'Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men's Dress in the Twentieth Century (Dress, Body, Culture)

Product Information

After controversy over the sanitized carol swirled in the media and on the internet, Hallmark amended its response: “We never intend to offend or make political statements with our products and in hindsight, we realize we shouldn't have changed the lyrics on the ornament. Hallmark—“when you care enough to send the very best”—has caused a stir by taking the “gay” out of Christmas.

But the fact that gay has been embraced in recent years both by the gay community and by English speakers in general as a positive, non-taboo synonym for homosexual makes it even more likely for the word’s other primary sense, ‘bright, festive,’ to fall into disuse. Shaun Cole is Course Leader for MA History and Culture of Fashion and MA Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK. Many American schools have mounted campaigns to get students to abandon this slang usage because it can be offensive (there are similar campaigns against the slang use of retarded, not to mention lame, used in a similarly negative and potentially offensive sense). When Oliphant wrote “don we now our gay apparel” he surely meant something like ‘brightly colored, festive’ clothing. And have you ever met anyone who really wanted a bowl of "figgy pudding," much less demanded it be brought to them or they won't stop singing?But apparently it’s more acceptable today to refer explicitly to drunkenness in a carol often sung by children than it is to risk implying homosexuality. Do you take control of your class like an experienced educator or do you, in an attempt to curb the outbursts, change the lyrics of a 150 year old song and replace the word "gay" with "bright"? The Pennsylvania version from 1877 omits the third "Fa la la" line (which corresponds to the instrumental flourish in the Welsh original). This would have been a great time to teach kids that "gay" isn't a bad word, that it shouldn't be used as a derogatory term, or at least throw a synonym lesson in there.

Personalized advertising may be considered a “sale” or “sharing” of information under California and other state privacy laws, and you may have a right to opt out.By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. The original “Deck the Hall,” a Welsh air with words by Thomas Oliphant, was published in 1862 as a song for New Year’s Eve. Can y Coach faier - Ethnographic wax cylinders - World and traditional music | British Library - Sounds".

If you’d like to file an allegation of infringement, you’ll need to follow the process described in our Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy. Machine wash: warm (max 40C or 105F); Non-chlorine: bleach as needed; Tumble dry: medium heat; Do not iron; Do not dryclean. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Hegemonic masculinity is a whole subject in itself, entertainingly and learnedly discussed in Shaun Cole"s perfectly titled Don We Now Our Gay Apparel, which shows in fascinating detail how "clothing has been a primary method of identification for and of gay men. You can help by participating in our "I Support" program, allowing us to keep offering readers access to our incisive coverage of local news, food and culture with no paywalls.

Traditionally, this word was used to indicated that someone is cheery, merry, jolly, or light-hearted. Turning off the personalized advertising setting won’t stop you from seeing Etsy ads, but it may make the ads you see less relevant or more repetitive.The company insisted that, since “gay” today means something different from what it meant in the nineteenth century, that “could leave our intent open to misinterpretation.