This past Saturday began as most my Saturdays begin, with a
five mile run around Wascana Lake. But
later on in the morning, taking my fat little pencil to Market, I felt a little
bit different. I felt different because
it was my birthday!
All palmy Saturday I could not stop reminding me that I’m a
long ways from my world debut in a birthday suit. Now I have threads! I’ve fifteen black
shirts long-sleeved with collars, eleven white shirts long-sleeved with
collars, five pairs of blue jeans for work, four pairs of blue jeans for
busking, three pairs of boots, one cowboy, one working, one hiking, and two
pairs of sandals.
Research has confirmed that the raiment in which we wrap ourselves, our garment our apparel our attire, actually primes our brain to function
and operate accordingly. In a line, we
become what we wear.
In the 90’s Barbara Fredrickson found that women who were
given math tests performed worse when wearing a swimsuit rather than a sweater.
Research suggests that a person’s mental
agility improves when wearing a white coat.
Adam Galinsky referred to this phenomenon as Enclothed Cognition. Galinsky found that when research participants
wore a medical doctor’s coat, their mental capacities sharpened; whereas, their
performance was not significantly altered when they thought they were wearing a
painter’s coat.
Professor Karen Pine had students don Superman t-shirts. And when they did, Professor Pine noted that
their self-impressions had been boosted, and they actually thought themselves
stronger than those in the control groups.
Pine was convinced that clothing can change minds. In her latest book, Mind What You Wear: The Psychology of Fashion, she
describes the link between women’s moods and their choice of clothes. Women are more likely to wear jeans when
feeling low. Clothing can reinforce
negative moods – when we are stressed our world narrows and we dress simpler.
And I remember simpler.
My earliest memory of being in costume was, at six years of
age, wearing a coonskin Davy Crockett hat and a leather-fringed Davy Crockett
jacket.
At seven years of age a friend, Randy Corbin, wore pink
pants to school. Within a week, there were several of us wearing our new pink
pants to school.
As an early adolescent my grandma allowed me the luxury one
pair of pants and two shirts per week to wear to school. We did not have indoor plumbing at the time.
And I can remember one September, driving into Swift Current
and buying several new shirts and jeans and two dickeys, one black and one
white. Dickeys were the rage in 1966.
At one time in our town (Vanguard, Saskatchewan), all the
guys had BRYLCREEM hair, madras shirts, blue laminate jackets, tight jeans with
a rat tail comb in the back pocket, and pointed leather shoes.
Then, by the time I had graduated from high school, grease was out and the dry
look was in – no more BRYLCREEM. And my girlfriend had bought for me in the latest of fashion, three Alpaca sweaters, an Ebony, an Ivory, and a Midnight Blue.
My university garb was always a Canadian tuxedo, t-shirt and
jeans, and hiking boots, except when I did my teaching practicum. During this four month internship, I sold my
International half-ton truck, and bought some sports jackets and dress pants to
teach alongside my mentors. (I’ll mention that immediately following this
period, I was hired as a high school English teacher, then ditched the dress
shirts and dress pants, and reverted back to t-shirts and jeans and hiking
boots, but kept wrapped in the sports jackets.)
The notion of Enclothed
Cognition demonstrates the importance of symbolic association of garments
as being the mechanism for altered cognitions.
Clothes change the way we think and feel. I feel much different when dressed up for teaching
at the university than when dressed down for busking.
Whilst standing in front of a university class, my attire cap-a-pie,
is hatless, with either a black or white dress shirt, a sports jacket overtop, jeans
for pants and brown-polished dress shoes for wheels.
Whilst guitar busking, I often wear a Brixton hat, a tight white
t-shirt, worn-out faded blue jeans, and polished-black work boots.
My new gig, sketching pencil portraits, I cover my noggin
with a black and white checked bowler, my shirt is always white, long-sleeved,
and with a collar. And I wear grey cargo
short pants and brown leather sandals.
Enclothed Cognition
works for me. If I want to feel happier
and more confident --- I wear the right clothes. The garb I choose does make a
difference. My raiment doth have that
ability to advert my attention to the things I am doing. My attire is akin to
an Aesopian fable, conveying innocence to an outsider, but a hidden meaning to
me. As a busker, I never want to present
my image as being a clochard or cadger.
With my guitar I like to present windswept and breezy; while with pencil
I like to present a bit more polish.
My CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week has got
to begin with the voluptuous cowgirl who pulled up alongside me in her black
Dodge Ram as I was guitar busking at VALUE VILLAGE.
“Do you know any Janis Joplin?” she asked.
As I thrummed one out, twisting in her knee-high cowboy
boots, she gyrated and grinded against me in her tight satin blouse and
skin-tight jeans, while singing her unique version of Me and Bobby McGee. I must confess I was mildly aroused … I mean amused (Freudian slip)!
And I must include some pictures of some of my consumers and
their portraitures at the FARMERS’ MARKET:
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| WYATT BUCKLEY |
 |
| AUDREY |
 |
| NICOLE |
 |
| JULIA |
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| SMURF |
From birthday suit to swaddling clothes to work-a-day duds ...
Last Saturday at the MARKET was
just another day in my costume party life! In fact, by midnight, with my brand new leather barbeque gloves, I had transmogrified from busker to boxer!
 |
| THE BOXER |
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