XIX - CLOTHES

If everyone wore clothes, would you? Most people would. If by “clothes,” we include jewelry, cosmetics, and aesthetically-driven body alteration, such as hairstyle, shaving, tattoos, intentional scarring and plastic surgery, clothing is practically universal throughout human society.

Once again, the question is why. Obviously there are needs for thermal, solar, and physical protection, but that is only the beginning of clothing’s appeal. Clothing is costume.
Costume is part of drama. Costume is a statement of role, of one’s place in the myth. It may be explicit, such as a soldier’s uniform or a diver’s wet suit. It may be implicit, as in the formal evening gown or the casual jeans and T-shirt.

Clothes can do much to describe a role. They can reveal one’s sex, age, religion, wealth, alpha status, marital status, political views, recreational preferences, sexual values, orientation, and availability, group memberships, vocation, and many other aspects of one’s life.

We use clothes as a form of language to quickly communicate key mythic information both to others and to ourselves. We understand a man in his pajamas to be withdrawn from the public scene for activities associated with being in bed, going to bed, or getting up. When the man puts on his pajamas, the moral demonstration caused by looking like a man who will soon sleep tells him he is a man about to sleep, so it helps him be sleepy. The costume supports the role. It makes the role more real and inevitable to all who see him in it.

All costume carries mythic implication. Anything one wears affects the role one plays. Clothes are never neutral. They affect; they usually do not control, but the effect is real and significant. Clothes designed by a culture carry the values of that culture’s myth and bias one’s thoughts and actions in that direction.

Clothes also allow people to give themselves permission to perform the roles associated with them. Why do people wear shorts on vacation? It is not just that short pants are cooler—I have seen hikers in down jackets and shorts in the mountains. Short pants are associated with children and thus with play. The shorts tell the wearer that for the time being he is not a worker and is entitled to play all day.

Similarly, when people are in a situation where they want to be alpha, they will usually dress accordingly. The alpha costume does help convince others of the wearer’s status, but it also enables him to believe he is indeed alpha and thus have the nerve to take the alpha position. We use costume to help us make the mythic shifts we need from one role to another.

Nakedness
Most people are uncomfortable being naked, especially around others, more so around strangers than close friends. Uncomfortable is too mild a word; terrified would be more accurate. For most people, to be seen naked by others, more so strangers, more so strangers including the opposite sex, more so by a group of clothed strangers of both sexes, is an experience absolutely to be avoided by any means available no matter what. Why is this so?

One reason is the culture tells you not to be seen naked, with threat of correction backing up its directive along with the common desire to be part of the culture and uphold its myth. This is the quick, obvious answer.

But it is not the whole answer. Why does the culture tell you to wear clothes? Why does it matter? We all need quick information about the roles and alpha status of others so we will immediately know how to behave in their presence. The clothes of a group are symbolic expressions of its morals. Our wearing those clothes is a demonstration of those morals being part of who we are, so the clothes bias us towards accepting the morals and thus the myth of the group. Costume helps hold the group together. What you are wearing is seen as a badge of tribal identity.

Also, when we are naked, we are without costume. Most people depend on costume to legitimize the role they are playing. Without costume they feel they have no role, no place in the myth, and no status in the group. They might as well not exist. Others will see them in a negative light also. Being seen naked in situations where clothing is expected is penalized heavily in the alpha game.

Why Styles Change
Clothes confirm the myth of the group by reinforcing and helping to define its roles. In a conservative group, one with little mythic change, the styles will be slow to change. As the group myth shifts, the new mythic information will make a change of costume feel right. The people who first have the new version of the myth with new morals being idealized will be first to have the new look. Those people are alpha, part of the group’s mythic source. Consequently, one way to appear alpha is to dress in the latest style.

If you wear the new fashion after it has been approved by a recognized alpha in your group, you are fairly safe from rejection within the group, but the clothes, being already accepted into the group myth, will not have the maximum alpha effect. The most alpha is to bring new myth to the group and have it admired and accepted, to wear something mythically new and get the group to believe in it. The clothes are only part of the alpha ploy; the costume’s alpha success will depend on one’s actions in a credible performance of an alpha role as well as the role for which the clothes are costume. Alpha clothes on a timid character invite rejection. A common alpha costume strategy is to be at the alpha edge of the myth’s range of costume rather than beyond it, so one appears alpha but not beyond the group myth.

