Hooray for Male Hosiery

Men's tights by Gerbe 

(the famous French hosiery manufacturer, est. 1895)

 

I. 

 

There are not many advantages to being diagnosed with superficial vein reflux (and associated varicosties) in your leg and then having endovenous surgery to address this. 

 

Indeed, the disadvantages and risks are clear; lumps, bumps, bruises, scarring, pain and discomfort, not to mention possible sensory nerve damage (causing numbness) and the danger of deep vein thrombosis.

 

However, once the layers and layers of mummy-like bandaging and protective gauze are removed 48-hours after the operation, one is afforded the opportunity to parade around in full-length elasticated black stockings and that at least affords a frisson of pleasure. 

 

One can even pretend to be Paul Morel, who famously found it thrilling to pull on a pair of Clara's stockings when alone in her bedroom [1]; or Steve Jones, at the end of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, holding up Malcolm's ten lessons inscribed on tablets of stone, like a punk Moses, whilst wearing black rubber stockings [2].

 

 

 

II.

 

Of course, whilst men wearing stockings is today mostly seen as either comic or kinky, historically this practice was the norm for long periods; from the Middle Ages until the mid-late 16th century men wore hose and proudly displayed their legs (whilst covering their groin with a cod piece).

 

After this date, the fashion was for separate breeches and stockings, but men still loved to show a shapely calf and members of the nobility would wear stockings made of expensive silk or the finest wool (rather than the coarser fabrics worn by the lower classes).

 

Now, sadly, male legs are either hidden under trousers, or bare and exposed in shorts and it is only ballet dancers, super-heroes, and drag queens who get to regularly and openly wear tights [3].

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Chapter XII of D. H. Lawrence's, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 381. 

 

[2] Actually, I have misremembered this scene; Jones wears a black rubber (or PVC) cape with bright red PVC thigh boots; not stockings. See The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, (dir. Julien Temple, 1980).

[3] Thankfully, at least women are increasingly wearing hoisery once more, as the fashion for bare legs wanes and coloured tights are bang on trend for 2023. And there are some who fly the flag for male legwear; see for example the blog Hoisery for Men: click here.     

 

Eric Gill: On Trousers and the Most Precious Ornament

D. H. Lawrence wasn't the only weirdy beardy Englishman writing in the interwar period to be concerned with the question of masculinity and men's fashion, with a particular interest in trousers and the male member.

The artist, typographer, and sexual deviant, Eric Gill, also wrote on the vital role played by clothing within society and that most precious ornament, the penis, and I would like to discuss his thinking on these things as set out in an essay from 1937 which exposes a phallocentric sexual politics that makes Lawrence's look relatively limp in comparison.

Like Lawrence, of whose work he was a passionate admirer, Gill hated commercial and industrial civilisation. For whilst it encouraged women to "flaunt their sexual attractiveness on all occasions" and display the shapeliness of their legs and breasts with pride, it forced men to dress in a manner that suppressed their maleness of body and obscured their animal nature.

The protuberance by which a man's sex might be identified, is, says Gill, carefully and shamefully tucked between his legs and modern men are taught to regard the penis as merely a ridiculous-looking organ of drainage; "no longer the virile member and man's most precious ornament, but the comic member, a thing for girls to giggle about ..."   

The mighty phallus has been deflated and dishonoured. And not just in the West, but wherever machine civilisation has triumphed, with disastrous consequences for both sexes. For in a world in which men lose physical exuberance and assurance, women quickly lose all natural modesty. They start to parade around like shameless prostitutes in a desperate attempt to arouse the half-impotent male.

The only hope, says Gill, lies with those men who still retain something of the Old Adam about them; men who, like Oliver Mellors, despise commerce and industrialism; men who care about more about making love and waging war, than making money; men who refuse to commute to the office on the Tube each day in clothes that restrict their maleness and crush their balls.

For Gill, if modern man is to be emancipated and remasculated, then he must throw off his trousers and refuse to wear "cheap ready-made coats and collars and ties". Instead, he should don a dignified long robe, like an Arab; or a kilt, like a proud Scotsman, sans pants, allowing his penis its natural freedom of movement and chirpiness: I'm out there Jerry and I'm loving every minute of it!

Not - we should note in closing - that Gill wants men to make a spectacle of themselves and expose their nakedness; indeed, the last thing he wants is for men to become sexual exhibitionists flaunting their masculinity like modern women flaunt their femininity by wearing short skirts and make-up. He just wants us all to admit that the question of clothing - like that of the human soul - is of great importance and deserves the most serious consideration ...

Notes 

Those interested in reading Gill's 1937 essay can do so by clicking here. 

The Seinfeld episode in which Kramer discovers the joys of going commando is Season 6 / Episode 4: 'The Chinese Woman'.