Gazelle identity Crisis

You might be able to tell from the header image… and background image… and those photos I put on Fet-Life, that I like wearing a suit. I’ve never really bothered to articulate why I do, until very recently.

Exhibit Unadorned recently posted an interesting piece giving his take on the matter (I look and feel fucking sexy in a suit so nerr nerr… I may be paraphrasing but, go read his article yourself, in fact you should be reading  his blog in general, he uses much better words than me). I agree with most of what he says and, if something works for you, even if it’s a too-tight Chuck Norris vest and a pair of blue speedos, then work it baby!

What spawned EU’s, and indeed, this, article is a pair of tweets from the ever-cheery Dom Signs (btw the scars are healing nicely).

“Men that wear suits are so very seldom at the top of the food chain… it is the people who dress like they have only £10 in their pockets…to me a suit is a sign of submission to the corporate world”

Wait but… hold on a second.

First up let me point out that Signs quite rightly prefaces his latter comment with “to me…” so let me offer a counterpoint by explaining what a suit is to me, and why I like wearing one. This isn’t an advocation for everyone else to wear one (frankly it’s too much competition, I like standing an outside chance of being best dressed pervert in a room), but rather an attempt to articulate some of the less obvious aspects of wearing a suit.

I’m not the top of the food chain, nor do I want to be. I’m not an apex predator, I’m a scavenger, an outsider. The hyena slinking into view as the lions collapse into a flatulent heap, the feral cat that’ll rip Mr Nibs’ ear off if he shoves his way into my territory. Or at least I like to think I am. In reality I’m probably a gazelle going through an existential crisis.

Anyway. To me a suit isn’t s declaration of being the most powerful person, a suit is camouflage. I used to wear a suit for work and, when attending events in the evening, it was always easier to just go as-is. A suit is a garment that attracts pretty little attention anywhere it goes. It’s unlikely to be frowned upon and, in some circumstances, will back up your desperate pleas that you’re an honest good person really and this is all just a terrible coincidence… but I digress.

What a suit also is, is menacing. not in a “I’m the most important person rah rah rah” way, but something subtler, more insidious.

A suit comes with two things, a belt and a tie. It only takes a small additional notch at the wrong end of the belt and suddenly you have there, on your person, all day every day, everything you need to knock together an improvised gag, wrist restraint, hog tie etc. Most people don’t usually think about that, but once the seed of that idea is planted… it can be a lot of fun.

The other thing is this: Think about the most stressful experiences in your life. I bet a good portion of those will be, on some level, meetings with people. Bank Managers, prospective employers, lawyers, plain-clothes police officers, all of whom wear suits. A suit isn’t a display of alpha male dominance, but it does trade of a certain amount of alienation and fear.

For a lot of people the greatest fear they’ve felt in their life has been someone in a suit.