0 out of 10 for Top Tens

As December draws to a close we are generally bombarded with retrospective looks at the year. There is something natural about this: making sense of how we got here from there is never a bad idea. Yet why this nauseating tendency to make top-ten lists in all kinds of inappropriate categories? I am all for some playful, and personal, top-tenning in the style of High Fidelity, for it does no harm, and represents the ordering of one’s inherently messy existence. But who decides, say, the top ten weather disasters of 2009? Or the top ten celebrity deaths of 2009? This is not a considered or sophisticated way to reflect on the past; it is more like gawking at dead bodies. It is akin to the ‘like’ feature on social networking sites, where reports of exams passed and dogs dying are all ‘liked’ alike, which seems to mean, like, that you acknowledge it, or, like, something. I don’t much like ‘like’, and for the same reason, I don’t care for inappropriate top tens. With wanton inappropriateness, therefore, here are my top ten inappropriate top tens for 2009:

Top Ten Pariahs (Time) – nothing says ‘outcast’ like being on a Time top-ten list.

Top Ten T-Shirt Worthy Slogans (Time) – please. T-Shirts shouldn’t be talked about. Slogans the less so. In combination, celebrated in frivolity in serious news magazines? No, no, no.

Top Ten Breakups (Time) – nothing about celebrity, especially not the bad stuff, should be celebrated.

Top Ten Cryptozoology Deaths (Cryptomundo) – how gutted would the family of a recently deceased cryptozoologist be if they didn’t make it on to the list of top dead cryptozoologists? Or how happy?

Top Nine News Moments of ’09 (CBC) – special mention because doing a Top Nine is so lame.

Top Ten Humanitarian Crises (Medecins sans Frontieres) – imagine being 11 on this list. That would suck. This is surely not list material.

Top Ten Dirtiest Hotels (Tripadvisor) – bottom ten might have been better.

Top Ten Layoffs (Fiercepharma) – newsworthy, yes. Top Ten, no.

Top Ten High Concepts (Greentech) – this list wasn’t one of them.

Top Ten Foreign Policy Blunders (Powerlineblog) – hardly light-hearted ‘ooh let’s make a list’ material.

Brace Yourself

I cannot find out whether or not this is apocryphal, but I have long believed Oscar Wilde to have said that clothes should hang from the shoulder, and not from the waist. Whether he did or not, the aphorism rings true. The male trouser is in a sorry state these days. Amid all the medicated bluster about being well-hung, the trouser is a crumpled mess upon the ill-chosen shoe. The nonsense should be suspended. If you want to look well-hung, buy braces.

Can any man recall being complemented on his trousers? Why do we spend such fortunes on every accoutrement of the manly toilet and yet force ourselves into ill-fitting garments of the leg, with complete lack of care and wanton abandon about the location of the male waist? I propose we aspire to the sartorial mastery of Surtees’ Mr. Sponge, whose ‘nether man’ was thusly described:

Mr. Sponge’s trousers… were easy without being tight, or rather they looked tight without being so; there wasn’t a bag, wrinkle, or a crease that there shouldn’t be, and strong and storm-defying as they seemed, they were yet as soft and as supple as a lady’s glove. They looked more as if his legs had been blown in them than as if such irreproachable garments were the work of man’s hands. Many were the nudges, and many the ‘look at that chap’s trousers’, that were given by ambitious men emulous of his appearance as he passed along, and many were the turnings round to examine their faultless fall upon his radiant boot. (Robert Surtees, Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour).

Let all those who assert that braces, or suspenders as the North Americans confusingly call them – please let no Englishman hear that I ever suggested a man should wear such frilly feminine fancies – are mere ostentation, give them a try. I would not go out of my way to put them on display. After all, if you are properly dressed, the mechanics of your trousers ought to be concealed. That’s not to say that particularly fine examples might not be afforded a show, but the principal reason for donning them is functional. Trousers look better when suspended from the shoulder, and are more comfortable to boot.

Affecting Friendship

There is an art to manliness which is affect. I don’t really have a problem with the cultivation of affectations so long as they are thoroughgoing. After a time, the recently acquired affectation becomes a way of being, and adds to the depth of one’s character. Forms come with meanings, and should be thought about along meaningful lines. Smoking a pipe for the mere image of it, for example, would be no good. There are rituals, commitments, and artisanal considerations to weigh before display can properly be carried out. Such things being observed, the image of it conveys a seriousness of character and thoughtfulness that merely smoking would not. Not that I should go out of my way to promote smoking, heaven forefend, but if that’s your cup of tea, may you observe the appropriate ceremony.

