When you look at the clothes we wear today they are so confusing. You don’t know if it’s for a boy or a girl. It used to be a time when you knew what to wear based on if you was a boy or a girl. Don’t get me wrong I’m not judging I’m simply stating a fact. Now you got men carrying purses and calling them man bags, women wearing mens clothes and saying they are non-binary. Sounds like a math problem. When you hear metrosexual it brings to mind a group of people doing all kinds of sexual things, it definitely doesn’t strike you as a style of clothes. I often wonder what people be thinking when they wear certain clothes. Not only is the style of clothes different they are also called a different name. You got fits, swag, now drip. Whats next tics. LOL
What people actually don’t know is that there is nothing new under the sun. Some of the same styles yall wearing now we wore back in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s up until now. Some of these clothes that yall wearing actually were not for everyone but for certain groups of people like slaves, prostitutes, spinsters. Slave women sometimes didn’t have blouses and they wore necklaces to cover their shame. The slave men who worked in the field had the cheapest and raggediest clothes so they wouldn’t look too good. Pants with holes in them and hanging off their butt. This way they couldn’t run.
Their clothes represented them as slaves so if they ran away they would be caught just by their clothes. So that’s why a lot slaves before they ran away would steal some of their masters clothing so they could fit in. Now they could represent free black people.
Those brogans yall wearing that was what the slave men had so the master wouldn’t have to buy them shoes but once a year instead of their twice a year allotment.
History is very important to know especially when you are perpetrating some of those old slave Jim crow rules unknowingly. I know a lot of yall like wearing those headwraps and some of them look good, but here is what that really meant. Clothes were made back then to keep you from the elements, and to establish social norms. But what a lot of yall don’t know they were also used to define who you were and manipulate your gender identity so they would have more control over you. We however used it to separate ourselves from each other and let our personalities shine through. We used clothes for style and rebellion and to represent who we was as an individual.
For example headwraps were a sign of poverty and subordination. It stated that you didn’t have money to fix your hair. However; later and today it represents a source of pride in who you are and the community you’re from. Just like afros, braids, and dreads were a form of protest in the 70’s and even this day and age, it represents a form of black power. Its a statement that says I am proud to be black and white people can’t tell me how to wear my hair.
Just as we have made some steps forward there are still people who keep taking us back.
Now I’m all for the freedom to wear what you want and this style isn’t something that bothers me enough to justify mistreatment of that person or making them feel less than, it just doesn’t represent they way we were brought up. When you went out in public we were raised to look your best and respectable.
You were to make sure that your clothes were clean, ironed and presentable. There is this disturbing trend of coming out in pajamas, house shoes, clothes all wrinkled, with a doowrag on their head and this is the epitome of slavery and all it’s ignorance and foolishness that it entails.
I learned something very important and that is everybody can’t wear everything. No matter what everybody wearing some things only certain people should wear. For example; I know leggings is the thing. Young and old, skinny and fat, with a shape and without, but somebody should tell some of their family members and friends please don’t wear this.
Finally as I stated earlier in the article slave masters would put clothes on people to define their gender for purposes of making more money when they sold them. A prime example is the new rage for men and that’s those skinny jeans. Remember when women used to be the ones wearing them and they still do, but now they are wearing the mom jeans and the bigger pants, while the men are wearing the skinny leg jeans. We see this on tv, in commercials and unfortunately in the street with the millennials and when they wear it right it’s ok, but some of them have taken it a bit too far. Here are some extreme examples of men wearing what girls wear and the way they wear them. Lord help!!!
Now of course these are all jokes, especially this father showing his daughter how she look and embarrassing her all the same, but there really are men wearing these skinny leg jeans and not realizing that the majority designers are gay (not talking about them just sayin) and they want to see the mans endowment and his behind and what better way to see them than by creating jeans tight enough to show, it’s actually ingenious and quite clever, but at some point in our life we should have enough sense to know that not everything is for everybody. Lets go back to the days when what you wore represented a decent, classy, trustworthy yet stylish individual and not the joke of the year.
Can we go back to when men dressed like men and women dressed like women please!!!