87. Manufactured Norms: The Lesser-Known History of Fashion with E.K. Powell

 
 
 
 
 
 

A Lesser-Known History

Fashion is part of everyday life.

Whether you love it and follow the latest trends, you’re a minimalist with a capsule wardrobe, or none of the above, we all have to wear clothes. And what we wear is influenced by way more than our personal preferences. History, capital, and even revolutions influence what we think we’re supposed to wear.

E.K. Powell joined India for a live conversation within The Pause on the Play Community about the lesser-known history of fashion, gender norms, and the role of capitalism in what we think are just preferences.

Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:

  • The real history of nail polish and high heels

  • How cultural norms about childhood, gender, and color have evolved under the influence of capitalism

  • The difference between trends set by people and norms created to sell more product

  • How norms of gender and fashion prey on people’s fears

Content Note: This episode includes mentions of gender norms, bullying and hatred.

Many Valid Ways

E.K. Powell is a social media influencer who specializes in talking about African American English. After learning Spanish, he wanted to give something back to the language learning community which helped him tremendously in the process as well as demonstrate to both English learners and native speakers that there are many valid ways to speak English.

Nail Polish and Masculinity

On the Flaunt Your Fire® podcast, E.K. Powell (he/him) says that he was inspired to go down the rabbit hole of fashion and gender by a post from another person on TikTok who asked for help from the men of TikTok to show her son that it was okay to wear nail polish, have long hair, etc.

He painted his nails and recorded a video and got comments from other users about why he shouldn’t be wearing nail polish because it’s not masculine to care about beauty.

“And I’m like, have you seen the men’s health section in any magazine aisle in a store? It’s full of dudes posing and you know, that is beauty. You might not want to call that beauty, but that is beauty. That is one hundred percent the beauty industry. You care about that stuff.”

He says he used to be a “gym bro,” and it was common for men to be covertly checking each other out, or even overtly asking how another man got his legs or arms like that. He also points out that male fitness influencers almost always pose with their shirts off.

“Men care about this stuff regardless of whether or not they want to admit it.”

Those types of comments about his nail polish led E.K. to research when and why people started wearing nail polish, and he discovered that ancient Babylonian warriors would paint their nails black as an intimidation technique.

“It didn’t start with women. Men were doing that stuff…Really all of the stuff gets tied in a huge conversation about male flight and how as soon as a few women start to get into something, men just kind of shove it to the side and leave it alone.”

India notes that many of the critical comments were coming from other men, and a lot of women were complimenting E.K.’s nails.

E.K. says that men “keep on going counter to this because it’s not what you expected, or because you bought into this one idea of masculinity which was something created by men for men.”

Pink is For…

India says that one of the topics that E.K. has researched regarding fashion and gender that she is particularly fascinated by is the history of colors being associated with gender.

E.K. says that he started researching color and gender in response to a commenter, and kept coming across a photo of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a dress. Further reading led him to discovering that historically, children weren’t associated with a strict gender until they were six or seven years old.

“Less than a hundred years ago, any child was put in a dress when they were a kid.”

And it wasn’t until manufactured dyes were widely available that children were dressed in colors. E.K. recalls a poll from a 1927 issue of Time that asked retailers what colors were for boys and what colors were for girls, and it came back with 60% being pink is for boys.

“Blue was considered the feminine, dainty type of color. Pink was considered a more masculine color because of its association with red.”

He continues, “It was literally just a way to sell more product. If you convince the parents that their children aren’t going to be a certain way, aren’t going to live up to a certain ideal unless they have this red dress, then that’s going to make you not want to reuse your daughter’s blue dress…And then that becomes the norm.”

India says that at some point the norms obviously switched that pink is for girls and blue is for boys, “but when I think about modern times, I’m starting to see more men exploring wearing pink,” but some men still have their masculinity called into question for wearing the color.

E.K. recalls working at Express Men in college and the staff deciding that on Fridays they would all wear a pink shirt, “and I remember all the women walking by, they were fine…and the guys would just have such animosity for us. They would walk by and give us dirty looks…It was such disgust and I was like, dude, it’s a color.”

He continues, “It’s just fabric and dye and garments. It’s just random stuff that you would put on to feel good about yourself. Like, who really cares? It doesn’t affect what I’m doing in the world. I’m just expressing myself, being who I want to be. Which everyone should.”

India says she was also excited that E.K. has dug into the history of high heels, particularly as she is someone who has let go of the expectation of wearing heels in order to look professional.

E.K. shares that high heels were first created by Persian mounted archers in order to have more stability in the stirrups when they were on horseback during battle. The fashion spread to other men because owning a horse was a sign of social status.

India adds that a member commented about cowboy boots being an acceptable heel for men.

E.K. agrees and says, “Unless you are putting on cowboy boots specifically to go ride a horse and do the cowboy stuff…it’s just high heels for men. That’s it. You cannot change my mind.”

Trends and Manufactured Norms

India says, “I feel like we’re in a season where maybe people are more open to experimenting with how they dress or how they groom themselves.”

