Showing posts with label phallic pride. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phallic pride. Show all posts

21 Aug 2017

Eric Gill: On Trousers and the Most Precious Ornament



D. H. Lawrence wasn't the only weirdy beardy Englishman writing in the interwar period to be concerned with the question of masculinity and men's fashion, with a particular interest in trousers and the male member.

The artist, typographer, and sexual deviant, Eric Gill, also wrote on the vital role played by clothing within society and that most precious ornament, the penis, and I would like to discuss his thinking on these things as set out in an essay from 1937 which exposes a phallocentric sexual politics that makes Lawrence's look relatively limp in comparison.

Like Lawrence, of whose work he was a passionate admirer, Gill hated commercial and industrial civilisation. For whilst it encouraged women to "flaunt their sexual attractiveness on all occasions" and display the shapeliness of their legs and breasts with pride, it forced men to dress in a manner that suppressed their maleness of body and obscured their animal nature.

The protuberance by which a man's sex might be identified, is, says Gill, carefully and shamefully tucked between his legs and modern men are taught to regard the penis as merely a ridiculous-looking organ of drainage; "no longer the virile member and man's most precious ornament, but the comic member, a thing for girls to giggle about ..."   

The mighty phallus has been deflated and dishonoured. And not just in the West, but wherever machine civilisation has triumphed, with disastrous consequences for both sexes. For in a world in which men lose physical exuberance and assurance, women quickly lose all natural modesty. They start to parade around like shameless prostitutes in a desperate attempt to arouse the half-impotent male.

The only hope, says Gill, lies with those men who still retain something of the Old Adam about them; men who, like Oliver Mellors, despise commerce and industrialism; men who care about more about making love and waging war, than making money; men who refuse to commute to the office on the Tube each day in clothes that restrict their maleness and crush their balls.

For Gill, if modern man is to be emancipated and remasculated, then he must throw off his trousers and refuse to wear "cheap ready-made coats and collars and ties". Instead, he should don a dignified long robe, like an Arab; or a kilt, like a proud Scotsman, sans pants, allowing his penis its natural freedom of movement and chirpiness: I'm out there Jerry and I'm loving every minute of it!

Not - we should note in closing - that Gill wants men to make a spectacle of themselves and expose their nakedness; indeed, the last thing he wants is for men to become sexual exhibitionists flaunting their masculinity like modern women flaunt their femininity by wearing short skirts and make-up. He just wants us all to admit that the question of clothing - like that of the human soul - is of great importance and deserves the most serious consideration ...


Notes 

Those interested in reading Gill's 1937 essay can do so by clicking here

The Seinfeld episode in which Kramer discovers the joys of going commando is Season 6 / Episode 4: 'The Chinese Woman'. 


9 Apr 2017

From Codpiece to Camel Toe Pants



The codpiece was a popular male fashion statement in Renaissance Europe; attached with string ties to the front of the crotch, its purpose was to accentuate the genital area rather than conceal or afford protection.

For despite often being riddled with syphilis, the men of the 15th and 16th centuries were proud and confident in their manhood and these colourful cocksure dandies would compete to have the best shaped, most padded and most decorative codpiece.

This outlandish game of one-upmanship came to a climax in the 1540s; after this date, the codpiece increasingly became an object of derision and fell out of favour amongst the more stylish and sophisticated of men.

Indeed, the word coddy would eventually become a disparaging slang term for those who were governed by their pricks rather than their minds; characters such as the young tram inspector, John Thomas, for example, in Lawrence's short story 'Tickets, Please' (1919).

And today, who wears a codpiece other than the odd leather fetishist or heavy metal musician - and even then it's worn ironically as a theatrical item of macho-camp, rather than as a symbol of phallic pride and undaunted masculinity.

Thus, in the absence of men who might carry off wearing a codpiece with conviction whilst gaily strolling along Piccadilly, it's left to our young women to step up and make an immodest display of their genitalia - and with the creation of camel toe knickers they can do just that ...   

These padded pants, offering the illusion of a perfectly shaped pudendum, have been popular in Asia for some years. Now they've finally arrived for sale in the UK, affording British women the opportunity to turn heads by unashamedly directing attention to their labia. 

Available from Amazon in a variety of skin tones, the pants cost just £28 - which is certainly cheaper than paying a plastic surgeon to design your vagina with a knife ...