I am the exemplar. I am the specimen in your anatomy atlas, the most deeply understood datum in your pathology textbook, the model to whom the parameters of pharmacology apply the most accurately. I am the standard-issue chassis: medically, humanly--decidedly--average. I am the 70-kg male.
Yet an exhausting week weaving up and down midtown Manhattan clearly leaves me thinking that the 70-kg male is dead--at least economically--in the estimation of clothiers and cobblers. Especially this 70-kg male, searching for a simple white shirt with a french cuff that does not make me look like I'm wearing my daddy's nightshirt for walkies. Or for a light jacket, or a pair of trousers, or even a pair of shoes that actually measure what they portend to measure.
As usual, several things are bothering me at the moment and if you know me, then you know that I wouldn't have it any other way.
The fattest common denominator.
It seems that clothing manufacturers and their retail henchmen are complicit in this plot to systematically disrobe those no longer falling within the nation's ballooning average. Put another way, they are seeking to surreptitiously recreate 'average' in their own bloated overgrown image.
This runs deep. Oh I'll feed you, children. Gargle this mindful of truth-flavored listerine:
The people eat. The people get fat. The people try to buy clothes but oh! now they've moved up a couple of sizes and they feel bad, guilt-stricken by their doctors and ridiculed by bufoons in fat suits. Meanwhile, they are herded into Big & Tall and have to start dressing like Cedric the Entertainer. No, you're not going to like the way you look, I guarantee it.
Oh but here's the hat-trick.
The clothing giants, hand-in-dirty-hand with the food conglomerates, agree to slowly increase the real sizes of their clothes while maintaining their labeled sizes. In essence a medium is now the size of what was previously large and a small is now what used to be medium. And the little guy gets shut out. We, the old mediums, are now sifting through piles of small and extra-small and shopping at Petite Sophisticate which is very gay because the stretch-pants-and-skirt look is not unisex.
Système International d'Unités? Bah and harumph.
It doesn't stop there. Not content with the outerwear and the casual vestments of the commonfolk (sized as they are in an appropriately common and course scale: s, m, l, xl, xxl, xxxl, 4xl, 5xl, and two-seat-minimum), the sartorial serpents are infusing their venom into our all-important standard units.
How else could it be that, despite being a very clear 9.5 on the Brannock device (pictured here), I must purchase Johnston and Murphy's in a size 8.5? Or Kenneth Cole's and Aston Grey's in a size 8? So what if I wasn't going to buy them anyway? I should be able to try on a pair of $350 shoes at the store with confidence as I gather the necessary capital over the next few years.
Why is there so much variability in 30x30 trousers? Some fit perfectly, yet many hang from my frame like wet underpants.
Why is it that the neck of this 70-kg male--an exquisitely empiric 14.5 inches--happens to be the smallest size in production anywhere? Still, there is not a 14.5 shirt that will fit me adequately enough to look presentable. When I am told by the helpful salesman at Thomas Pink that I'd be hard pressed to find 'a man's shirt' in my size without having it tailored, and that--if pressed for time--I should shop in the boys' department, I feel so very small. And little boys don't wear shirts with French cuffs, sir. Cufflinks are a choking hazard.
From the ashes, a gaunt phoenix arises!
I know that I am not the smallest man on Fifth Avenue. I know there are people in the Village who share my travails, who've felt the diminution of standing next to the mother of a prepubescent scamp trying not to cringe at the horrible things t-shirts have stamped on them these days. I've seen these men: skinny, lanky men, wispy even. It is as though our money is stained yet we have no voice.
Brothers!
We must speak as one. Join me now to fight the tyrany of these coddlers of the corpulent, these pamperers of the portly, these indulgers of the inhumanly big! They subserviently change their tallies for the tall and the tubby, and yet they spurn the business of the slim and the slight! We say they can't have it both ways! We say we can no longer be the average when it suits science, while being the extra-small when it suits suits. We can no longer abide the slights of this...this obesity-industrial complex! React! Rebel! Revolt!
Or we could just go for coffee. Either way we can meet for sandwiches at Ben's Deli on 38th and 7th but I can't be out too late (my wife, she worries). Or bring a sack lunch why don't you, we might eat outside if it's nice. And a beverage maybe? Whatever.
Showing posts with label clothing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clothing. Show all posts
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Viva la Revolución Antiséptica!
I've written at length, though never coherently,* about the mockery we make of curbing the spread of nosocomial infections by insisting on wearing ties. Fie upon the tie et cetera.
Anyway, ties are only the beginning of my usually pointless griping. The original idea for my anti-sartorial campaign came in the cliched form of a dream. Actually, it was a nightmare, but it wasn't as scary as it was boring and horribly written and shot. The director was probably asleep during filming. Suffice it to say that the talentless protagonist (through whose eyes this farce was depicted) was being interviewed at a prestigious teaching hospital for a residency position and was not clothed in the complete and traditional interview getup.
Namely, he was missing a tie. But also a jacket, a shirt, and pants. And he was unshaven and crusty-eyed. I mean, he had all of these things with him but he was holding them in his hands as if to say, 'I have no use for these! Ask me your questions, sir, and do not mind the hole in my boxers, for I am confident that you will find me to be nothing less than professional.'
