On January 19, 2015, Italian designer Alessandro Michele debuted his
first collection as the creative director of Gucci — a date that fashion
writer Angelo Flaccavento names the “official birth certificate” for the
“advent of genderless-ness”.1
It was the opening look that sealed the deal: the model Hugo Goldhoorn,
hair like Sharon Tate’s in Valley of the Dolls, in a
lipstick-red silk pussy bow blouse — a garment historically associated
with women in male-dominated spaces. Think trailblazing women entering
the American workforce in the 1960s and ’70s, think British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher, who reportedly wore them to “soften” her
look. As for Goldhoorn’s girl-tie, asserts Flaccavento, “That very item
worked like a Trojan horse on preconceived ideas of masculinity and
ignited a massive commercial phenomenon”.2
Reignited is more like it. While the pussy-bow blouse has paved a path
for today’s genderfluid styles, credit for the blurring of contemporary
masculine identity is due less to Gucci and more to the young men of the
Peacock Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. These youthquakers shook
conservative America to the core with their fashion — known for bright
colors, soft fabrics, and typically feminine details — that reflected
the sexual revolution and their activism against the Establishment and
social and political injustices.
One worthy and equally willowy precursor to the pussy-bow: David
Bowie’s “man’s dress”, as depicted on the cover of his 1971 album,
The Man Who Sold the World.
The image is well-known and often cited: The singer draped on a chaise
covered in iridescent, almost-midnight satin; designed by Michael Fish,
his shin-length dress a silver-gold splashed with blue florals. Two
pairs of knotted buttons resembling traditional Chinese pankous fasten
at his chest, as smooth as, its sheen the same as, the garment’s. Long
gold hair sculpted in waves and curls.
Bowie’s presentation and the use of mise-en-scene on the album cover pack a powerful subversive punch. His pose is that of an odalisque in an Old Master painting — but whose gaze is this game-playing harem girl holding, the King of Diamonds between his fingers? The image of a feminine-looking man in a dress was so shocking at the time that record executives pulled the cover for the United States release of the album, where it was swapped out for a cartoon illustration of John Wayne.3 The young men who wore styles like these were typically seen by the general public as rebellious and nonconformist. But not all of them.
Up for nomination to the canon: David Cassidy and his white lace-up
jumpsuit, for their steamy, dreamy mix of masculine and feminine. Worn
during one of the pop idol’s concerts in 1972, the suit is both fluid
and fitted to the body, with flared bottoms that elongate the legs in
dancerly lines. The sleeves are long, slightly belled at the cuffs,
adorned in fringe from armpit to wrist. Around the waist a sequined
belt, strung with tassels that swung as he moved. The laces criss-cross
from waist to mid-chest with the toppermost one undone, the suit’s
collar extending beyond the shoulders as if they were wings. Like Bowie
on his chaise, Cassidy’s embodied presence breathes meaning into the
ensemble. How would this white lace-up jumpsuit look on a being not as
androgyne?
The prettiest face, a pendant on a braided chain glimmering between the
laces, hair kissing the clavicle.
Although this outfit has been widely documented by fans, photographers
and journalists, it has not been as widely discussed as iconic costumes
worn by his equally famous contemporaries. It has not been declared,
like Bowie’s dress, as a “powerful step forward for androgyny”.4 Cassidy was not named, as Elvis
Presley was, a style icon who changed “how men dressed forever”5 with his white jumpsuits and
effeminate styling. Nor was he cited, as were Bowie and Harry Styles, as
following Elvis’ lead with their nontraditional gender expressions.6
That may be because he was not borrowing from Elvis.
That may be because he was the one going with the flow.
“I Don’t Care If He’s Old, He’s Beautiful! Give Him to Me!”
Whether it was Karen, a 7-year-old fan sharing the above sentiment
with a reporter while waiting to get into Cassidy’s March 1972 concert
at Madison Square Garden, or a young Marc Jacobs who recalled his
childhood crush (“He was hot. That shaggy haircut”) in Harper’s
Bazaar,7 David Cassidy made the whole world
swoon.
