Raccoon Suit

[jere7my]

K.'s other-sweetie Chris tells a story about Oberlin. Some young women were sunbathing topless in front of the library, because Oberlin is the sort of place where young people sometimes get it into their heads to demonstrate a political point by being naked, and construction workers on a nearby scaffolding were watching them. One of them sat up and shook her fists at the men, shouting, "Don't you look at us! Don't you look at us!"

Walking around campus, I see a lot of cute young women in skimpy or clingy clothing, and whereas in Ann Arbor such women were clearly putting themselves on display I more frequently get a "Don't you look at me!" vibe from Obies. Which leads me to once again explain my Raccoon Suit Theory of Sexual Dress:

I have every right to wear a raccoon suit when I go out. There's nothing wrong with it; if I enjoy dressing like Ranger Rick, and if it keeps me decent and warm, nobody else can tell me not to wear it. But I should expect that I'll get stared at, and pointed at, and probably snickered at; that comes with the territory when you're doing something ostentatious or unusual. It would be nice if I lived in a world where I could dress as a furry animal without drawing attention, but over the last twenty years it's become pretty clear that I can't.

I feel the same way about skimpy clothing. By all means, wear as little as you want—but if you're wearing something that stands out, I will notice, and I expect other people will as well. There's nothing wrong with either side of that equation, in my eyes. I don't wear raccoon suits, but I do have long hair and dress a little oddly and sometimes wear an Amish-boy hat, and in our society that means I have to deal with drawing attention sometimes; cute braless girls in scoop-neck tops sitting on the floor of the video store (for instance) should learn to deal as well.

If the attention crosses a line—if people touch me, or harass me, or otherwise interfere with my business, which has certainly happened [1]—my furry raccoon tail will positively bristle with indignation. But if I'm wearing something weird, I gotta expect people will give me a glance. I really don't understand why this is true of every kind of unusual clothing except skimpy clothing on cute girls.

Nice guy that I am, I'm probably oversensitive about unintentional harassment and unwanted attention. I hate the feeling that I'm making someone uncomfortable, and I've modified my ogling here in Oberlin to reflect this new vibe; nobody's slapped me or gotten up and walked away or even frowned at me, so I doubt it's really much of an issue. Still, I think about it.

[1] For instance, I was coming home late at night from Halloween at my theater, wearing my cloak and floppy Leonardo hat, and two big drunk college kids blocked my path, leaned into my face, and insulted me for a few minutes with their beer-flavored breath. They seemed to think I (I!) was Goth, and kept saying, "That cloak doesn't make you cool!" I walked on, neglecting to draw the rather large and pointy sword I happened to have at my hip beneath the cloak.

Comments

[god-of-belac.livejournal.com]

The line between one's right to act and one's right to not be acted upon is ever vague, and it's all too common that people try to have it both ways. Bitter experience has taught me that wanting to go around topless and not be stared at is far from the most extreme definition of personal space out there.

I hope those cute girls sitting on the floor of the video store are able to deal. It would be a good precedent.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

> K.'s other-sweetie Chris tells a story about Oberlin. Some young women were sunbathing topless in front of the library, because Oberlin is the sort of place where young people sometimes get it into their heads to demonstrate a political point by being naked, and construction workers on a nearby scaffolding were watching them. One of them sat up and shook her fists at the men, shouting, "Don't you look at us! Don't you look at us!"

Maybe because I am myself a young woman who occasionally wears slight clothing, I will be a little more forceful in my rhetoric: that's so FUCKING STUPID it doesn't even deserved to be approached as delicately as you did with your raccoon suit, sir.

