ajkandy’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Yup, the left are humorless and thin-skinned..

  ....or at least, that's the way the popular image would have it. And of course there's a grain of truth in that.

  Remember that great SNL parody game show sketch from the 80s..."Make Joan Baez Laugh?" (Or as recently as last night, SNL's celebrity-roast sendup of the overserious Sean Penn?)

  Is your identity so tied up with "being a rebel, man," that you've become as equally fusty, reactionary, and humorless as the college dons of yesteryear? Then read on...

  Getting progressive views out there, getting progressive views accepted, into the mainstream, and more importantly, getting progressive candidates elected and policies enacted -- requires careful, calculated (but honest) perception management.

  Carina's point above is completely valid -- once you outgrow your early-20s identity crisis and no longer feel the need to shock people, it doesn't mean you blend in and shut up, but you find more effective means to get your point across.

  Of course, if you're out on a Zodiac hounding ships dumping waste at sea, no one cares if you're wearing Gap khakis.

  But if you're working for a public-interest research group, meeting with government committees and citizens alike, appearing on television news, even marching in a protest, you will be listened to more, and trusted, and make a better impression, if you look like the audience you are trying to reach -- the undecided, the unconvinced, middle-class and working-class.

  If your group needs to make a case before city council, you're free to come in looking like the cast of A Mighty Wind, but realize in advance that you're going to polarize your audience before you say a single word!

  Dress quietly and carry a big joke. Demolish your opposition with well-chosen bon mots. Rent those Margaret Cho DVDs. Make progressive values fun and glamourous, something to be emulated. And remember - If Tim Robbins -- as progressive as mainstream hollywood gets -- can laugh at his own image, well, then so can we, and then those stereotypes no longer have any power. On Yes, clothes really do make the activist posted 4 years, 8 months ago 24 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Don't forget Kyan....

  Great piece. I would add that not only does dressing "neutral" help you get your point across, It helps you avoid media stereotyping.

  Mainstream media inevitably pick people with dreads, do-rags and Birkenstocks as the all-too-visible "face" of the green movement (in crowds, protests, person-on-street interviews etc.), and then contrast them with cornucopians and neo-cons in suits.

  The green "uniform" of anti-fashion - and it IS a uniform, let's not kid ourselves that it's not a case of "let's all be different together" -  has already been associated in the public mind with soap-dodging hippies, and more recently with violence at WTO protests, etc.  

  To use George Lakoff's terms, the wearers of that style of dress have now been "framed" by their opponents. The average person is going to respond to them with suspicion at best, and hostility at worst.

  Dressing "neutrally" doesn't mean selling out. Like it or not, we DO live in a particular culture, in a particular place and time, and it has a "mainstream" mode of dress for certain social arenas. One wouldn't wear a Paul Smith suit into the mud at Glastonbury, and neither should one wear a tube top in church, as the Etiquette Grrls have noted.

  I'll go one further and add another level: grooming counts. I know, I know, hair is political. But politics means power, too - you have to tame your mane if you want to take the reins.

  To start, one word: conditioner.

  Guys, ponytails belong on horses and Steven Seagal. Combovers are NOT an option. Shave it if you can't behave it!

  Ladies, the pre-Raphaelite, hair-to-the-waist look just drags one down. In 2005, the power flip with a bit of volume says Everywoman, thank Oprah!

  On a serious note, there are some wonderful, green hair products made by Druide -- some of the few on the market not to contain sodium lauryl sulfates. (http://www.druide.ca/catalog/default.php?cPath=23&language=en) - it's all we use. On Yes, clothes really do make the activist posted 4 years, 8 months ago 24 Responses