Well There's Your Problem | Bonus Episode 38 PREVIEW: Fashion

This episode explores the fascinating intersections of fashion, gender expression, and social norms throughout history.

1. Fashion has historically been used to code and enforce gender norms.
2. Certain clothing items, like high heels, have undergone significant transformations in their societal meanings.
3. Fashion can also serve as a medium for challenging and redefining gender norms.
4. High-end fashion and craftsmanship can symbolize social status.
5. Modern fashion continues to evolve, blending traditional craftsmanship with contemporary designs.

1: Introduction

The hosts introduce the topic of fashion's role in society, discussing its impact on gender coding and social norms. Alice Caldwell-Kelly: "Fashion is one of several ways that you can code gender in your society."

2: High Heels History

Exploration of the origins and evolution of high heels. Liam Anderson: "High heels make you look amazing."

3: Modern Fashion Controversies

Discussion on modern fashion and its controversies, including gender-neutral clothing. Alice Caldwell-Kelly: "My new secret secondary objective is to fashion pill in before the end of this episode."

4: Craftsmanship in Shoe-Making

Insight into the craftsmanship and techniques of traditional shoemaking. Rob: "The details on this shoe that are still excellent in modern shoemaker."

1. Explore the history behind everyday fashion items to appreciate their cultural significance.
2. Consider the impact of your clothing choices on societal perceptions and norms.
3. Support fashion brands that promote sustainable and ethical manufacturing practices.
4. Engage in conversations about fashion to challenge and redefine traditional norms.
5. Embrace fashion as a form of personal expression and identity exploration.

Fashion is Danger

People

Justin Roczniak, Liam Anderson, Alice Caldwell-Kelly

Companies

Leave blank if none.

Books

Leave blank if none.

Guest Name(s):

Leave blank if none.

Content Warnings:

None

Alice

Yeah, if we go to the next slide, this is one that I wrote, which has much more free form and therefore worse content. We have sexy high heels. Yeah, the sexy high heel. The sexy shoe. The point that I'm getting at with this is something we've kind of alluded to earlier, which is that fashion is one of several ways that you can code gender in your society.

And this is very dependent on your society, its ways of organizing and thinking about gender. It's very mutable sometimes. It's very alien to our conception. One example of that is high heels, which were originally invented for riding horseback with stirrups by the Mongols and sort of came to Europe as a form of ostentation that was specifically male and specifically manly because it made you look imposing and it made you look tall. All the same reasons that women like it.

Liam

And it makes your cows look good. Yeah, it makes you look good as hell. Like, high heels make you look amazing. I mean, if you look at that picture of Louis XIV from the last slide, it is specifically arranged to show off his legs. That is part of the point that's being made here.

Rob

Just like, what's his face from Game of Thrones con drogo in, like, stilettos. Yeah, it's powerful and it's elegant. And if they get tall enough, then they can also do the same thing of conveying that I'm too fancy to have to really walk around. It keeps your shoes out of the gusses. I have a horse to do.

Liam

That can also help you give people the Johnson treatment. Yeah. And my point with this is only to say that the ways in which fashion is used to convey gender have changed in ways and are changing in ways that we seldom fully understand and which are often tremendously subtle. And if you are the menswear guy, you can use this to own Matt Walsh on Twitter and be like, oh, interesting. You want to take away trans people's rights.

Alice

Are you aware that you're wearing a suit that was originally designed for a feminine. It doesn't matter. I don't care. That's a stupid way of dealing with him. I think you should probably.

Instead, you'll have to bleep that this is a bonus. You don't have to bleep anything. Exactly. Yeah, but it's a stupid own to make. And I hate the fucking menswear guy.

But there is a point to be made here about, like, the menswear guy. And get into it. Ways in which gender is socially constructed through clothing. And that was my slide for this. There's another interesting fact about shoes from this era, which isn't particularly relevant to the discussion we're having here, but it is just interesting, which is that a lot of them were what is called single lasted, which means they are made to be worn on either foot.

Liam

So what you would do is you would wear them one way and then you'd switch them around and it would help the wear pattern even out so they'd last longer. Oh, God, you were halfway through that. I was going to make a joke about it being about the wear pattern. Oh, no, it's about the wear pattern. Wow.