Being-examined is just part of life when one lives within a visually-oriented, social species. It's totally fucked-in-the-head to declare that since you have draped (or denuded) yourself with what you perceive as politically- or personally-significant visual tropes, therefore other people may not privately or socially focus their gazes upon you. It's reasonable to desire that they have the basic social etiquette-awareness not to make you uncomfortable by inconsiderately projecting their hitherto-private perception of you in such a way that you cannot avoid it, e.g. not shouting lascivious remarks or mocking you to your face. It's reasonable to expect that they not take your strangeness as a sign you are not human but rather an object or animal without rights or dignity, e.g. not loping over to touch your exposed breast. It's totally ass-backwards to intentionally take on a visual state such as nudity for the reason that it is provocative, and then become furious when people are privately provoked.

::yawns:: ::sneezes::

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Maybe because I am myself a young woman who occasionally wears slight clothing, I will be a little more forceful in my rhetoric: that's so FUCKING STUPID it doesn't even deserved to be approached as delicately as you did with your raccoon suit, sir.

I knew there was a reason I liked you. Eminently sensible, you are. (Of course, you have now left yourself wide open for ogling. Won't have a rhetorical leg to stand on, you won't.)

(Gezundheit.)

[miraling.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm pretty much going to agree with you on this one. It's a matter of invasiveness -- what you do with your eyes is your business just as what I do with my clothing is my business. Comments from strangers are simultaneously irritating and flattering; innapropriate touching is just that.

Compared to mainstream society, I look downright odd all the time. I have purple hair. I have facial piercings and more ear piercings than you could shake a stick at. People stare. That's expected. People start up conversations with me about my appearance. I attempt to remain polite and informative and the conversations are welcome if those talking to me seem to be keeping an open mind. If not, I still hope that I can impress people in some small way that I am at least a polite human being.

Those girls were trying to pick a fight.

[(Anonymous)]

I hardly ever wear a raccoon suit anymore, but I am well familiar with having people shout things at me because of my clothes (although I still don't know why some Harvard Square person shouted 'Gallagher' at the top of his lungs whenever he saw me: I don't dress like Gallagher, nor do we have a similar hairstyle, nor do I carry around a large wooden mallet and a melon. But I digress). I do tend to feel awkward at even the most positive comments. 'Nice hat', someone will say, and I will get flustered and say 'um, thanks, I, uh, like it myself.' I'm not sure who I'm dressing for these days; I have allowed myself to stop thinking about how people read my outfits, since I've become such a recluse.

From the other angle, I 'figured out' in high school that the women who dressed like they wanted to be ogled did in fact want to be ogled but not by me. I'm just in the room (or the park) where she is hoping somebody she really wants to ogle her may be. If I'm discreet, she won't even remember I'm there. This may or may not be true, but it works as a model of the universe for keeping me unslapped and ungrumpy.

Another problem (mine, not the world's) is that my pavlovian responses were set in around 1983, when backless shirts still had some cloth covering some portion of the back, when miniskirts showed the knee and a bit of thigh, rather than the thigh and a bit above, and when women wore trousers around their waists. Their waists. I didn't see a hipbone until I was eighteen, dagnab it. And underwear was still considered private; a shirt that let the bra show was grounds for being sent home from school (or given a three-record deal). And tight? The hoo-hah about 'tight jeans' seems victorian, now. So my definition of skimp covers just about everything worn in the summer by just about anybody under the age of twenty-five. Don't get me wrong. I'm happy as a pig in mud. But a college sophomore might well think of herself as a moderate dresser and still set off my own bug-eye. I try to keep it in mind.

,
-Vardibidian (http://www.kith.org/vardibidian/journal/).

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

GALLAGHER!

[god-of-belac.livejournal.com]

With regard to our brand of odd clothing (Renaissance stuff):

I went out today dressed in Renaissance style (high fringed boots, poofy pants, doublet, sword belt (sans sword, as the cops would not appreciate it), and feathered hat. The people on the 1 train asked if I was one of the 3 Musketeers. The people at the mall I went to asked if I was Jack Sparrow, or sometimes Peter Pan. The people on the 3 train coming back asked me if I was Robin Hood.

That's an amusing decline in both coolness and accuracy.