- me: "the clothes make the man" is one of those idioms, quite like "more than meets the eye", that feels like it's a quote from Hamlet. I think it should be just considered one, whether it is or not; our history and our future are flexible enough to allow for this
- you just read it and you know! that's why hamlet said "If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all" — if you read it and it's hamlet, then its read-iness is enough!
- also me: wait,
Let us then borrow back to shakespeare, and Polonius' overlong instructions to his son, the foil Laertes, before the latter departs on his journey to France from prisonous Denmark where we lay our scene. The elder elephant advisor has this for our present precedent:
Hamlet is so full of these - just two lines later we get neither a borrower nor a lender be (for loan oft loses both itself and friend), and two lines past that the eternal to thine own self be true (and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.) It's a testament to Polonius' doddering that he can so frankly provide wisdom through the ages amidst a comic monologue. But the moral stands: you get what you pay for; but spend that thing you pay on commensurate quality over o'ercompensated show, as your payment will be meted in one or the other. And apparel? You know it ofts proclaims the man.
And yet — I have promised that we give the line new meaning. Which is to say that no matter how many years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt, there is a delight in the continuity and presence of a different kind of performance. There is a joy in making a man; as Julian Jarboe would say, in the style of making wheat into bread or fruit into wine. A joy in the deliberation and care, a joy in the precision and the breadth of possible expression, a joy in the communication of an idea. That the idea of gender is an incomplete one lessens this communication not one whit; for the romantic era, we embrace imperfection and communicate the imperfect. Let's actually return to Hamlet for this moment, as Claudius makes a claim about our fêted, fated Prince:
And what a template for a prince of gender is that? Claudius gets Hamlet's pronouns correct and everything, and if his remark of wow hamlet sure has changed, I don't even recognize him anymore is crude, we can recognize that his secondary audience is the audience, who did not know Hamlet before the play began.
In this same way - do not be afraid of transformation! Of course, sublimation into the costume of capital is itself a constant compromise — but mastery of its guise can make even an apprentice into something like a man. It's the journey, after all, that counts!