The new style will be first worn by the alphas who are the source for the new mythic material represented by the clothes. The next people to wear the new clothes will be people mythically closest to those alphas. As the style spreads, a widening circle of people including those down the alpha hierarchy will become able to credibly wear it. As the masses take over the style, it ceases to be an identifier of the avant-garde alphas who must find a new way to look more alpha than the crowd and the process repeats itself. A new style starts as alpha but loses that quality as it spreads. People are attracted to wearing a little more alpha than they are, but in so doing, gradually drag down the perceived alpha of the clothes, making them a choice of lesser alpha people. Eventually the alpha perception of the style reaches bottom and everyone is tired of it because there is no alpha enhancement left and they want something new.

Clothes and Body Image
Clothes typically cover part of the body and expose other parts. The most commonly concealed parts are the anus and genitalia. The most commonly exposed are the hands and face. Again, why? Beyond obvious practical reasons for keeping hands and faces exposed, they are the main body parts used in communication, which is necessary for alpha and dominance and other social mythic interaction. Clothes that cover everything except the hands and face draw attention to them and help us forget there is a body that connects them. The clothes become a stage for the actions of the hands and face.

Since reaching and grasping with the hands is the main way we make contact with objects, gloves alter our relation to our world. Task-specific gloves increase the abilities of our hands. A baseball glove helps the outfielder catch a fly ball. Welding gloves shield the welder’s hands from heat and flying sparks. Social gloves serve a different function. They create a barrier between the wearer and his or her surroundings, both objects and other people, and create an atmosphere justifying stylized formal behavior and discouraging intimacy.

We depend on facial characteristics for much of our identification of other people. Covering the face, as with a veil or mask, serves to play down the individual uniqueness of a person and concentrate identity into the role being played, making the person more generic and therefore anonymous.

By restricting the amount of body we can see, the clothes emphasize the role the character is playing rather than the person who lives in that body. The costume is born of the role and fits the body only by necessity.

The cut of the clothing can emphasize various parts of the body. The clothes can be a frame for a view of part of the body. They can reveal while concealing by a tight fit. The cut, color, and style of the clothes can shrink or enlarge the apparent size of various anatomical features.

By doing so, clothes allow us to manipulate other people’s perception of what our body is like. The group myth considers some body types more alpha than others and it is in our alpha interest to appear so. The right costume can make a lumpy-dump body pass for an admirable physique.

Crotch Concealment
We still have the question of crotch concealment. Why is it so important to most people to keep human genitalia and anuses covered, to the extent of jailing people who are not sufficiently modest?

Most people will say crotches are ugly or smelly or concealment is just customary or some such way of saying cover your crotch because the group myth says so, which puts us back almost where we started. We need to do better than that.

Crotches are about elimination and sex. Most people prefer some level of privacy for both these activities. They want to be concealed from public view, and not just because their pants are down.

Everyone urinates and defecates, but most people try to give the impression that somehow they have transcended these universal urges. They train their bowels to keep still except for a few minutes early each morning. Bladders demand more frequent emptying than colons, but even so, most people try to hold out for hours, more so in social situations. When they do have to go, they try to sneak off unobserved or at least with a plausible denial of the true mission. The more formal the situation, the more universal is this behavior.

Formal events put an emphasis on form, the particular form being the role one is playing, usually including an increased alpha stance. Elimination forces us temporarily out of our social role as we turn our attention inward to our bodily functions. The group myth demands that we stay in character, that we continue to play our proper part. The stability of the group and the validity of the group myth are threatened when any member is out of role.

The necessity of elimination demands that the group have some agreement about people while they are so occupied. Typically, the group agrees to ignore them while they are out of role. One disappears from the mythic progression for the duration and returns as if nothing had happened.

In groups where public elimination is acceptable, it can further a sense of tribal unity, as can any activity accepted and shared by the members of a group and performed in each other’s presence.

The more important a person is to the progression of the group myth, the stronger is the pressure to stay in character, stay present in the role, and not go to the bathroom. Alphas are understood to represent mythic ideals, one of which is dominance over one’s body and ability to stay in role, in character, no matter what. We expect the leader, the mythic source, to be free of the physical constraints of the rest of us. One sign of alphas is the iron bladder. If you can outlast someone else in resisting the bathroom, he is shown to be weaker and therefore you are more alpha. Since he was forced out of role by his body before you were, your myth must be stronger and therefore better, therefore you are the preferable alpha, the ideal mythic source. As in many other commonly accepted situations, this kind of alpha validation is mythically obvious but rationally ludicrous.

