Men and idiot fashions
Women are supposed to be more obsessed with fashion than men, but, in a sense, the opposite is the case. Men not only accept fashion - and stupid, damaging, worthless fashions - much more uncritically than women, but become its slaves for centuries at a time.
Two (related) cases in point. One day Louis XIV of France discovers that his hairline is receding. From then on he wears wigs - and being Louis XIV, his wigs are monstrous and absurdly overripe. This rivets the fashion for wigs, one of the most ridiculous fads the human race has ever seen, on the whole male sex of Europe for a good 150 years; it takes the revolutionary age to put an end to it, when one would have supposed that its discomfort and expense would have made it vulenrable to the very first change in fashion. In fact, its fossil still haunts British courts of justice.
But even that pales compares with the collective stupidity by which the whole sex is still held in thrall today. At least those wigs, ridiculous though they were, did something to cover the head. But when, half a century ago - half a century! - an ambitious and popular American politician began to ge hatless to show off his fine and well brushed head of hair, suddenly - BOOM! - every man who watched TV and reads the papers geban to go hatless. And it has not changed since: the sex that goes bald in middle age refuses to wear hats. To wear one has become a kind of affectation or assertion - think of Terry Pratchett's fedora - instead of something that should come natural under the fury of a blazing sun or in the cold of winter. And there is something rather despairing about the way that many still young men, as soon as they see their hairline receding, start shaving their heads bald. Get a hat, you fools, and save yourself the time and nuisance! But hats are so rare that it has actually become a bit of an administrative exercise to buy one.
I just bought a cap - and my hair, mind you, is still mostly thick and l. And I hope the men reading this stop and think a little about the follies of fashion.
Two (related) cases in point. One day Louis XIV of France discovers that his hairline is receding. From then on he wears wigs - and being Louis XIV, his wigs are monstrous and absurdly overripe. This rivets the fashion for wigs, one of the most ridiculous fads the human race has ever seen, on the whole male sex of Europe for a good 150 years; it takes the revolutionary age to put an end to it, when one would have supposed that its discomfort and expense would have made it vulenrable to the very first change in fashion. In fact, its fossil still haunts British courts of justice.
But even that pales compares with the collective stupidity by which the whole sex is still held in thrall today. At least those wigs, ridiculous though they were, did something to cover the head. But when, half a century ago - half a century! - an ambitious and popular American politician began to ge hatless to show off his fine and well brushed head of hair, suddenly - BOOM! - every man who watched TV and reads the papers geban to go hatless. And it has not changed since: the sex that goes bald in middle age refuses to wear hats. To wear one has become a kind of affectation or assertion - think of Terry Pratchett's fedora - instead of something that should come natural under the fury of a blazing sun or in the cold of winter. And there is something rather despairing about the way that many still young men, as soon as they see their hairline receding, start shaving their heads bald. Get a hat, you fools, and save yourself the time and nuisance! But hats are so rare that it has actually become a bit of an administrative exercise to buy one.
I just bought a cap - and my hair, mind you, is still mostly thick and l. And I hope the men reading this stop and think a little about the follies of fashion.