Thuggo and Sluggo

July 2, 2007
     As someone who spends a fair amount of time in airports, I marvel at the way my fellow citizens present themselves in public. I see middle-aged women who appear to have left home in their pajamas. But it's the costume and demeanor of American young men especially that raises interesting questions about who we have become.

     The fashion and body language of male youth in 2007 comes from three sources: prison, the nursery, and the pimpmobile. It's an old story now that many conventions of gangster fashion come out of the jail experience, where they take away your belt and shoelaces so you won't hang yourself. Apparently, at some point in US history, they stopped giving the belts and shoelaces back on release, and it became stylish to wear your trousers falling down below the top of your underpants (or butt crack as the case may be). Jail being a kind of accreditation device these days, the message may be: I passed the entrance exam.

     Less obvious is the contribution of the nursery. Pants that are ambiguously neither long or short, worn with XX-large T shirts, tend to make grown men look like babies. Babies have short legs and large torsos compared to grown men. They also make big awkward gestures and touch their sex organs a lot. Add a sideways hat and unlaced sneakers and you have the complete kindergarten rig. Why a 20-year-old male would want to look five years old is another interesting question, but it may have a lot to do with the developmental failures of boys raised in households without fathers. They simply don't know how to be men. They only know how to behave like five year old boys. They even give themselves nursery school nicknames. But they are men, and what could be more menacing than the paradox of a child bent on homicide.

     Tattoos used to be pretty much the sole fashion statement of merchant seamen or people who have served in the armed forces (or people who live in jungles). Now they are common among career girls. The tattooed guys I see down at the gym are ordinary young men who work in cubicles. Tattoos on sailors used to celebrate places they had been or people they had loved. The tattoos I see now are meant to convey fierce and barbaric statements of superhuman power: look at me, I'm a Power Ranger! It's understandable that someone who spends most of his waking hours in a cubicle wearing a telephone headset in order to swindle old people out of their savings might fantasize about rising above all that. But the tragic thing, of course, is that getting tattooed is not quite the same as accomplishing something with your life. In the end, you're just another loser with a grandiose and ridiculous tattoo.

     The pimp connection is too obvious to belabor -- meant to mock normal executive attire while signifying an existence of total leisure and the enjoyment of unearned riches. The trouble is that the worship of unearned riches -- based on the belief that it truly is possible to get something for nothing -- has now become normal at all levels in American life. Everybody from the lowest whoremonger on Hollywood Boulevard to the Wall Street hedge fund managers believes in unearned riches plucked from "suckers." The catch is that men who live by this code almost always come to a bad end. They get their throats cut with razors, or go to prison, or manage to lose all their unearned riches (and the investments of many strangers, too).

     The portrait of the young American male in 2007, therefore, is of an impotent, infantalized being lost in grandiose fantasies of power and importance. It's a picture of men without real confidence, and no idea how to achieve it, who wish to project a transcendently ferocious image complete with odds-and-ends of manner taken from comic books and movies based on comic books, in order to be taken seriously.

     The rest of the world must tremble to contemplate the picture we present. The Nazi soldiers of 1944 were glamour boys compared to the riff-raff that American young men have become. As for those who actually do make it into the army, you wonder how they appear to the locals overseas -- they're probably taken seriously as exactly what the present themselves to be: manifestly evil beings who really need to be blown up. Back home, I look around at the thugs and sluggos at my gym, and I'm ashamed to be a citizen of the same country they live in.

Comments

[Rex]

Nice sterotype Jim. My sons don't dress or act this way, nor do their friends. The four interns I hired this summer are fine young men that do not fit your description.

I think may be you are seeing the exceptions rather than the rule. When you were that age the the rule was clean cut young men concerned about a confusing war and making a living. The exception was tie-died hippies that ate acid like candy.

Popular culture remembers the images from Woodstock and the summer of love. Flip open a college annual of any college from that era and you will see a very different image.

My point is that the stereotype you describe is most visible, but the majority of young men do not fit it. This is especially true of the ones that will be succesful.

[joshua]

Great stuff James...when I was a young man jeans were worn by men working in manual constuction projects,on the roads etc..
Likewise young women never worn the gear of the prostiture.
Now all that black-stocking stuff seems like a glimpse of the brothel
Yes, the world does regard the USA as a universal bully.We are friendless and alone ..Thanks Mr Bush!!

