![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Excuse me, while I dis this guy
Sep. 19th, 2005 11:40 amThis morning on the Metro I saw a guy – a regular, twenty-something, 6'2-190 African-American guy – wearing a black t-shirt with the HUSTLER logo in white lettering. There were some smaller words underneath it that I couldn't immediately make out; I initially assumed that it was some kind of jokey repudiation or disassociation from the HUSTLER brand, like "Objectifying Women for Far Too Long" or "Best Cinematography Oscar Winner, 1961." But I finally read it to say "Hardcore since 1973."
And I'm still trying to figure out: what motivates a person to wear such a shirt? What is the thought process that goes behind the decision to wear a shirt that virtually symbolizes misogyny and chauvinism through uncomfortably explicit pornography?
It is possible, I suppose, to wear such a garment in an ironic manner. This probably would have been best accomplished by a woman wearing the shirt, but a man could conceivably execute such a sartorial maneuver with the proper combination of goofy apparel, footwear, and accessories. For example, a man wearing this shirt with plaid pants, bowling shoes and horn-rimmed glasses would effectively drain the t-shirt of its boastful power and convert it into parody. This Metro passenger, however, was not attempting parody, or was at least making a very poor attempt. His blue jeans and Timberlands and patchy facial hair, as well as his solemn demeanor, suggested a man who had never read Mad Magazine.
Furthermore, from his attendant wardrobe, we can infer that he was not wearing the shirt because it he had to find something that "matched." Pretty much anything goes with blue jeans and Tims, so it was not as if he needed the neutrality of a black-and-white shirt to coordinate the outfit. Besides, from his scruffy countenance and the presence of miscellaneous stains on his jeans, this individual did not seem like the type of person who puts a lot of thought into "matching" – nor should I imply that the shirt was, much less was the only thing, freshly laundered.
Exhausting these practical reasons, we are left with only the philosophical. Maybe he has been through a series of unfulfilling romantic relationships that left him feeling skeptical about the purity of physical love, and this skepticism has led him to the conclusion that cheap, artificial encounters are the way to go. Maybe he is a naturalist of the purest order, believing that there is nothing more beautiful than the unabashedly animalistic and agressive act of intercourse, even hurredly captured under unflattering fluorescent lighting. Maybe he's just really into dicks and tits.
It is perhaps more probable that he is simply trying to portray a "bad boy" image, silently asserting that he is wild and cannot be tamed, too naughty to bring home to mother, the kind of man who is rugged and raw and practically covered in a glistening sheen of testosterone and therefore well-nigh irresistible to women (who, lest we forget, invariably have their own relationship and intimacy issues) and who, through rigorous study of HUSTLER magazine and other periodicals of a similar sort, has amassed a repulsive but nevertheless somehow admirable knowledge of a vast cornucopia of sexual positions, techniques and creatively invasive procedures.
These assumptions may all be valid. But I try to believe in the best of people, so I choose to believe this: that the black t-shirt is a constant, solemn tribute to all our lost and fallen citizens along the gulf coast. His wearing of the HUSTLER shirt is a symbolic act of mourning specifically for New Orleans, a city and a people among which the men and women and readers of HUSTLER would have felt right at home, especially in the HUSTLER Club on Bourbon Street – perhaps a fondly remembered point of interest on the wearer's own visit, once upon a time – where men and women can revel in the essence of the Big Easy: wine, women and song; and where the bathrooms are surprisingly well-appointed. Not that I would know.
And I'm still trying to figure out: what motivates a person to wear such a shirt? What is the thought process that goes behind the decision to wear a shirt that virtually symbolizes misogyny and chauvinism through uncomfortably explicit pornography?
It is possible, I suppose, to wear such a garment in an ironic manner. This probably would have been best accomplished by a woman wearing the shirt, but a man could conceivably execute such a sartorial maneuver with the proper combination of goofy apparel, footwear, and accessories. For example, a man wearing this shirt with plaid pants, bowling shoes and horn-rimmed glasses would effectively drain the t-shirt of its boastful power and convert it into parody. This Metro passenger, however, was not attempting parody, or was at least making a very poor attempt. His blue jeans and Timberlands and patchy facial hair, as well as his solemn demeanor, suggested a man who had never read Mad Magazine.
Furthermore, from his attendant wardrobe, we can infer that he was not wearing the shirt because it he had to find something that "matched." Pretty much anything goes with blue jeans and Tims, so it was not as if he needed the neutrality of a black-and-white shirt to coordinate the outfit. Besides, from his scruffy countenance and the presence of miscellaneous stains on his jeans, this individual did not seem like the type of person who puts a lot of thought into "matching" – nor should I imply that the shirt was, much less was the only thing, freshly laundered.
Exhausting these practical reasons, we are left with only the philosophical. Maybe he has been through a series of unfulfilling romantic relationships that left him feeling skeptical about the purity of physical love, and this skepticism has led him to the conclusion that cheap, artificial encounters are the way to go. Maybe he is a naturalist of the purest order, believing that there is nothing more beautiful than the unabashedly animalistic and agressive act of intercourse, even hurredly captured under unflattering fluorescent lighting. Maybe he's just really into dicks and tits.
It is perhaps more probable that he is simply trying to portray a "bad boy" image, silently asserting that he is wild and cannot be tamed, too naughty to bring home to mother, the kind of man who is rugged and raw and practically covered in a glistening sheen of testosterone and therefore well-nigh irresistible to women (who, lest we forget, invariably have their own relationship and intimacy issues) and who, through rigorous study of HUSTLER magazine and other periodicals of a similar sort, has amassed a repulsive but nevertheless somehow admirable knowledge of a vast cornucopia of sexual positions, techniques and creatively invasive procedures.
These assumptions may all be valid. But I try to believe in the best of people, so I choose to believe this: that the black t-shirt is a constant, solemn tribute to all our lost and fallen citizens along the gulf coast. His wearing of the HUSTLER shirt is a symbolic act of mourning specifically for New Orleans, a city and a people among which the men and women and readers of HUSTLER would have felt right at home, especially in the HUSTLER Club on Bourbon Street – perhaps a fondly remembered point of interest on the wearer's own visit, once upon a time – where men and women can revel in the essence of the Big Easy: wine, women and song; and where the bathrooms are surprisingly well-appointed. Not that I would know.