On the topic of affectations that belie meanings, one of the most prevalent, and least edifying, is the tendency of Western males to pretend to stoicism, if not mechanism, in their personal relations with other men. Many of us are fortunate to count among our number one, two, or more genuine male friends. These men, with whom we would entrust our fortunes in love and money, are our dearest companions beyond spousal considerations of whatever persuasion. Yet how often do we tell them? How often do we emote, not theatrically, but sincerely, in their direction? What do we fear would be the result? The truth is that many men fight shy of their own feelings, and presume the same of others. In a vicious circle of machismo – the least manly quality, by the way – we bid to outdo one another in the hardness of our countenances, while consuming ever more alcohol and spiralling downwards into the much vaunted, but overrated, ‘cave’ of primal masculinity. Robert Bly and his ilk are welcome to abscond to their dark, dank, dismal corners and grunt together, but I see no reason to turn my back on the light. Male bonding might be found in ritual violence, but I somehow think there is a sweeter, lighter way. Just for once, be honest with yourself and tell your best mate what you think of him.

You don’t have to tell him you love him if that freaks you out. But my guess is that whatever you say, if it’s heartfelt, won’t be ungraciously received. It would be a hard man indeed who would not soften in the face of true feeling. Beat down the least helpful, least thoughtful of your affectations – the need to seem tough – and be true to the nature of the friendships you value. Who knows, you might start to affect emotion more often and, if you give it due consideration, it might lead you to an altogether better place.

Firing Up the Ol' Factory

Few of us know the meaning of true manual labour. The ideal manly musculature is now copied from Men’s Health, or worse, and fabricated not in the factory, foundry or mine, but in the gym. But the ideal’s origins were in the chiselled physiques of men whose daily labours would horrify most modern men. George Orwell, in perhaps his most erotic moment, described such men thusly:

They really do look like iron – hammered iron statues – under the smooth coat of coal dust which clings to them from head to foot. It is only when you see miners down the mine and naked that you realise what splendid men they are. Most of them are small (big men are at a disadvantage in that job) but nearly all of them have the most noble bodies; pronounced buttocks and sinewy thighs, with not an ounce of waste flesh anywhere… They may be any age up to sixty or even sixty-five, but when they are black and naked they all look alike. No one could do their work who had not a young man’s body, and a figure fit for a guardsman at that… (George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier).

Of course, nothing much else about these lives was worth celebrating, not least the foul stench the men carried around with them in between baths. Orwell, however much he admired the well-cut figure of an honest man, knew that ‘you cannot have an affection’ for a man who stinks: ‘in your heart of hearts you will hate him’. Orwell saw that the English were ‘growing visibly cleaner’, but how many men now really think about the emanations of their unlaboured physiques?

Whereas some women announce their presence through the overpowering musky sweetness that precedes them (men really don’t like this), as many men carry on as if sweat will pheremonically enchant the opposite sex. Orwell wanted us all to take regular baths. This much surely should now be taken for granted. But then what? What does my smell say about me? Does it complement me and project something about my character? Hopefully it is designed not merely to mask my natural odour. Noses, the least-used of our sensory organs, have been ignored for too long. I have fired up my olfactory sense. How pointless to forge a fine figure of a man if nobody wants to go near it!

You Can Keep Your Hat On

Not too many men wear hats these days. Baseball caps don’t count, unless you’re actually going to a baseball game, in which case they might be forgiven. Actually going to a baseball game may not be forgivable, but that’s probably not worth pursuing just yet. You certainly have my permission if you are playing baseball, but then it’s unlikely that you are a) reading this blog, or b) giving two hoots about my permission. These considerations aside, not too many men wear hats these days.

It’s difficult to understand why this is so. After all, Hollywood has always been alive to the trick of putting leading men under a trilby to convey suaveness and cool elegance. People follow the stars in almost every other respect, but not this one. The general reaction of the uncouth to a bona fide titfer, not on the big screen, but actually in their midst, is one of gawking bewilderment. Not long ago, I was crossing the road, sporting a well-fitted brown fedora, when some strip-club going young Americans leaned, en masse, out of their SUV’s windows and shouted ‘Yeeeehaw, Cowboy’ at me, as if I was some exotic immigrant from Montana. The inability to differentiate an urbane, city-going male from Roy Rogers is disturbing to say the least (and I blame Bruce Willis in Die Hard). A few months earlier, at the height of summer, I was wandering around in my sunny panama, when a lady of late-middle age stopped me and told me how much she admired it. I am all for compliments from ladies, but there was something perturbing about the (hopefully unrepresentative) demographic to which it singularly appealed. I would rather think Kit-Cat Club (the eighteenth-century English one. Please.) than cat-food club.

The masses clearly don’t think hats are worth the bother. Judging by the rather poor fare in High-Street shops that sell a variety of head coverings, retail bosses don’t think so either. Resorting to the fineries of gentlemanly shops can hit you in the pocket, but I would suggest they are worth the investment. Otherwise, there is the odd sign that the tide is turning. I noticed that Zara is purveying a range of tall tiles right now, and it has for several years been pushing a somewhat Mediterranean line of jaunty bonnets at extremely affordable prices. Nobody seems really to buy them, more’s the pity, but my own collection is growing and I see no reason to stop. Whatever the uneducated ‘think’, a hat gives a man an air of elegance; it tells the gathered throng that you have thought about the occasion and dressed accordingly; it projects confidence and personality; it lets everyone know you’ve arrived. If you’re a man about town, trying to get ahead, get a hat.