[Ed]

"Youth today love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, no respect for older people, and talk nonsense when they should be working. Young people do not stand up any longer when adults enter the room. They contradict their parents, talk too much in company, guzzle their food, lay their legs on the table and tyrannize their elders."

Socrates

You're not saying anything new. I'm sure that the current generation of G'd-out fashion victims will be equally outraged when their kids abandon all common decency and start dressing like Young Republicans.

[bor]

And , of course, sugar in our time was sweeter and water wetter.

[Dr.Doom]

They're redundant? Even if true, I wonder if they actually realize it. I've read that theme before, in Catton's Overshoot, about the German's rationale for starting two world wars. Somehow I doubt we have much to fear from the bunch JHK describes.

[Fred]

Kunstler does this great crotchety old man schtick even better than the sky is falling schtick. I laughed and laughed. But the analysis doesn't go very deep. People will live for the day if and when they can, and if and when it becomes necessary to shape up, people will do just that. I would love to see peak oil, because I've always detested car culture and consumerism and everything else associated with our affluent society, and I really think I'd be happier if we had to struggle a bit more to survive. But much though I long to see it, I don't peak oil is coming. But if it does come, all the social ills will vanish quickly. The young men who refused to act productively will be lined up and shot. The drug addicts, the fatsos diabetics in their motorized wheelchairs, the elderly in their nursing homes--a bad flu epidemic will rid us of those parasites in one fell swoop. No one likes discipline, so when discipline is not necessary for a society's survival, discipline is dropped. When discipline once again becomes necessary, discipline is swiftly reinstated. If for some reason a society is unable to reinstate discipline when necessary, that society will soon be invaded by one of its neighbors which was able to reinstate discipline.

As for me, I'm more amused than ashamed to be an American citizen.

[New Scientist]

I think someone must have cut in front of Jimmie at the airport. And given him a thug look to boot.

[FARfetched]

People wear clothes for three reasons: 1) comfort (me), 2) to identify with a group (The Boy), and 3) to avid getting arrested for public indecency. :-)

Asoka's comment about an "organizing principle" is sort of scary: we all know what organizing principle appeared after the Weimar Republic collapsed. I hope when the time comes, our organizer is more of a Gandhi....

[fallout11]

The current wave of selective infantilism popular with many is closely related to another modern trend, that of abdication of personal responsibility and voluntary victimhood (it's not my fault, I'm a victim!) that itself stems from the lack of individualism and personal control we have over our own lives.

[zerotsm]

What's this got to do with peak oil and "The Long Emergency"? Jim, I'm really surprised that you didn't post something in reference to propane prices in Pennsylvania.

Out in the country where there is no natural gas distribution, cook stoves and home heating is often fueled by propane. Propane is a byproduct of oil refining and to a lesser degree natural gas recovery.
Historically, the cost of propane per BTU of heat has been about half that of electric resistance heat.

Until around November of 2006 that is. Propane hit $4.00 a gallon in small quantities. The best price I could find in any quantity was $3.00 a gallon. Electricity is going for $.092 per KWH now. When you do the math, electricity is significantly less expensive per unit of heat than propane. Even if electric rates go up to 12 cents per KWH, as our local utility is talking about, you are still slightly ahead cooking with an electric stove rather than propane.

How can this be? 60% of the electricity production in Pennsylvania is from coal, 30% from fission reactors, 8% from a mix of hydro and windmills and just 2% from fuel oil.

To me this is a sign that we have passed peak oil and the 'fun' is just about to begin.

[keef]

There is some muddying of the influences of today's oversized style.

I grew up in SoCal in the 60's. graduated in 72. Living near the beach we all wore jams, brightly floral print baggy beach trunks. XL T-shirts also made their debut being comfortable and cheap. Screen printing came around and soon the T-shirts carried messages and logos. Soon people were billboards for their favorite surf shop, board maker, beer, etc. Soon the big guys got into it and people were wearing free advertising to the corporations who used to have to pay dearly for this kind of exposure. That's when I drew the line what kind of T-shirt I would wear.

