Sunday, March 23, 2008 Sun.Star Essay: Pants-ness of life By Erma M. Cuizon
IN trying to clarify, during her political campaign, the role of husband Bill in her administration if she wins the US presidency, Hillary Clinton jokingly said during an interview with David Letterman on television, “In my White House, we will know who wears the pantsuits.”
In Manila (which isn’t the Philippines), the Opposition, who’s convinced that the FG is making a scam, would say they know who wears the pants. This, even if Gloria Arroyo goes around in pantsuits, like Hillary does while campaigning. But the administration would also ask if Cory ever wore the pants in her time, or others did (and her kamag-anak).
If you stop thinking of politics, you’d find many other topics to talk about, like pants.
News on the predictable rush of people going home in buses, trains, boats and planes for the Holy Week before Palm Sunday seven days ago was taken up, as forever, by media. This is the usual picture you expect to see year after year.
I saw an interesting aspect of the crowds that we take for granted---people packed in restless lines, crowding each other in transport terminals----men and women all wearing pants!
The next time you go to PLDT to pay, take note of the rows of chairs facing the cashier’s booth. There are about 30 waiting chairs, not the lounging sofas, in that side of the room. I went to pay my PLDT bill this month and saw only one woman wearing a skirt, three women in shorts, some older men in short loose pants that cover the knees, everyone else wearing pants.
So you could ask about the pants-ness of life these days. There are trousers, slacks, breeches, leggings, pantaloons, jeans for both men and women. But the Wikipedia describes pants as---"a garment worn by men," probably referring to the time when women weren’t supposed to wear anything else but skirts.
But the guys in Western countries didn’t wear pants hundreds of years earlier, only until the 16th Century. And the fashion of pants for men and women became popular, then out of mode, then in, through the years. The Scots in some places haven’t changed the fashion, not where the men wore the Scottish kilt, or in Greece where robes or cassocks and tunics were worn by men during certain ceremonies. Catholic priests formally say Mass in tunics or cassocks, the garment flowing much lower below the knees.
For the women, it was only in the 20th Century that they started to wear trousers with something close to society’s consent. But hundreds of years earlier, in places where women worked outdoors, they already wore pants, although, as put aptly, “suitably altered.” Women in ranches who helped in the farms rode horses and wore pants. Women coal mine workers also wore trousers, to the consternation of the proper Victorian ladies.
It was particularly during World War II that the pants for women became fully acceptable in America when the men left home for the war in some parts of the world. Then there were less and less men to work in factories, especially the factories that manufactured materials needed in the war, like uniforms, blankets, even ammunitions. The women took their place and wore pants.
In Britain during the war, there was lack of clothing in some places so that women wore their husband’s civilian clothes (while the guys were away at war somewhere in the globe). Besides, they could use the ration money not on clothes but on food.
The Filipina took after the pants-ness of American women, although perhaps much, much later. I remember a time in the Sixties when there were some stories about an isolated parish or two discouraging women from attending mass in pants (even as there were rules in school against wearing sleeveless blouses during no-uniform days, like on Friday).
In the Genesis, it’s said that Adam and Eve “sewed together fig leaves” for aprons. But God instead sewed for the couple garments made of animal skin, to check their nakedness.
Adam and Eve’s descendants wore pants and pantsuits.
