Clothing and Our Effect on Men - Part I

This article, is also published on my website: www.marionfennell.net


In my mid-20s, I was an active young woman who liked music, parties, good movies, and hoped to get married to a man who would love me for the rest of my days. But as years went by, I was increasingly unhappy with my life. After trying work as a secretary and a waitress, and two important relationships failed, I decided to go to college to study something I might really like to do: design clothing. I had liked sewing outfits for myself and others, and later earned good grades at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where I learned about some of the beautiful fabrics and garments of the past and present.

I was excited about what I was studying; but it wasn't until I studied Aesthetic Realism that I learned about the true, deep meaning of clothing. Decades before he founded Aesthetic Realism, Eli Siegel, then a young man of 23, wrote in an article for the Baltimore American newspaper about why he liked the new direction in the fashions of 1925, placing them in relation to cultural history:

“The kind of clothes that the people of any country wear, or the people of any time, shows the mind or spirit of that country and time. It is the most outward things that show the deepest desires and the desires least known.” [TRO #1545]

Aesthetic Realism teaches that the criterion for being proud of anything we do--reading a book, eating a meal, kissing a man, or putting on a garment--is whether our purpose is to respect the world, or have contempt for it. Learning to distinguish between these two purposes is crucial for a woman to be proud of her effect on men. I've learned, too, that the existence of clothing as such is evidence that the world can be liked. In the Aesthetic Realism Explanation of Poetry class, Ellen Reiss spoke some years ago on what poetry says about clothing, and asked:

“If clothing keeps you warm, makes you prettier, it makes you more yourself. With all the misuse of clothes, is it a tremendous tribute [showing] that the world is for us?” And she described how the phrase "It fits like a glove" is about that garment and you, but also says something so large about how reality can fit you. It never occurred to me to be thankful that the world provided materials to make clothing--like the earliest made of grass fibers, and later made of fabrics woven from spun threads--or to respect the people who made them.

I will tell here of what I learned, and Part II (next month) will include a very good, very influential American designer of the early to mid 20th Century, Claire McCardell. And as I talk about how women can use clothes and fashion to be proud of our effect on men, I also have to say that it is horrible and unnecessary that millions of people in our rich nation can't afford to have decent, attractive, well-made clothing to wear!


1. What Interferes With Being Proud of Our Effect on Men?

I am sure that along with knowledge of color coordination, proportion, and this season’s hemlines--women need to know that there is such a thing as one's purpose as to clothes that we are either proud or ashamed of. That is what I was learning in an early consultation as I spoke about how much the "right" wardrobe meant to me. My consultants asked me questions no one had before, such as:

"Why should you look as good as you can? Does the world somehow benefit? Or is it just that you would knock people’s eyes out? When you get dressed, or sew garments, is it to beautify reality, or to be superior to reality?" My answer was, "Superior."

And I came to see that that hurtful desire began early in my life. There were times, for instance, when after shopping for a new holiday dress and shoes, my mother would ask me to “model” them for my father, and to thank him. But what was more important to me was how he would say "Ohhhh, you look beautiful" than being grateful for his hard work which enabled me to have them.

As I grew older, I yearned for the day when I'd have a woman's figure, and could use it to my full advantage--feeling "If you've got it, flaunt it." Meanwhile, even as I sometimes worked hard to make a stunning appearance, I felt somewhere uneasy, not proud. Then, I began to learn there is an ethical basis for our choices as to clothes! In her commentary to The Right Of #1545, Ellen Reiss explains:

"Clothing should be a means of relating ourselves accurately to the outside world, or showing ourselves honestly....[but] people so often use clothes really to hide who they are and to put forth something that will impress and fool people; that is contempt, and is a big reason people are excessive about clothes."

I feel described by these sentences! There were times I had great pleasure in finding or making an outfit that had me feel “This is me!” And I once stayed up all night to make an outfit for my sister to wear for a special occasion, when she didn’t have money to buy one.

But many times I used clothing to impress and fool men, without knowing how much it made me ashamed. Women the world over need to know what Miss Reiss writes further in her commentary: "And, of course, women have used clothes as weapons, to weaken men."
When out on a date, I often dressed in a flirtatious manner in some of the daring clothes of the day: tight tops and hot pants, or a low-cut jumpsuit.

One summer my boyfriend, John, and I drove to Canada to see the Montreal Expo. After visiting several exhibits, I was surprised when he said he thought my outfit was too revealing, and that he was uncomfortable with how other men were looking at me. I dismissed his feeling as being old-fashioned: I was a modern, liberated woman, and thought: “If men can’t keep up with evolution and accept woman’s new freedom of expression, it’s their problem." But I wasn't proud of this attitude because I was looking for a cheap victory as I arranged to turn men's heads toward me, and not at the exhibits of countries from around the world. And as I think of that outfit now, I see it did not have a beautiful relation of the opposites of tightness and looseness, hidden and shown, and didn't encourage people's respect for women.

Today, many styles are even more revealing, such as skimpy tops showing bare torsos, and the low cut pants I see on girls in the high school where I work. Many of these states of undress are promoted by music videos and designers as the most avant garde fashions. But with all the bold and surprised-how-they-stay-on kinds of garments women wear, it is simply a fact of reality that when we use anything—money, education, love, or clothing— to have contempt for the world and people, we have to be ashamed.

Aesthetic Realism certainly doesn't tell people how to dress, or say women should look like prudes. But it does teach that we have an ethical unconscious, and we judge ourselves for how fair we are to the world, in everything we do. This knowledge is more precious than gold--what women and clothing designers are hoping for.

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Part II will be posted next month!