Modern societies have an underlying trend that goes in about 20-year cycles regarding gender distinctions in young adulthood, particularly noted in dress. Hints of the coming shift are seen as a new generation comes of age, which is exactly what is happening with the born-2006-and-after generation no one is paying attention to. (They are the gray-suit generational archetype classic to the ’50s.)
It goes like this:
The boomer-like generation eschews sex-based roles and clothing, and de-sexifies gender roles. Men feminize (get in touch with their feelings more) and wear things like tie-dye and Hawaiian print shirts; women masculinize and wear shoulder pads, masculine suits and feminized ties.
The gen-x-like generation neutralizes gender roles and does what it can to not be seen, and when seen to be slick, to have panache, and to have a bit of streetwise smarts about them. Black. Black. Black. That was the ’90s. Don’t look at me. The garçon look for women / the flapper look / the waif of the ’90s.
The millennial-like generation moves toward classic gender roles and clothing — just note how many sharply dressed young men started looking at work some 15 years ago. This generation will move toward classic gender roles more and more as they start to crest into midlife as a generation. There will be other reasons why they desire these classic gender roles; those reasons have yet to manifest but will in the next handful of years.
The after-millennial (born 2006 and after generation) does the APEX distinction in classic gender-defined (think poodle skirts for women and anything accentuating the hourglass shape, think suits, suits, suits for men and anything accentuating the broad shouldered, inverted-triangle look for men. Think of the first few seasons of Mad Men.
It’s there if you look, these trends,
It’s there in history. It’s here now.
We will be moving toward the GRAY SUIT, Organization Man world. Not quite yet. A little early, but society is moving in that direction culturally. Moving away from the GenX do-what-you-need-to-do ethos and toward a more mainstream, conventional, mono-culture millennials seek.
