there are some bizarre things in the fashion world, as a tool of communication and attempt at identity expression (a fraught phrase, but we'll go with it for now), it's worth exploring, if only a little bit. I am, after all, quite interested in communication--I'm a writer, after all--and so I no longer want to close off an entire subset of such communication simply because I don't think about it much. For me, I love to wear graphic tee-shirts. Here's one: And this one I wore on Shakespeare's birthday: I'm a scrawny white guy (very white, based upon both my choices of shirts, and the pasty color--or lack thereof--of my arms), and I like to demonstrate my interests through what I wear. In fact, sometimes, when I see one of my favorite shirts, I say, "Yaaas!" to myself as I pull it out of the closet. I did so with the Wonder Woman shirt pictured above (which also served as the impetus for today's essay). I do so with my singular John Milton shirt, and some of my better dinosaur shirts, too.
This is a peculiar behavior, in part because it's an expression I render because of forgetfulness. "I forgot I have this shirt!" is part of the reason for my miniature celebration. It's also strange to me the significance of some shirts because of a) where I've worn them (they accompanied me to England, for example), or b) where I purchased them (I still have a Resident Evil shirt from when I went to North Carolina for an NCUR presentation). In the unsurprising way of a neoliberal-capitalist society, I have created sentimental reasons for preferring certain articles of clothing, placing an unjustified value on one piece or another. Even more than that, though, is the way in which I allow the clothes to provide a definition of my selfhood. "I support this band" or "I understand this pop culture reference" or "I enjoy this joke" are all subtexts that undergird my selection of shirts, as much when I buy them as when I wear them. I went to a poetry reading a few years ago where I wore my NaNoWriMo Winner shirt. I selected it specifically because I figured, of all the people who might see it, a group of poets would likely understand what it meant without me having to explain it. It's interesting to me that by wearing a silent piece of cloth, styled and stylized the way it is, can say so much. I saw a little girl running toward Café Rio the other day. She wore a cute Wonder Woman shirt and frilly skirt/tutu (I thought) combo. Chasing after her was her dad, adorned with the Superman "S" logo on his shirt. That says something about that family, something that I'm familiar with. In that sense, I wear my graphic tees as a way of indicating solidarity with the subset of culture that I more closely identify with (nerd/geek culture, mostly) and have even found a measure of comfort when I see someone wearing a shirt with a Tri-Force on it. Because of the communication that it sends out, I find myself more closely associated with the entire community the message represents. This isn't to say that I don't identify with people wearing ties, but it certainly isn't saying the same thing, is it? The best that a tie can communicate is something about the person wanting to appear "professional", an ambiguous enough term that it may as well not be said at all. Sadly, I'm not in charge of fashion. (Which is good for people who make clothes like this, I suppose.) And I think there's probably a lot more going on with it than I've noted here. The point is, I'm glad it's Saturday, so that I don't have to wear a tie. I think that's about all I was really trying to say. --- * My source for this observation comes from Michael Kimmel in this speech. You can skip to about 4:30 to hear his take on it. |
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