Today's style has it's roots in beach culture and it's laid back lifestyle. Tough luck if you missed out on the surf and chicks. I pity ya'll. Unfortunately most today are afraid to surf, skateboard, or ride the snow. Thjey sure want to dress the part. Nothing more disgusting than seeing some rapper at the X games wearing goggles and skicap sideways knowing this clown couldn't flail his way down a bunny hill.

I'm 52 and dress a bit how you describe because it's very comfortable. Of course my frame isn't bloated out of proportion by fast food and cola. That's why most of these fools dress as they do. It's all that fits them.

I raised 3 fine offspring within the surf, skate and snowboard culture and all three have professional careers while dad still surfs as often as possible.

My kids were denied all the expected badges of phony wealth. No hyped brands, no junk food, no shiny cars. They were raised in a small town university ghetto where the mix of cultures was healthy instead of homogenized like out in suburbia.

[John]

Ah, Jim, good conservative Geezer reflection. Yes, the oversized clothes do look like enlarged versions of the costume for the Little Rascals. Yes, America is a Gulag society where prison life informs an astonishing number of lives. But these are just tribal markings for the varying tribal groups that are running around this country.
We are ruled by a tribal warlord oligarchy using the structure of corporatism.
What else would you expect?
The clans have to identify themselves somehow.
Neatly pressed button downs and khakis just means that you are part of, aspire to or wish to blend in and be ignored by the oligarchy.

[roughdoggo]

Who would have thought, years back, that the dishabille of the stupidest of the Seven Dwarves would be considered the height of male sartorial elegance a few decades on?

[David in Los Angeles]

I don't think JHK is a "crotchety old man", I agree with his observations. What I find annoying is the use of word "cool". (With "awesome" running a close 2nd). "Cool" has become the new "Thank You". I hear people saying it everywhere. At work: ("Here's the report you wanted" Response: "OH, COOL!"). Walking down the sidewalk, hearing someone yakking on her cell phone: "That's SOOO COOL!") It is everywhere, it has become the all-purpose adjective. I cringe when I hear people say the word. The constant use of the word is the result of watching too much TV. Hmmmph, there!

[Mike K]

Having spent a couple days in Las Vegas last week (business, not casinos), I'll vouch for the veracity of Jim's observations. I think the underlying reason for his writing the column is to imply that, with respect to the future talent pool needed to deal with The Long Emergency, we are in big trouble. That's certainly true of many; it is hard to imagine them growing food, pedaling a bicycle because the standard of living will no longer allow gasoline purchases on a burger-flipper salary, or moving beyond getting something for nothing. I teach in a state university, and there is plenty of "I want something for nothing", but it is not universal; there are plenty of young people who show much promise, uncorrelated to dress, tattoos, etc. So these will be the leaders and survivirs of the Long Emergency, and the nursery rhyme gang-bangers will be imprisoned, or serfs if they are lucky.

[Mike G]

Back in the 50's in Britain, we had what were called Teddy Boys. They wore drainpipe trousers, Tony Curtis haircuts with duck's arse backs, Edwardian jackets like something a Mississippi steamboat gambler might wear, and beatle crusher shoes (thick crepe soles,blue suede uppers) with white or yellow or pale blue socks. They spent their time in coffee bars listening to corrupt wailing "music" called rock n roll Juke boxes "sung" Elvis and Bill Haley and Bobby Darren etc.

The old colonels would write furious letters to The Times (of London) harrumphing about the decline in youth manners and standards and the end of western civilisation as we know it and demand the kids do National Service (=the draft)to become real men and have the nonsense beaten out of them etc, and these Colonel Blimps and Old Farts would declare they didn't know what the world was coming to by Gad.

In the sixties we had the protest generation in flowers and khaftans and open toed sandals, singing We shall overcome " and "Where have all the flowers Gone? and listening to Dylan and Baez, or mods and rockers over (Beatles, Stones, The Who - "My Generation") and the colonels and the old fogeys would gnash their teeth and mutter on about the youth of today and the end of western civilisation as we know it etc.