And for about two years, he was one of the most popular people on the
planet. Cassidy rocketed to fame as Keith Partridge on the hit TV series
The Partridge Family, at its peak reaching 14 million U.S.
households every Friday night at 8:30.8 The
highest paid solo performer in the world, he received more than 25,000
fan letters a week, and smashed the Rolling Stones’ record for
consecutive shows at Wembley Stadium.9 American youth could buy
everything from a David Cassidy Double Cutaway Guitar — marketed to boys
in Montgomery Ward catalogs for 6.6610 — to David’s choker
“LUV” beads in blue, white, and red at $1 per kit.11
He even showed up as a straw man in Joan Didion’s seminal and
scathing critique on feminism, “The Women’s Movement”, published in
The New York Times on July 30, 1972: “The derogation of
assertiveness as ‘machismo’ has achieved such currency that one imagines
several million women too delicate to deal with a man more overtly
sexual than, say, David Cassidy”.12
Didion references his nonthreatening appearance and dis-embodiment of
traditional heteronormative masculinity — more lithe, less linebacker —
yet this is the basis of Cassidy’s appeal. Fans regularly talk about him
in such decidedly nonmasculine terms as “pretty” and “beautiful”. For a
less subjective analysis, The New York Times reported on his
“emaciated, wistful quality”13 and “androgynous
appeal”,14 and indeed, as reported in
Tiger Beat, his stunt double on the show was a 24-year-old
young woman.15
Though regularly referenced, Cassidy remains largely unexplored through
a critical lens in any area of academic study. An initial search on
JSTOR reveals Cassidy is often cited as a signifier of pop and material
culture and a “teenage heartthrob”,16 though there are also
name-drops that hint at the possibility of juicier analyses. Queer
studies scholar Alexander Doty, for example, in proposing queerness as a
mass culture reception practice, cites Cassidy on a list of stars one
could queerly examine as an “impetus for gays to be more vocal about
their ‘lowbrow’ sexual pleasure”.17
Equally telling are the references to Cassidy not as a performer but an artifact of material culture, via his likeness — his fashionably dressed likeness — on posters and pin-ups on the walls of children’s and teen’s bedrooms in the early 1970s. The thing is, at the time Cassidy was in a better position than, say, Bowie to influence popular culture and style and, as I will show, shake up ideas of traditional gender roles and inspire young Americans. While Bowie is beloved and celebrated today, it’s easy to forget that this was not always the case. In the early 1970s, his presentation and art were considered radical, even off-putting. To be sure, Bowie was playing with gender norms at the time — when asked in an interview why he wasn’t wearing his “girl’s dress” that day, he famously replied, “Oh dear. You must understand that it’s not a woman’s. It’s a man’s dress”18 — but he was still relatively unknown. In comparison: By June 1971, The Man Who Sold the World had sold just 1,395 copies in the United States;19 four months after its release, The Partridge Family’s first single, “I Think I Love You”, was closing in on 3,500,000 in sales. And Cassidy’s audience was broad: during the first season of the show, 38% of the show’s viewers were children, 19% were men and 28% women over the age of 19.20 In today’s parlance, because of his reach and acceptance by mainstream American public, Cassidy had simply earned more opportunities to see. In other words, a lot of Tiger Beat 8-by-10 glossies.
“A Wind-up Version of an Updated Elvis Presley”
The study of the dressed body is relatively new in fashion analysis,
which has historically concentrated on history, the documentation of
material culture, and fashion as a visual rather than corporeal
spectacle. “While the body has always and everywhere to be dressed”,
writes Joanne Entwistle, “there has been a surprising lack of concrete
analysis of the relationship between them”.21
Using Cassidy’s concert-worn white jumpsuit as a case study opens a door
to an analysis between body and dress. There’s no way to ignore the
flaming specter of Elvis Presley who, through the power of celebrity
mythmaking, may very well be at the head of the jumpsuit line in the
public consciousness. It’s hard to divorce Cassidy’s embodied
presentation from the cartoony trope of aging, sideburned masculinity
that eclipsed it, thankyouverymuch. Even Cassidy himself deemed the
outfit “silly” in retrospect.22 But when discussed
through Joanne Entwistle’s framework of dress as an embodied practice —
David Cassidy wearing a particular jumpsuit, at a particular time — the
individual garment regains a deeper meaning and can be read as a
powerful conduit of social change.
“Dress is always located situationally and temporarily”, Entwistle
proposes Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the body as groundwork for
her thinking about dress as embodied practice. To Merleau-Ponty, we
understand the world through the experience of our bodies in space.
