This week the Platypuses received a reminder about just how significant uniforms are in our culture. Last Monday there was Boy Scouts. Plenty of uniforms there.
ON Tuesday it was a different youth service organization... again in uniforms. Wednesday was a suit and tie (the corporate uniform) for a Chamber of commerce meeting. BY Friday there was fast food place where the staff were all attired in uniforms. Today a pro football game was on TV. More uniforms!
Why not trade these uniforms for the uniform of the human race once in a while: your bare skin! Go naked. Feel what it is to be human. Feel great too. And it doesn' t have to cost you any money.
This uniform is free.
Society's uniforms are their indicators of their place in society...their status. Many people have no idea WHO the person in the mirror is without their trappings of their WHAT they are. They feel empty, devoid of meaning, without whatever it is that makes them feel good about themselves. They are most comfortable, neatly-packaged, in a tidy little box...a uniform. That is the result of systematic dehumanization - de-person-alization that begins at birth, and continues for all of a person's life. The first words out of someone's mouth when a baby is born are either "It's a boy" or "It's a girl"...with the emphasis on "It's", as if the baby is a "thing". What if we started out with "He's a boy" or "She's a girl"? From then on, that baby's gender...their person-hood, is designated by gender-specific clothes in gender-specific colors.
ReplyDeleteThe first item of clothing a baby receives is a diaper, because they might have an "accident", as if normal and natural bodily-functions are "accidents". As a baby gets more and more "used" to being dressed, being undressed feels less and less "normal". They naturally become textiles for life.
The vast majority of people are dressed from birth to death...inclusive, and we, who have successfully made the transition to a clothes-free lifestyle, wonder what is so difficult about shedding ones clothes and just living in their birthday-suits. What is natural to us is totally-unnatural to them.