The Flip Side of Bliss

Wearing your clothes inside out.
Why are all the seams inside, constantly rubbing against your skin?
Millennia of oppression – whoever came up with the idea anyway? And why has it endured? – the space-time pervasive idea of social perception – consciousness of the Gaze and how it affects formation of self identity.
Why is it such a basic taboo that you don’t even stop to think about it? Ok, let me backtrack, or pull-out and give you a wide angle shot – a sort of context for my text. Yesterday, while dressing for bed, I put my t-shirt on inside-out by mistake (so what else will happen when you sleep at three?) and damned if it wasn’t more comfortable that way. The sudden absence of constant irritants rubbing against your skin, reminding you of your enslavement to clothing/modesty; no label asserting its presence against your nape, lodged right at the base of your brain/spine, an inescapable steady reminder of uber-successful capitalist policies of property – YOU OWN WHAT YOU CAN CLAIM – we’ve all sat through history in school, we all know that empires, even entire continents flourished on the undeniable truth of that assertion.

Having made this incredible, liberating discovery, I looked around to liberate the unenlightened masses still burdened by the old illusions. Unfortunately, the only one around was my cousin, who just heard me out and said, ‘yeah, of course’ (in that tone she reserves for speaking to slow dimwits who have only just now managed to crawl up to the lip of the fountain of knowledge, where she has been perched all along) ‘you should try it with underwear.’
So, I did.
!!!!!!
I kid you not. What have I been doing all these years. Ok, before making any counter-arguments (ummm, yeah, still assuming faceless, nameless millions read this) go try it out - wear your underwear inside-out for a day. Just one day. And then tell me I'm not right. Not saying I'll believe you then either, but don't even try to say it without testing it out.
Ok, I am not just being carried away by the force of my own rhetoric, I do realize there were originally strong functional reasons to keep the seams inside – less exposure, less wear and tear, possibly also better weather-proofing. But I don’t know how far any of these still hold true: in this our age of easy production, excess and use and discard lifestyles, we’re usually done with our clothes way before they’re through with us. And honestly, an inside-out shirt doesn’t feel any colder to me either.
Next on my agenda, trying my jeans inside out - if I can ever get them that way that is. Damn them skinny jeans, its like the nineties revisited. Not that I'm really complaining, I was always not so secretly an Eighties/ early Nineties child. (remember the Wham! gloves?)