Clothing as Myth.

I remember two distinct thoughts about clothing that have occurred to me over the past four years. The first was a quote from Mark Twain that I saw once: "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

The second was a simple wondering I had at one of the InterVarsity conferences I went to during my time as a student at SIUe. I was attending a theological track about Multiethnicity. Near the end of the track, the staff worker in charge said: "You can use this method [of starting with Genesis 1-3] and develop theology on any subject you can think of!" And I asked, humorously, "What about fashion?" He chuckled and said, "Well, maybe not any subject."

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that clothes are actually a fairly important details in the opening chapters of Genesis. Think: Adam and Eve are naked. Then they clothe themselves with fig leaves. Then God clothes them with animal skin. The progression is quite clear and quite interesting.

Today I read a little more of Claude Lévi-Strauss' The Savage Mind, and he was discussing how people in totemic cultures would wear clothing in certain ways at certain times to mean certain things. For instance, people in particular Hawaiian custom would never drape their skirts over their shoulders, because for the Hawaiians "what belongs above should stay above, and what belongs below should stay below" (Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, 144). Or what a boy should wear at his initiation, what a woman should wear at her wedding, what warriors should wear to battle [which is sometimes practical, and sometimes ritual].

But (as I commonly think about "totemic systems"] there is little difference between "totemic" societies and our society. Just over the past two weeks, I have had two separate conversations about clothing and what it means. My supervisor and I talked about what "professional clothing" should be when I go to meet with people who dress a little more professionally [mainly, I lacked khakis]. And then the woman that I am courting shared with me about her views on how dressing "nice" [well, for her, "classy" would be the most appropriate term; she is an elegant woman!] in public makes people more at ease with you.

Clothing has mythological, interpret-able meaning. It is not meaningless. And if clothing is meaningless, it is just another symptom of myth-less society.

If I walk into a room wearing a T-shirt and jeans, I send a message: I'm just here, hanging out, nothing official. If I walk into that same room with a suit and tie, I say: I'm on business, I have something important going on. Just like our actions, clothing speaks.

(Now, it is of vital importance that this is shown to be a neutral matter. It can be good or bad. People can find their identity in clothing, rather than in Christ, and it is wholly unhealthy and sinful to do so. People can use clothing as a method of vanity or pride. Likewise, the lack thereof, in opposition to what Mark Twain said, does not devalue a person. At least, it shouldn't.)

Clothing is myth. It is a symbol that we interpret immediately when we see it. It has so much meaning that comes with it. When you watch a movie, for example I just watched The Illusionist, you can immediately discern certain things by the clothing of certain characters. In The Illusionist, from the first scene, you know that you are in 1800s Vienna. The moment you see Prince Leopold, you know that he's important -- he's dressed importantly. The moment you see Eisenheim the Illusionist, you know that he's professional -- he holds himself that way. If all of the characters were in T-shirts and jeans, something wouldn't register right. The era would be wrong. The characters would be wrong.

I mentioned above that if clothing is meaningless, it is another symptom of a myth-less society. When Joseph Campbell was alive, he bemoaned the lack of a real, living American mythology, and he wrote his works (in particular, The Hero with a Thousand Faces) in response to a myth-less culture. As our cultural norms have grown more and more lax on clothing -- what is and isn't modest, whether modesty is a value at all, what women wear, what men wear, what is "in", what is not, why in the world did people wear those sweaters in the 90's?, &c. -- our systems of communication that were built on clothing begin to sense distortion.

However, the lack of a clothing-myth in America is simply a symptom of our overall lack of a cultural mythological narrative. There are so many individual narratives that there is little to no national, cultural understanding. And no wonder we are so divided! If I have my own cultural narrative, and my neighbor has his own, and his neighbor's is wholly different from both, then how will we have any communication? I remember in an IVP book I read once called Deepchurch how members from the Traditional end of Christianity tried dialogue with members of the Emergent Church, and how they struggled to understand one another because of language.

The lack of cohesive overarching cultural narrative leads to mythological misunderstandings. And clothing fits this bill very well. There are still some things we understand: that person's a lawyer, that person's a doctor, that person's a youth pastor [honestly, they all dress the same! -- down to the tattooes on the forearms!]. But some of our general understandings of one another are confused.

I'm not saying this as a "call to traditional clothing." Heavens, no. Nor am I saying that modern clothing is abhorrent. (Albeit, some of it is.) But what I am hoping to illuminate here is that clothing is not meaningless, and it is actually a vital part of human communication. The woman that I am courting told me that she dresses nice so that other people will be comfortable around her, that way she has an avenue to share the Gospel with them. Its funny, but I said something similar to a staff friend of mine during my training back in July -- and he wore a Beatles shirt on a day we evangelized a pot-smoker.

Clothing is Myth. It tells us something, and it speaks to us. And it would be well for us not to be unaware of what we say to people without even knowing. Of course, let's not be religious about it. But, like everything else in the Christian walk, let us be "as innocent as doves and as shrewd as serpents." Clothing speaks, and what we wear can say something to whoever we meet.