Privilege Blog

Why Would Anyone Wear This, Or, Saturday Morning at 6:21am

Why on earth would anyone wear this?

I don’t know. My excuse is that last weekend I attended my 44th Class Reunion at Princeton, and absurd costumes are part of our tradition. Behold the glorious details.

Another question. Why would anyone go to a gathering of 35,000+ people in the trailing days of a global pandemic? I don’t know. I went because for the past couple of years I’ve worked with members of our class on programmed Zoom events, and I wanted to finally meet my colleagues-become-friends in person.

Besides, my son was there. Here are a few of his classmates in their 10th Reunion costumes.

I am gleeful that the shirts register as pink. For all the reasons you might imagine.

I’m messing with you. I think I do know the “why” of these costumes, this event.

People create identities for a sense of self, and people want, no, need to belong to groups. Costumes support both identity and belonging.

Externalities, as we know from the first blanket we wrap ’round our shoulders to play Superman, reflect and then augment internalities in one giant thrumming circle. We all want to feel comfort in who we are. I feel good about myself when I say “I went to Princeton.” A balm to my insecurities. I feel validated when I wear the same costume as hundreds of others.

Which brings us, and I think I should apologize for the structure of this post but I’m not sure, to the question of guns in America. The facts are clear. America’s gun policies cause more of us to die here of gunshot than in any country like us. It’s also clear that many people choose to subvert those facts. It’s not that they can’t know. It’s that they don’t want to know.

This makes me rend my garments in mourning. Life is so short. Selfhood so ephemeral. Why do we dishonor the gift of time on earth by willfully believing garbage? Because we form worldviews, early, to make sense of childhood. We have to be children before we are people, and children make stuff up. Those early worldviews orient us, and we stick with them. They appear to save us. Sometimes we’re destroyed.

I think many Americans want to identify with and belong to a “gun culture” writ large. These constructs answer questions they found unsolvable when they were tiny, either questions about personal internal mysteries, or about the painful acts of their family and friends. And some people are willing to ignore everything to keep that answer in place.

Maybe nobody’s out to get you. Maybe you’ve already broken what you’re trying to protect.

The time comes when a new fact may crack our worldviews. This might be hard. This will be hard. But don’t we owe to life itself a willingness to change our minds? To be humbled and admit mistakes? Words can be interpreted; a constitution isn’t physics.

Question identity. Question community. Expand both. We are foolish. We are happy. We are sad. We are angry. Belong to humans, not as symbols.

Incoherently yours, Lisa

P.S. Have a good weekend. Maybe I’ll change my mind about something.

17 Responses

  1. Beautiful outfit… beautiful post… beautiful person who wrote it. Someday I would love to meet you in person, my on-line friend… xo

  2. You don’t have to sell a loud, campy ensemble to me – I live for this stuff! And you’re pulling it off in a way that makes it look super high end and desirable! Those sandals are the most comfy Birkis ever. Have a pair sitting in the locker room here at work as I write this.

    K

    1. Kristin, if you think I’m pulling it off I will question no more:). Had to wear the Birkenstocks to rep California;)

  3. Such a beautiful and thoughtful post, Lisa. I wish the heavy thoughts that weigh on your mind weighed on the minds of more people. Belonging is such a visceral human need and can be positive. But it’s also the one exploited for profit by social media’s isolating nature and “pull-down-menu” politics, as well as certain news outlets’ steady spoon-fed diet of opinion and outrage to please their sponsors. Profit will never take a back seat, and neither will its generators’ need for belonging — consumers, investors and executives alike.

    My own father is a member of the “gun culture,” and there’s no way to even reach across that divide anymore. We can only talk about the most neutral of topics: pets and such, since I don’t have children. So that’s what there is now, due to me wanting to maintain a relationship with my family. I’ve lost enough people to know that they are what’s important, not anyone’s opinions. Opinions can change in light of new evidence — or they used to. I got rid of all my social media in 2016, and I know for certain that I couldn’t maintain those relationships if I had to read their innermost thoughts.

    “Maybe you’ve already broken what you’re trying to protect.” Truly powerful words.

    Have you read any of Eric Hoffer’s works? “The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.” It gets worse in times of trouble and economic hardship — and when the clinging to ideological groups both results from and contributes to the trouble and hardship, how do we break out of the terrible cycle?

    I feel a little incoherent as well. You, in contrast, sound clear and brilliant.

    I hope you and your son both had a fantastic time at your reunions! Silly costumes are the best kind — they allow us to relax and take ourselves less seriously for a little while.

