More and more of the young men I know in New York are carrying pocket handkerchiefs.
My father was amused to hear about this trend and inquired whether these same men had also taken to making shows of crying in public just as fashionable gentlemen did in the nineteenth century. I had to say that no, they had not. Yet he made me realize that the growing popularity of the handkerchief does have overtones of Romanticism.
The reason handkerchiefs have come back into style is fairly obvious: They’re just one of the many foppish accoutrements that men have adopted as part of the Anglophile dandy look that’s having such a major comeback. But unlike the other popular accessories, such as hats, pocket squares, and custom-made shoes, the handkerchief has changed not just aesthetics but behavior.
Traditionally, men sniffle through colds and allergies and drip through sweaty summers. These bodily discomforts are seen as unavoidable, since no manly man would be seen carrying around a packet of tissues in his pocket or fanning himself with a piece of paper. Men in our society aren’t supposed to be fussing over themselves in that way. But now that handkerchiefs have become mainstream accessories, men are not just carrying them but using them, to blow their noses and wipe their brows. And while this rediscovered habit is a far cry from weeping at the opera, it is similar in that it’s a public acknowledgment of men’s sensitivity—just in a physical, rather than emotional, sense.
There’s a long-term trend towards the genders becoming more alike, and the readoption of the handkerchief is a sign that one symptom of the continuing feminization of men will be their increasing willingness to be seen indulging in the kind of self-care—even pampering—that has long been the exclusive prerogative of women. Axe body spray, for instance, while a pitiful version of the cornucopia of fruitily-scented products with which women shower themselves daily, is nonetheless an example of a product that would have been considered effeminate a few years ago but which is nonetheless quite ordinary today. It will be interesting to see what new ways marketers find to capitalize on men’s increasing interest in exploring and enjoying sensory pleasure.
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3 comments:
My own switch to handkerchiefs was inspired less by the English dandy than by (at least what I perceived to be) a kind of Southern gentleman. And maybe I'm just being defensive (no real reason, I guess, why I shouldn't like being told I'm becoming more feminine), but my tendency is to think of all this as different kind of masculinity -- the influence, essentially, of a different culture (I'm from the North). Odysseus, after all, wept openly, and as I recall he took a few fancy oil baths (administered, admittedly, by sexy teenage girls)...my point being that using a handkerchief makes you a contemporary übermensch who could kill an army of men singlehandedly. Right? Guys?
Also, I'm a racist.
Don't forget that a manly man might show a bit of class and choose the right moment to come to the rescue and hand a clean and crisply folded handkerchief to a woman who needs it.
nancy: That's absolutely right! Chivalry never completely died, and it's an especially good behavioral complement to the gentlemanly fashions. A really prepared manly-man would carry TWO handkerchiefs: one for himself and one for potential damsels in distress. That level of consideration is one of the hallmarks of the real old-school masculinity alexander refers to above.
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