Rob

This is the same reason they turn around railroad equipment when they don't really have to. There you go. Try to only use your powers of psychic prediction for good, rob. It's interesting, by the way, the details on this shoe that are still excellent in modern shoemaker, they're sort of more rudimentary because it's old and it's not as sort of concealed, but like things like a stacked heel that sort of like hand welted the seam along the side there, which was then sort of like supplanted by a goodyear welt with vulcanized rubber and stuff. But it's still in use in high end shoes.

Alice

So, yeah, I mean, a lot of this stuff, as much as fashions change, there are only so many ways to make things. A lot of techniques still kind of survive in unexpected ways or are rediscovered and reused in that way. Not to mention that even as we've invented faster and cheaper ways to make things, a lot of those older techniques are considered artisan craftsmanship, and wearing them is another way to show off your money, because it takes somebody days and days to do that. Yeah, I get my sort of like my fancy english leather Boots where someone has stacked the heel and sewn the welt and everything by themselves. And it's like, yeah, because I got that podcast money.

Rob

Yes. All right, keep it going. That's life. What is the podcast or fashion? I'm wearing a t shirt that has the septus system printed shorts.

Liam

I'm wearing a t shirt that says Memphis on it.

Alice

I am wearing a boy genius t shirt and some tactical jeans from Varys to lake. I will note that on this t shirt, Patterson station is still called at t not selling station. Naming rights is fucking awful. I wish I had been better dressed for this, just so I could flex and people would cancel their patrons on mass because I could just be like, yeah, I'm wearing a Prada, like linear Rossa. I'm wearing one of those probably, yeah, of course.

That is linear. Rossa is Prada's like winter sports line. It's like they do the snowboarding stuff. You can get linear Rossa, like red line. L-I-N-E-A-R-O-S-S-A.

Rob

Please sponsor.

Alice

My new secret secondary objective is to fashion pill in before the end of this episode. And the next time I see him at a live show or I see a photo of him, he's just like, gucci'd out to the nines. I really like this. They don't make this in fat guy sizes, but if they did, I'd be, oh, I will be spending your patreon dollars on the. Oh, the raycoat goes up to three x.

Cody

That's not bad. But is it european three x? Yeah. I was going to say we'll get into this in the oca to a bit. But like high fashion.

Alice

I am like a 25 xl as far as these things go. Yeah, european three x is like a medium twink here. We'll get to that. It's just a guy standing on an iceberg. I'm going to shoot this model.

This is the funniest thing about high fashion is you can throw people at it and they find exciting new ways to hate themselves. I don't mind being fat. I just mind this. I take that and I just turn it around into exciting new ball of clava rich people.

I'm just going to name you. Do you want to look at the Gucci mix capsule that's supposedly gender neutral but really isn't? All right, I'm going to better blast my calves. I better look fucking good. We're recording this on Super Bowl Sunday, folks.

Liam

Can I just say that any fashion can be gender neutral if you're not a fucking coward. Anyway, thank you. Yes, absolutely. There's a Gucci MLB capsule. Why?

Cody

Oh, this is dreadful. All right, new game is just like. I get Liam's earnest first reaction to any high fashion thing because I think this is my favorite thing in the world. Right? You get Liam in the AI generated Balenciaga ad with the bondage teddy bears.

Alice

No, that was a separate thing. That was like a kind of weird controversy that was also kind of confected. But there was also, like, AI generated Balenciaga ads that would, like.

Rob

There was a Harry Potter one. And then someone did famous architects, which was very funny, which were ready to wear Gucci.

Cody

$720 for a t shirt.

Alice

We'll get into like, actually, the t shirt is a good lens to explain different tiers of fashion. So we'll do that I got my. T shirt for free at the Septa railroad. You know, I like some of the all over awful Gucci print shit. I think that that's pretty good.

Thank you. Liam, we got some gowns. Yes. Once upon a time, we were. Sorry, sorry.