Interpret this however you want, but I take it to mean that something must be done about clothing. Obviously, given the popularity of sculpture, nude photography, and sex and pornography, I am right. Don't argue with me, for I can weave a straightjacket of syllogisms around you faster than you can say 'that doesn't make any sense, you idiot.' And it's true, I am an idiot, I should know.
The point is that in addition to banning the necktie in the hospital we must also ban sleeves, white coats, and pants. Every time a tie, shirtsleeve, or pant leg brushes over some germy metropolis on one person's backside, it takes some of those citizens on a ride to the next person's face and, of course, the physician's lunch and no amount of hand sanitizer or handwashing will address the domino effect of cross-contamination. What we need is leadership on this issue. What we need is a Truman Doctrine--a Marshall Plan if you will--for the containment of microbial evil. While I'm no leader, I will gladly take up my position as behind-the-scenes pragmatist and insidious instigator of antimicrobial attrition and realpolitik. A neurotic germophobic George Kennan if you will (and if you won't).
We must therefore institute funding for an armory consisting of the weapons necessary for this war--for make no mistake, that is what this is comrades and we must not shirk our responsibilities! What this plan amounts to is the distribution of scissors to a contingent of able-fingered guerilla housestaff who will use them to carry out lightning raids, cutting dangling bits of clothing not closely adherent to the bodies of caregivers in the hospital. These soldiers of sanitation will fly by nursing stations snipping off germ-dinghies and bacteria-boats as they swarm, bringing back the sleeveless look from the outskirts of fashion onto the catwalk of the clinically responsible.
We must then fortify our offensive with daring propaganda. This is no time for bashfulness comrades, for the revolution cannot wait. Our message must be clear and strong:
* On a parenthetical lever, I don't want to give you the wrong impression. This post will certainly not be coherent either. Homie don't 'play that' and he's n't about t' start today. D' n't question m' use of the apostrophe. It's ours to dispense with as we each please. I don't come to your house and tell you not to end sentences with a preposition.
Anyway, ties are only the beginning of my usually pointless griping. The original idea for my anti-sartorial campaign came in the cliched form of a dream. Actually, it was a nightmare, but it wasn't as scary as it was boring and horribly written and shot. The director was probably asleep during filming. Suffice it to say that the talentless protagonist (through whose eyes this farce was depicted) was being interviewed at a prestigious teaching hospital for a residency position and was not clothed in the complete and traditional interview getup.
Namely, he was missing a tie. But also a jacket, a shirt, and pants. And he was unshaven and crusty-eyed. I mean, he had all of these things with him but he was holding them in his hands as if to say, 'I have no use for these! Ask me your questions, sir, and do not mind the hole in my boxers, for I am confident that you will find me to be nothing less than professional.'
Interpret this however you want, but I take it to mean that something must be done about clothing. Obviously, given the popularity of sculpture, nude photography, and sex and pornography, I am right. Don't argue with me, for I can weave a straightjacket of syllogisms around you faster than you can say 'that doesn't make any sense, you idiot.' And it's true, I am an idiot, I should know.
The point is that in addition to banning the necktie in the hospital we must also ban sleeves, white coats, and pants. Every time a tie, shirtsleeve, or pant leg brushes over some germy metropolis on one person's backside, it takes some of those citizens on a ride to the next person's face and, of course, the physician's lunch and no amount of hand sanitizer or handwashing will address the domino effect of cross-contamination. What we need is leadership on this issue. What we need is a Truman Doctrine--a Marshall Plan if you will--for the containment of microbial evil. While I'm no leader, I will gladly take up my position as behind-the-scenes pragmatist and insidious instigator of antimicrobial attrition and realpolitik. A neurotic germophobic George Kennan if you will (and if you won't).
We must therefore institute funding for an armory consisting of the weapons necessary for this war--for make no mistake, that is what this is comrades and we must not shirk our responsibilities! What this plan amounts to is the distribution of scissors to a contingent of able-fingered guerilla housestaff who will use them to carry out lightning raids, cutting dangling bits of clothing not closely adherent to the bodies of caregivers in the hospital. These soldiers of sanitation will fly by nursing stations snipping off germ-dinghies and bacteria-boats as they swarm, bringing back the sleeveless look from the outskirts of fashion onto the catwalk of the clinically responsible.
We must then fortify our offensive with daring propaganda. This is no time for bashfulness comrades, for the revolution cannot wait. Our message must be clear and strong:
The noose of the enemy chokes you! Off with your tie!
Cut off support to the enemy of the people! Cut off your sleeves!
Pants are the haven of the antisocialite germ! Remove them from our midst!
May the sounds of steel kisses and flying fabric resonate in the halls of healing! Viva la Revolución Antiséptica!
* On a parenthetical lever, I don't want to give you the wrong impression. This post will certainly not be coherent either. Homie don't 'play that' and he's n't about t' start today. D' n't question m' use of the apostrophe. It's ours to dispense with as we each please. I don't come to your house and tell you not to end sentences with a preposition.
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