In the seventies came the Punk generation and Sid Vicious, and then the New Romantics and Duran Durtan and the Goths etc and the Colonels would rabbit on about the youth of today and bring back the birch and National Service etc. And so we passed into eighties and then the nineties and now the noughties, and the old Colonel Blimps (some of whom had been Teddy Boys or Mods and Rockers or even Sid Vicious fans in their their youth) and old farts and fogeys would go on about the youth of today and their low standards of behaviour and ludicrous dress and hair styles and bloody awful music and what is the countryy coming to........?

Kunstler has turned into an old fart, a Colonel Blimp, a fogey. Hey, Kunstler, leave thenm kids alone! All in all you're in danger of being another brick in the wall.

[Johnny]

Columnist Stanley Crouch hit it on the head when he called these guys "clownish buffoons."

[Dennis]

This is markedly so when travelling in places like Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland. I spent about 12 hours combined in Cleveland and Chicago last month and your observations and commentary are spot on, unfortunately.

As a teacher, I can only sigh and hope my pupils eschew such lifestyle choices.

[kd]

I'll go out on a limb & say that I've observed more tatoos on young women than on young men.

The U.S. Marine haircut (the "jarhead" look, you could call it) is quite popular amoung young men too. Interestingly, many of the guys I see w/ this military cut are grossly overweight.

For many young women "stripper chic" is still the look they go for.

The infantilism you speak of is not just expressed in clothing, but behavior as well. Young men & women (some even in their 30's) obessessed with cartoons, comic books, super heroes (& villans), computer games, "grindhouse" movies, toys...

The beat goes on.

When I was young, the look many of us fostered evolved from the original hippies. A touch of the pioneer ("from the land"), a touch of the Great Depression ("working class hero"), a splash of psychedelic color here & there (Native American &/or the mystic East).

The anthropology of clothes (including hairstyles, body decorations) can be interesting. I remember in high school my sociology teacher asking us to consider if long, sharp, red-painted fingernails on women had any "meaning" other than "dressy" -- a revelation for us 16 years olds.

[deathbystatusquo]

What's this got to do with peak oil and "The Long Emergency"? - zerotsm

These are the ASSHOLES we'll have to contend with when TSHFT. WTF, are you not paying attention? Gangs, losers, fucknuts all the rest of the idiot bastard children.

------------

we all know what organizing principle appeared after the Weimar Republic collapsed. I hope when the time comes, our organizer is more of a Gandhi.... - FARfetched

Hmmmphf. Gandhi. Take a good look around you. Do you REALLY see anybody even resembling a Gandhi being able to bring any sense of order to this three ring circus?

We have seriously deficient gene pool working against us. Jack boots and rifle butts seem to be the only thing that can get anyone's attention long enough to get them to do anything.

One thing about repressive totalitarian regimes, there is no doubt as to what the penalty for non-compliance is.

Fuck rehabilitation. Shot the offending MF and move on.

Those Enron fucks - shot for Treason.

Defense contractors screwing the gov't? Shot for treason.

Politicized generals dragging their feet on better arms, supplies and medical treatment for the military - shot for treason.

Anyone found guilty of financial misconduct with public funds - shot for treason.

I could go on for days about the sorry sons a bitches that should be shot on sight.

Behavior modification at the levels this society needs isn't based on "re-education" - it is based on a life or death choice.

You people are scaring me. I need more ammo.

[kd]

Here in the Austin/San Antonio area, the hairstyle sported by many Latino youth is either the shaved head of prison or the jarhead cut of the military. Older brother (the one whose overlarge clothes got passed down to little brother) chose either the gang or the military.

[JL]

So what do we need more of: a thousand preppy types going to law school or a thousand nerdy types going into engineering or a thousand country boys going into agricultural school? Judge them by their clothes.

[NicholDance]

Clothing and music styles (at least some) are obviously based on prison culture. In an environment of issued clothes, how are you allowed to express yourself? why, you wear them in an odd fashion or wear funny sizes. The evolution from jail -> inner city -> suburb -> your neighborhood is pretty obvious.

The huge difference between now and yesteryear is the homogeneous styles that sweep across the country. In the 1960's where I lived (the rural West, *not* California) bell bottoms, peculiar hair styles on men, etc. simply didn't exist, it was a thing you saw in Time or on TV.

A primary difference, then, is that the absurdity of overprivileged life on both coasts now quickly spreads to the entire country.