What if men—manly men—still wore looses?

Wotcher,

Today masculinity is defined by its esthetician, romantic yearning for the infinite and careful fashion: our cods, ‘loons and tights exemplify this.

But as breech fashion rightly failed along with boorism there was another even more plebeian fashion that died like a smothered monster in its crib: looses or as the preromantics sometimes called them “trousers.”

As anyone familiar with boorish modern molly culture knows only unmanned men wear looses: the very poor, the non-European, the coitally strange, the sex pest. While looses are fine on women, clamping their vapours safely, they open up dangerous flows for men’s sex. What spells out the strangest stranger than his button “fly” allowing him to expose his cods wilfully?

Obviously I am not suggesting that Asia triumph in the world economy of empires, or that men generally become “strange” even if they become hopelessly emasculated by Bruitish boorish poor inspired behaviour. But perhaps a lionisation of the breechless ones in France could usher in a general worship of the undeserving poor and their crude fashion. Even the most base mechanics if they have any self respect wear thick woolen workhose beneath their plain pantaloons and cloth cods. Something bizarre could produce the worship of the very poorest and their shameful workclothing of loose “trousers.”

Yours,
Sam R.
 
Yes. Asking what if no pants within the language of a no (man) pants world. Here pants are viewed as women’s, queer and ultra poor clothing. Culottes and breeches are viewed as historical costume. Men ordinarily wear hose (tights), with small baggy shorts at the hips and the genitals covered with a genital specific outwear (codpiece). Men’s gender is more explicitly performative, deliberate, fashionable, cultured and emotional. Rudeness and crudeness are viewed as base and feminine and potentially queer.
 
You'd probably need to break the massive madonna-whore complex Europe had goin for a while, along with the fsct that pants came in with Germanic invaders. A pantsless world is a different world.
 
Hose broke pants circa 1400. Pants only clawed their way back via breeches and hose, with breeches terminal by 1830ish outside high court wear.

So it ain’t ze Germans
 
My pod is a continuation of the secular trend towards dressing up towards the elite amplified by romanticism and a romanticist domination of c19 liberalism. As opposed to the waves of casualisation and dressing down 1789-1815, 1940-present. Instead of the plebeian and prole as the models of freedom, the aristocrat and haute bourgeois (aping the aristocrat).
 
Problems with the concept:

1. Cultures where women wore trousers or pantaloons had men also wear trousers or pantaloons.
2. Cultures where men wear skirts, wraps, or tunics, also have women wear skirts, wraps or tunics.

So to summarise: lower outer garments actually tends to be quite symmetrical for everyone regardless of sex. "Performative" maleness does not require such differentiation.

Ah, you say! But:

3. Cultures where men wore tights and codpieces, had women wear skirts.

But there's not a lot of crossover opportunity to get a tights-and-skirts culture to think of trousers as feminine. I just don't see how one develops from the other. Moreover, both tights and trousers are practical wear where it's cold and were worn together until the advent of central heating made long underwear redundant. Hosen were summer outerwear. So were skirts, really.

What you're asking is for is not a continuation of the trend for aristocrats to overdress. What you are asking for is that men prove their masculinity by being less dressed than women, basically. Fortunately, we have examples of such cultures!

4. Any culture that makes women cover up in modesty wear, hide their hair, face, etc. Coincides almost entirely with "women wearing trousers or pantaloons" cultures that aren't the industrial west 1940s onwards.
5. Classical culture specifically, where scantily dressed men are a common aesthetic as opposed to somewhat more covered-up women. Also reflected in the modern culture and its classical aspirations. Problem: this aesthetic prefers baring the torso to baring the thighs.

So what you're looking for is a culture that prefers men dressed more lightly than women, and prefers thighs to torsos. You want people who basically go around in jackets and underwear at all times.

So we're back to medieval European peasants again. But the women there wear skirts.

TLDR: don't see any organic way to get this to happen.


EDIT: Such a weird thread crossover I couldn't help but comment: HERE - "Comprehensive answer to this question had been given in a poem “Popov’s dream” written in 1878: a person found in a public place without his pants is being asked if he wants to impersonate the Russian budget." - the poem does indeed mention the Romans, liberalism, imitation of popular dress, overdressing, sans-culottes, high society, and, indeed, wearing only underwear to a party.
 
Last edited:
The Romans were wearing pants long before the Empire fell.

If only they hadn't started dressing like effete barbarians and instead proudly displayed their bare manly legs to the world secundo mos maiorum, Rome would have never fallen!
 
Top