Jonalysis

Bono, the lead vocalist of U2:

You put on the leather pants and the pants start telling you what to do.

(Source: paulhewson.com)

The Shakespeare Theatre Company is currently performing “Romeo and Juliet” in Washington. Aubrey Deeker wears black leather pants while playing Mercutio. Finn Wittrock wears a blue leather jacket while playing Romeo.

It is by no means a new idea to costume members of the cast of “Romeo and Juliet” in leather. It seems that costume designers are especially prone to choose leather pants when costuming Romeo and Mercutio. Dominic Comperatore, Tony Petrello, Andrew Bevis, Che Ayende, Guy Roberts, Karl Kenzler, Marcel Meyer, Sean Fredricks and Adrian Dart are among the many Romeos and Mercutios that have donned leather strides.

Is there something in the roles of Romeo and Mercutio that make the costume designers think of leather? Or is Romeo and Juliet just so popular a play that no matter what article of clothing one thinks of, Romeo or Mercutio has already been costumed in it in some production?

Somebody claimed the other day that as one gets older, one gets more selective with regard to men. Perhaps that is true in some respects, but it is not true for me as far as the looks of men are concerned. The older I get, the more often I find something sexy in many kinds of men.

One of the biggest changes of heart has been my attitude towards facial hair. As a teenager, I found all facial hair unattractive. However, something changed, because in my late twenties I was already dating a man with a goatee and a moustache. Today, I find my boyfriend’s chin strip only adorable.

I am not an unqualified fan of facial hair by any account. I still dislike a full beard, for example, and a moustache without hair on the chin makes my skin crawl. However, I must admit that there are men who look more handsome with a bit of hair on their chins.

Henry Cavill seems to know this: it is difficult to find a recent photograph of him without some kind of stubble. Not that I’d necessarily want to. Cavill plays Charles Brandon in The Tudors. The third season of the series is being produced and it will be aired in 2009.

My eyes rarely linger on advertisements about men’s suits. Recent print advertisements by Hugo Boss were an exception. In them, a man sits indoors wearing a gray suit. And black leather gloves.

Why is he wearing leather gloves indoors? I suppose this kind of puzzlement is exactly what the advertiser wanted to arouse. It would have been easy to ignore an advertisement portraying just a man sitting indoors wearing a gray suit.

Some fetishists get turned on especially by leather gloves. My fetishism for leather is a more multi-faceted one but I do understand the appeal of closely-fitting leather gloves. The act of putting on leather gloves is nice dresstease entertainment.

Because leather gloves are so ubiquitous, leather gloves are often the first leather item that a budding leather fetishist gets acquainted with more closely. As a young boy, I played with a pair of old motorcycle gloves not understanding what exactly was it in them that fascinated me so much.

More often than not, I enjoy tactile pleasures through my hands. I enjoy a man in leather usually by caressing his leathers. In the case of leather gloves, the roles are reversed: I do not touch leather, it touches me. In a sense, leather gloves are perhaps the most “active” of all leather garments. (What would be the most “passive” garment? A muir cap, perhaps? At least I do not know anybody who is in the habit of butting men with a muir cap.)

The blog “Above and Beyond the Cliché” contains an entertaining post about lifestyles and imitation leather pants. Here is an excerpt:

But let me tell you, the gap between real leather pants and imitation leather pants on the coolness scale is an astounding fabric knockoff phenomena. One set beckons a ride of the backs of hot, fervent Harley’s and (most importantly) hot, fervent men, while the other favors screaming I’m broke, and Mama wouldn’t help me pay for the real thing! Which, really, is just about as un-cool as it gets.

I don’t care that much whether the material resembling leather is leather or just imitates leather as long as I like what the material looks like and feels like. A couple of times I have encountered imitation leather that I have really liked. Countless are the times that I have encountered leather that has not excited me.

Bickering about authenticity is useless in many contexts. Many people use much time and energy to announce the world what kind of a man they consider “a real man”, “a real leather man” or “a real master”, for example. I snap my fingers at such discussion. It’s a question of preferences, not authenticity. As long as I like the man, I couldn’t care less about whether somebody considers him real or not. And if I do not like the man, I won’t call him “not real”. Instead, I call myself blinkered.