Liam

The printing press is introduced to Europe in huge mistake. Made a lot of people very unhappy. Yes. And in addition to actual things that can help society, like books and shit, this also becomes a way to print what is called fashion are they originate with France and Britain, where there's people who are just kind of drawing. These are all like royal fashions, but there's also just street fashion being drawn and made into these plates that can be printed and sent around two places.

Much easier, much more quickly than just one person going to Paris and coming back and saying, hey, I saw people wearing stuff that kind of looked like this. We should dress kind of like this, too. And so what you get is suddenly people start keeping up with trends more and more quickly over a wider area. Pop culture, too. That annoys people, particularly when men do it like, yeah, macaronis.

Alice

Yeah. And that is actually what the macaroni in Yankee Doodle is. Stuck a feather in his hat and called it Macaroni. It's sarcasm. Like, look at this guy who thinks he's the pinnacle of fashion by putting one feather in his hat.

Liam

These backwards Americans. Yankee Doodle was originally. Who won the war?

Alice

Yankee Doodle is like, still wearing an off white belt in 2024, six cry laughing emojis and then loses the war of independence. Anyway. Well, it started out as a sarcastic psalm directed at, oh, look at these backwards colonialists. And then the colonial Americans took it and they were like, yeah, that's us. Got a problem with it?

Liam

Who won the war?

Rob

Guess who's not in the commonwealth of nations? Yeah, I'll show you a special relationship and it's just me flicking off white belts.

Liam

I always assume that, oh, I'll show you an x is just immediately followed by unzipping. No, I would have to take off the off white. How much is off white? Off white. There's going to be a lot of me doing this in this episode.

Cody

Oh, this is off.

I kind of dig this industrial belt. Oh, I kind of like this. I'm going to drop this in the. Chat room of emotions you went through seeing one of these for the first time. That was very pleasing to me.

I'm not going to lie to you, Roz. I feel like you would look good in this. Well, I can't see it because I have. That's yellow.

Rob

Yellow is off of white. That is true, I guess, in the same way that I'm currently off of a horse.

Alice

My off horse belt.

Cody

Well done, everybody. Thank you. Yeah. So now you have a readily accessible, transmissible way of being. Like, here's what you should be wearing.

Alice

And now you can at least. Yeah, exactly. The thing about fashion is that you can understand it chiefly as a way of making other people feel bad about themselves so that they buy clothes. And now you can do this so much more efficiently. My God.

You're not just keeping up with the ladies of the court of your royal family. It's like fucking everybody's. What are the swedish bitches wearing this season? And this will repeat itself a couple more times before we're done. All right, next slide.

Liam

Alice, I think this one's yours. That's Liam, baby. Oh, it's Liam. Liam, take us through. Hey.

Cody

So I contributed very little to this episode, but I wanted to talk. I disagree. I prize your contributions. I wanted to talk about. We've actually already kind of hit it.

I don't know that I'm adding anything new, but I have the picture here of Antoinette being beheaded. And I wanted to talk about fashion as indicator of social strife. Some troy laws are a good piece of that to sort of keep the lower classes in line. And there are some modern interpretations of some sharia laws, well, down to, like, prohibition, cannabis prohibition, that sort of thing. Sure.

And I think what I really wanted to say is, how do our aesthetics project what we intend to project? So what are we saying? What are we doing by on that with the. I don't have to work fashion. Yeah.

Alice

And I can talk about this in relation to pants, specifically trousers, because the sort of courtly, aristocratic fashion in sort of like a french nobility of everywhere's nobility, really was breeches. Like short pants. They come to just below the knee, and you have stockings underneath those. And this is a kind of, like, marker of aristocracy of nobility, specifically. And your laborer, your worker, wears, like, a longer trouser, like, something closer to what you or I might wear today, unless we're still wearing breeches like fancy lads and specifically as a sort of revolutionary movement, the sonculot, the without breeches are the guys who are, like.

We either are or identify with the laboring classes who, because they work 20 hours a day in a tannery or whatever, have to wear filthy ankle length trousers instead of your fancy lad breeches. So, yeah, you can. Absolutely. And this is before we even get to military fashion. Look at fashion.

As a sort of, like, locus of class struggle. Absolutely. And actually, the next slide kind of expands on that. We can go ahead and advance.

Liam

We can go ahead and advance.