    Have a lovely weekend, and thank you for the lovely post. <3

    1. Jess, thank you so much for this eloquent and intelligent comment. I am so sorry about your dad, and I wholly understand wanting to maintain a relationship with your family. I haven’t read Eric Hoffer but that quotation resonates. And exactly, yes, silly costumes make it hard to keep up a polished front, which can be all to the good.

  4. I am going to own my reunion in two weeks, but not really expecting anything more that a blue and white baseball cap with a Y on it. How do they handle the sizing issues? My class wanted to do clothing but the alumni association turned it down because they said it was too hard to fit people.

    As for you other topic–it’s going to take a long time, and may be never, for some people to accept that their pleasures rely on the suffering and death of others.

    1. Oh, lord, Joanna, that last sentence packs a punch.

      We deal with the sizing by economies of scale and class dues. So many people come that we can afford to offer several sizes. So, XXL, L, S, essentially. And many women in oversized shirts;) Part of surrendering to the festivities. Also, one year we offered a tank for women, and they could just wear the camp shirt over the tank.

  5. Oh Lisa,
    An education from Princeton must be something so coveted. I think there is no higher gift. The gun issue is completely out of control. I hope you had a good time with your crazy outfit.

    Luci

    1. Thank you, Luci. I had a time that stayed just on the good side of the chaos/adventure border. Which was kind of what I needed!

  6. I am a proud Australian whose country banned automatic weapons after a mass shooting over 20 years ago. Our Prime Minister John Howard stood shoulder to shoulder with the grieving and traumatised and had the courage to act on what needed to be done to protect our nation for the future. Was it uncomfortable? yes. Were people (excuse the pun) ‘up in arms’ yes. Fortunately, our forefathers had not written a constitution that declared we had the right to bear arms, so we didn’t have to change our nation’s legal structural scaffolding, which does make it tough for your country, esp as the gun lobby make so much money and use it to put leaders in power and keep them there. Money is what gets you into politics in your country – should I keep digging or stop now – you all already know the system is cracked and broken. I am proud that we live in a safe society, and although Mr Howard may not have been the most popular man to ever have led our Country, he left us with a life-saving legacy, and for that, I thank him. I hope and pray for you all that Biden will have the courage and determination to push this through.

    1. TJ, you all did the right thing. Maybe Howard had a real gift not to seek popularity, that served you all in good stead. I think here it’s going to take a profound will of the people.

  7. My husband’s 50th Harvard reunion is next week. Over 170 members of his class have passed and that made us pause. In our remaining years, we face our own health challenges (not to mention COVID), climate change, international conflict, economic disruption and inequality, a polarized populace and continuing gun violence. Guns are the largest cause of death for our children and adolescents in this country. We can and must do better.

  8. You look great and I love the reunion idea and the gathering and the costumes. We all need to feel a part of something, sometimes that is a group, and this from a person who has always been comfortable on the fringes of groups. But I am proud of my own Vassar degree, and would have also been had I gone to Princeton. Oddly my father and uncle, who were Princetonians, refused to allow their daughter to apply and I was not yet independently determined enough. Well, Vassar settled that too, and my brothers were not interested in Princeton. That generation’s loss, and I am happy with my path.

    As to the rest of it, the question of who suffers and pays for our pleasures and our success is something that I think must be addressed, and yet may never be addressed. I am currently reading Heather Cox Richardson’s “How the South won the Civil War”, and although I don’t have a final judgement on the book as a whole yet, she is making me think about how this whole American idea of rugged individualism that led to “gun culture” was developed and shaped, often to the detriment of many, including those who fell under its spell, and the profits of a few, which might include my own ancestors. And what hope I can glean from all of this.

    Is it possible to both despair and have hope? I cling to that, and to the groups that stand for thoughtful humanity and the idea of “right”.

    1. We need concurrent despair and hope to be possible. American rugged individualism served its purpose, for better and worse. The question is why it prevails now that it causes more harm than good? My aunt went to Vassar, and remains one of the most intelligent and competent people I know, in her late 80s.

  9. My husband’s 50th reunion Harvard is this week as well. Curious who the other reader is who’s going to the reunion?? Hope you had fun at yours.

    As for the gun culture – so complicated, and so devastating. We (on this side) know what needs to be done, the facts are so clear, yet……? I’m feeling hopeless about it right now.

    1. Hopeless and one foot in front of the other anyway is my motto. But I think despair is warranted.

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