Clothes and Sex
We cover our crotches not only because of elimination but also because of sex. Sex is so related to alpha and group formation and unity that the group cannot give sex free rein. There will be in any group some understanding about how, when, where, and by whom sexuality is expressed.

Much of the function of clothing is to modify interpersonal sexual responses. Clothes can be a barrier between the body and the world, giving the message that sex is not available right now. The clothes may deemphasize the body so the message is “I am not available and there is not really a body in here anyhow, so forget it.” Clothes can also make the most of what they conceal, saying “I am not available right now but nevertheless I am very sexy.” Beyond that there are other outfits that say “Not only am I very sexy, I am available right now. Come and get it.”

Most clothes, though, turn attention away from overt sexuality in favor of sublimating the attraction into social bonding in an alpha relationship. Sublimated sex always carries some level of sexual arousal, even though one may not be aware of it. One reason to conceal the body is to hide from view the body’s physical responses to sexual arousal.

Sex and alpha are intimately intertwined. Each depends on the attraction of the other. The sex drive is largely a drive for alpha advancement, and alpha relationships depend on the mind and body’s sexual response system, usually sublimated.

That is partly why a person in the right clothes is perceived as a sexier stimulus than when completely nude. Costume can give mythic signals indicating that the character within represents a sexuality leading to the moral demonstrations one desires. The sexy outfit promises mythic progression for you in your desired direction, so the sex will not be just sex but bonding to alpha. At the same time, the body concealment is symbolic of limited access, so if the sexy person accepts you, you must also be alpha, since you were allowed past the barrier. The potential for alpha confirmation of ourselves helps hold our interest and makes us care what happens.

Furthermore, the costume can focus your attention on those parts of the body that give the greatest stimulus. By manipulating the other person’s perceptions, clothing can make the wearer more beautiful by increasing the wearer’s apparent embodiment of mythic ideals. The result is the alpha appearance.

The Clothed Mammal
Most people see life as divided into three categories: plants, animals, and humans. Clearly, we are mammals, every bit as much as whales or gophers are mammals, but we like to see ourselves as categorically different. We claim to be the only ones with tool use or language or self awareness or an immortal soul or creation in God’s image, anything to separate us from the beasts. Our bodies and their biological functions remind us of who we really are. We don’t want to hear it. We don’t want to see it. We don’t want to feel it. And we don’t want to smell it, either. Clothes help us deny the reality of the body. We want to believe we are higher, more enlightened beings of greater power, more alpha, more valid as mythic sources. Clothes help us believe we are beyond who we are.

What to Wear
Now that we have said all that, what are you going to wear? Most people have two guidelines they follow when selecting their clothes. They want to wear something appropriate to the situation and they want to look good. Most people would add “comfortable” to the guidelines, but since “comfortable” mostly means “socially comfortable,” it is almost entirely a restatement of the other two. “Appropriate” here means within the general confines of the pertinent group myth, and “look good” means to look as much like the alphas in the group as can be credibly done.

This is not a bad system. It wouldn’t be so widespread unless it worked. It will get you through. Being within the group myth will prevent rejection, and looking like the known alphas will help you be taken for one, with its attendant rewards. But surely there is a better way. What can a little more thought do?

There is a better way. Your clothes are your costume for your role in the myth. What role are you going to play? You will do better in the right costume, for then your clothes will support your actions. Suppose you are going to a party. What do you want your relation to others to be? Do you want other people to take the initiative and approach you, or would you prefer that they let you alone? Would you like to find a new sex partner or would you rather keep things platonic? Do you want other people’s behavior toward you to be formal and restrained or more uninhibited? Do you want to be the authority or would you rather hear it from others? Are you the life of the party, the belle of the ball, or are you more comfortable as a wallflower? What role do you want to have in the group? Do you want to be the leader, the fool, the rebel, the true believer, or some other role? The optimum costume for each is different. Your clothes do a lot to get you there or hold you back. You still have to play the part, though. The principle is to wear carefully chosen clothes to accomplish a specific purpose.

