Male vanity is a thing of long-standing documentation. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer deplored the wearing of codpieces over the genitalia. This flaunting of “shameful privee membres”, he wrote, by men with “horrible swollen membres” that “they shewe thugh disginynge [diguise]”, also made “the buttokes … as it were, the hyndre part of the she-ape in the fulle of the moone” - which was rich coming from a man who, as a page, wore a flaming costume with tights, one leg black and one leg red. Vanity’s also covered at length in the Old and New Testaments. In Greek mythology, Narcissus fell in love with his image in a pool of water and paid with his life. How many thousands of treatments are there for male pattern baldness, I wonder, and how many millions are spent on them every year? To this day, men wear a tie and a clean shirt because of a fop named Beau Brummel, circa 1805. I had memorable exposure to all this when, as a retirement gig, I sold suits for a living and it was a rough go. Let me explain.
© 2024 John Oliver
Substack is the home for great culture