E.K. says that reviewing the history of men’s fashion, “It seems like it almost one hundred percent always comes back to a male flight thing.”

At one point in France, there was a decree from King Louis that only noble men could wear heels, but as the general public, and particularly women, started wearing them, they began to fall out of fashion for men. And during and after the French Revolution, heels went out of fashion entirely because of their association with the nobility.

India gives a more modern example of a man wearing heels and experimenting with fashion in Prince during the eighties, and how “that would not have been considered acceptable in the communities that I was in in the nineties.”

E.K. references a video from YouTuber F.D. Signifier that discussed how there was a wider variety of male expression in the seventies and eighties with men like Prince or disco artists, “where they would be more androgynous and just wear more stuff that like, a little bit more out there, stuff that you wouldn’t normally associate with men wearing today. Especially when it comes to Black men.”

With the rise of hip-hop, “you just did not have that.”

Black male expression narrowed to “we wearing big-ass shirts and sagging jeans and that’s it…And it’s kind of sad because there was so much color and fun happening before then.” 

India points out that the oversized shirts were kind of dress-like.

And E.K. notes that the fashion has now come back around to more fitted styles. 

Trends driven by emulating musicians or other celebrities because they’re cool come and go, but E.K. says it’s interesting to delve into the social norms and trends that are manufactured by capitalism, like pink and blue being gendered.

“[Men] not wearing pink, that had nothing to do with a style choice…that had everything to do with somebody trying to sell women pink stuff.”

Confronting the History

E.K. says that one thing that really surprised him as he was researching the history of men’s fashion was the notion of all children wearing dresses, and that even referring to young kids as girls or boys is a relatively new convention.

“‘Boy’ was a derogatory term. So all boys were called girls or nave girls. Using the term boys to describe male children is relatively new as far as our society and culture goes.”

He says that he has received negative comments about his research, and recalls a commenter in particular who was adamant that “Black people weren’t doing this.” 

E.K. says that he deliberately chose not to include photos of Black children in his posts about children wearing dresses, because he didn’t want to show historical photos from the era of enslavement.

The comments, “are coming from a ridiculous, uneducated spot…but I don’t wanna put that image out there.”

He also ended up researching drag shows after receiving comments accusing drag queens of “twerking on children.”

He was curious about that specific phrasing showing up in multiple comments and discovered that it stemmed from a video taken at an adult-marketed drag show. The show had clear rules about any minors being accompanied by an adult, like for seeing an R-rated movie, but an out of context video made the rounds on conservative Twitter, “and it’s like ‘drag queens are going around twerking on children!’”

“Somebody took their kid to an adult-themed drag show and they saw something that you didn’t think was appropriate. That was the parent’s decision, not yours.”

E.K. says he has run into the same issues of people accusing him of engaging in grooming by reporting the history, or of misconstruing christening garments as dresses. 

“I’m like, dude, I showed you the same dude multiple times in a dress. You only get christened once.”

And he points out that putting boys in dresses for their christening is still a common practice today.

“Preying on parents’ hope for their children has been a tool of advertisers for years [until] we’ve got our current situation with, ‘I don’t want my kid to learn X, Y, Z in school,’ even though it’s the actual history…It’s so many different ways to prey on people’s fear or hope for their kids and it’s just like, stop. Some of this stuff has just come from people wanting to sell a product.”

India adds, “When you really break it down…so much of what we’re discussing goes back to capitalism. Capitalism and power…power and control.”

Remember Who Your Audience Is

E.K. says that his first piece of advice for anyone creating content that may be getting resistance from others is that blocking is self-care.

He says he used to not block anyone, but he started blocking people this year because “it will take away from other stuff that I might want to do,” for example making videos responding to genuine questions from viewers rather than responding to negative or bad-faith comments.

“Remember who your audience is, remember who you’re making videos for, making content for. Remember who you’re putting on high heels and pink dresses for, they’re the important ones, not the people that are gonna give you all the bullshit comments.”

He continues, “People really feel a certain type of way when somebody is unbothered by just living their lives out in the world, because they don’t conform to what they think their standard is. Not even knowing that their entire standard could be based off of somebody, someday, that just had an idea that helped them sell more dresses to kids.”

India adds, “The capitalism is real.” And that she’s noticed gendered norms in jewelry and the way things like diamond stud earrings are crafted and marketed to men versus women, “because now, you can’t share diamond earrings with your partner. He has to have these other kinds.”

E.K. recalls the way that Michael Jordan made it more acceptable for men to wear earrings because of his gold hoop, but that it had to be in the correct ear, and it couldn’t be both, etc. “We gotta find a way to sell people male earrings so that it doesn’t take away from the female earrings so we can make more money.”

Express Yourself

E.K.’s last piece of advice is simply “do what makes you happy.”

“Don’t let anybody shame you into not feeling happy for just being who you are.”

He acknowledges that that isn’t an easy thing. “It’s hard for me to do that every day.”

“But just go out there and express yourself and remember that someone might need to see you express yourself so that they know that they can express themselves.”

Connect With E.K. Powell:

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