If you do not have a feel for which clothes will do what for you, you can learn. Watch people and the clothes they wear. Watch enough people long enough so you have enough experience so that you can understand what the clothes are doing in spite of the large variation in what the people are doing. Notice your reactions and the reactions of others to different outfits.

You then need to find out how variations in your own costume affect you. Find a place to get inexpensive second hand clothes, such as the Salvation Army. If you have never bought clothes there, you are in for a treat. You can get good quality fairly new clothes for next to nothing.

Most of your present clothes are probably pretty similar. You have a look that you are used to, that you are comfortable in. The idea here is to take a chance on something new. Go through the clothes racks at your local cheap resale store and you will see a wider mix of styles and colors than at your favorite department store. That is because your favorite department store targets your role in your myth. That is why the store is your favorite. The resale store gets clothes from all sorts of people of a wide variety of myths.

Now that you are in the store, think about people in the role you want to play. What were they wearing? Find something mythically equivalent that fits your body and buy it. Find several pieces. Buy them. Take them home. Wear them around the house a bit and get used to them, and notice how they affect your behavior. Do they move you toward the desired role? Then wear your new look to the next opportunity to play the desired role in the presence of others. You will notice a difference. By the way, your friends will not know where you got your clothes or how little you paid for them. Just take off the price tags and you will be fine.

While you are at the store, buy a few clothes that you would never buy, clothes completely different from anything you now own. Wear them when you are out and about. People will treat you differently and you will act and feel different. The clothes will perk up your myth and bring you new experiences you will learn from. You will find your identity will shift a bit and demonstrate to you some of the range of possibilities that are readily available even though you may be unaware of them.

Charm
One technique of having costume interact to good effect with behavior is to be charming. Charm can be had independent of costume, but usually what you are wearing is an important part of the effect, so we shall discuss charm here.

To be charming is not the same as to be attractive or beautiful or pleasing or alpha, but charming people can also be any of those. The charming person involves your mind; you remember charming people. Charm is not just another pretty face, another set of alpha credentials, another clever mind, another submission to your alpha. Charming people get under your skin and crawl into your mind. There is something about this person that fascinates, something you are drawn to, you want more of, but you can’t quite figure out. The something is contradiction. You may think at first you understand the basic slant of this person’s moral package but soon you realize you do not. There is more than meets the eye and the more is positive. Of all the roles in the group, the charmer is most apt to be the fool. The next most likely is the leader. Note they are both sources of mythic material, something new and different. Yet being charming is not merely another term for being new and different, but we are getting closer. Charm consists of having some alpha quality along with some other quality that enhances the effect of the alpha quality but is not normally found with it in the same person. The alpha may be a recognized alpha of the group, but often not. The charming one is fueling your myth in a way you like, facilitating your myth’s progression and making you feel more alpha. All the while that person is being not quite the character you expect. Your expectations are contradicted. Charm is alpha but not in the usual form.

Suppose a man is alpha to you. If he is your mythic source from on high, aloof and dominant, that is not charming. But suppose he treats you as an equal, making you feel more alpha, and also allows you to perceive ways in which he is not congruent with the group's ideal of the alpha role. If he does it all in a way that enhances his credibility as a mythic source making your myth be what you want it to be, he will be charming.

Suppose the charming man is not the group’s big alpha. What could make him charming? Even though he is not the obvious alpha, he is nonetheless a mythic source for you. When you are with him, your myth is moving forward in a way you like, but in ways you had not expected.

Clothes are a key component of charm. Although one can be charming at a nudist camp, one’s attire is usually an important part of the effect. To dress charmingly, try wearing clothes that are within the group myth and credible for your role, but different from what anyone else is wearing. You costume should be slightly to the unexpected, as will be your behavior, yet you will make the effect work, because your costume and your actions will bring a welcome mythic advance, so they will be accepted by most if not all.

At this point I am sure you would like me to give you specific examples of what to wear to help you be charming. I regret that I cannot. Charming costume is too dependent on your particular role and what you personally do in that role. Thus two people of similar role, similarly attired, may differ greatly in charm. The best advice I can give you is to learn from the charm of others and from those times you have it yourself. Do not be dazzled by what the group myth tells you to see, but instead learn to observe what is actually happening. Then choose your clothes thoughtfully and wear them with confidence.