Aaronvitch is cynical of government attempts to change the culture of drinking.
To back his case, he points out to some historical attempts to decree fashion:
Consider the announcement in 1574 by Elizabeth I of her Statutes of Apparel, telling free-born Englishpersons what they could not wear. The statutes laid down limitations on the fineries to be donned by subjects, and were - or so Her Majesty claimed - motivated by a concern that now sounds wholly modern. Viz, “the wasting and undoing of a great number of young gentlemen and others seeking by show of apparel to be esteemed as gentlemen, who, allured by the vain show of those things... run into such debts and shifts as they cannot live out of danger of laws without attempting unlawful acts”.I don't think I was aware of the Elizabethan fashion laws. Still, if I were benevolent dictator, I would be tempted to have another crack at it.Elizabeth had the advantage that she could imprison anyone so much as questioning these laws, let alone breaking them. But not long afterwards we discover various proto-Mailites suggesting that antisocial dressiness had broken out again. Stephen Gosson lamented that hardly had Good Queen Bess “set downe the limits of apparel to euery degree: and how soone againe hath the pride of our harts over-flowen the chanel?” Huge ruffs bothered Philip Stubbes, who, in his The Anatomie of Abuses considered that: “If Aeolus with his blasts, or Neptune with his stormes chaunce to hit uppon the crafie bark of their brused ruffes, then they goe flip flap in the winde, like rags flying abroad, and lye upon their shoulders like the dishcloute of a slut.”
No comments:
Post a Comment