Othello (possible spoilers)

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Kemper wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/37784>:

<< on Main I suggested that DD could be gay a year before DH came out.
So I think my gaydar in literature can pick up a blip from a soliloquy
or a flamboyantly cut suit of plum velvet. >>

And Lee Storm replied in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/37790>:

<< Well, there are a lot of "metro" types who wear flamboyant clothing
and are not homosexual. >>

Before Beau Brummel in the early 19th century, it was at least as
normal for men to dress flamboyantly as for women. Think of a king
wearing a shining golden crown and a bright red velvet robe trimmed
with ermine fur and gold embroidery. It's not exactly a gray business
suit.

For one thing, flamboyant clothing showed off their wealth. Most
people then couldn't afford to dress flamboyantly -- before synthetic
dyes were invented, colorful clothing was very expensive, and in those
days all the cloth was hand-spun and hand-woven. Thinking of the
modern prices of hand-spun and hand-woven cloth, people on a budget
wouldn't want too many features, like dagged sleeves, that use up
cloth just for decoration. 

It also was supposed to attract people's attention. If power is that
people do what you tell them, the first step is to get their attention
so that they notice that you are giving them a command. Attracting a
person's attention is also helpful for seducing that person, as in the
traditional explanation of the lion's main, the peacock's tail, and so
many species of birds where the males have bright colors and the
females are dirt colored.

Brummel got the idea that he could attract people's attention, stand
out against the colorful kaleidoscope crowd of rich people at the
upper class parties  he attended, by dressing entirely in plain black,
simple but perfectly tailored. It was so effective that the other men
started to copy him.

It was in the air around then. IIRC synthetic coal-tar dyes were
invented in the 18th century. Then the French Revolution and Napoleon
swept in a new fashion that was supposed to look like Greek and Roman
statues. Women wore pure white dresses to look like marble statues
(and to demonstrate their wealth by implying how many laundresses they
employed) and got rid of most of their whalebone and steel
undergarments so their draperies would flow rather than being held
rigid. Men wore tight buff-colored breeches to look nude. A first
effort stop being colorful.

That the established rule took hold, of men wearing black and grey,
and indigo in clothes intended for physical labor, while women wear
colors, has something to do with the social order of the Industrial
Revolution. Before the Industrial Revolution, ordinary men and women
were farmers and artisans. They both worked, they worked at home, the
home was a unit of production as well as a unit of consumption. With
the Industrial Revolution, the Victorians came up with this ideology
in which men worked outside the home and got money, while women were
supposed to stay in the home and be too "pure" to deal with money. 

Therefore, men no longer had to try to attract women's attention, no
longer needed to seem handsome or charismatic or physically strong;
they just had to sit there and choose among all the young women trying
desperately to attract a man, any man, as long as he had a job.