“When getting dressed, one orientates oneself/body to the situation”,
writes Entwistle, “acting in particular ways upon the surfaces of the
body in ways that are likely to fit with established norms of that
situation”.23
Entwistle’s framework is particularly useful when applied to Cassidy’s
jumpsuit, because it is associated with a particular date and venue —
the afternoon of Saturday, March 11, 1972, at New York City’s Madison
Square Garden, 31st to 33rd Streets between
Seventh and Eighth Avenues. The garment was worn for a sold-out crowd of
21,000, mainly young girls and their friends who had likely never seen
him — his embodied presence — in the flesh.
Because this jumpsuit was worn and experienced by the wearer and
attendees in a performative nature, certain norms surrounding clothing
and behavior strictly adhered to in daily life would have been relaxed.
For example, a 21-year-old man may very well have been arrested for
directing gestures of a sexual nature toward a minor; all parties have
deemed such actions acceptable, however, when performed in a concert.
Cassidy’s television image of big brother Keith Partridge, combined with
his embodied androgynous presence, likely facilitate easing of the
rules. Indeed, The New York Times described Cassidy as a
“diminutive, extremely mobile young man who moved around… like a wind‐up
version of an updated Elvis Presley, gyrating his pelvis, leaping into
the air in wide‐spreading splits and trying, with all his might, to
project an image of writhing sensuality”.24
As Cassidy noted in the 1973 BBC documentary Weekend at
Wembley, “It is a sexual experience for them all — for me too, you
know. It’s not blatant — it is to a certain extent, but I only,
we only, carry it to a certain extent. If I were to carry it
further, it would be a burlesque show (mimes ripping off shirt). It is a
matter of saying, ‘Okay, there is where we draw the line, kids’”.25
One line was drawn at the collarbone, actually. Photographs taken that
day record the top coming undone as the concert progressed, revealing
most of Cassidy’s bare torso. This is likely due to his continuous
movement — the leaps, splits and gyrations as noted by the
Times reporter or, borrowing Llewellyn Negrin’s description of
the clothing designs of Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo, “a much more
fluid and organic relationship between the fabric and the body, in which
the garment is constantly changing its form in response to the movements
of the body”.26
Now that the jumpsuit has been located in time and space and set in
motion, it can also be looked at through a gendered lens. Using
Entwistle’s discussion of the orientation of men’s and women’s bodies in
work spaces as a jumping-off point, it can be shown that Cassidy’s
embodied presence in his work space represents a subversion of gender
norms.
In the business world where, Entwistle states, “sexuality is deemed
inappropriate” as it distracts from production, the traditional man’s
business suit attempts to de-sexualize the male body. Indeed, the
jacket, trousers, shirt with collar and tie leave only the head, neck
and hands uncovered. “While it does not obliterate the sexuality of the
male body, it works to obscure, blur or reduce it”. In contrast,
Entwistle reiterates many women’s studies theorists’ argument that a
woman’s body, even in a business space and wearing a man’s suit, is
always a sexual body. “In other words, women are still seen as located
in the body, whereas men as seen as transcending it”.27
For David Cassidy, performing at Madison Square Garden in a lace-up
jumpsuit was considered work, the stage his work space; the jumpsuit and
his movements in it constitute labor, for which he was compensated
$50,000. In this case, a man’s sexuality did not distract from
production, but enhanced it, Cassidy’s business attire leaving much of
the upper torso, in addition to the head, neck and hands, uncovered. And
not unintentionally tight and white — features favored by young men at
the time, shares Daniel Delis Hill in Peacock Revolution: American
Masculine Identity and Dress in the Sixties and Seventies, “not
only for the eye-catching brightness of the color, but also because
white accentuated the legs and buttocks”.28
But does the meaning change if Cassidy’s embodied presence is read here
as not [traditionally] male but androgynous? Does the jumpsuit function
to obscure, blur and reduce the male body by emphasizing his epicene
features? Cassidy’s body can also be read as inhabiting the role of a
woman in a business space. Because his labor is physical, because the
products of his labor — singing and dancing — are products of the body,
he is, as is a woman in a business space, always located in the body.
Because he sexualized, even if by tens of thousands of pre-teen girls,
he takes on the role of woman at work.
While one might lean into Erving Goffman, who’d argue that there are
different rules for performing on a stage than there are for working in
an office, nevertheless, the haptic experience of gendered dress plays a
role in both arenas. Cassidy was following — if treading lightly — in
the footsteps of other male stars such as Bowie and Mick Jagger who, per
Delis Hill, “perpetuated the masculinity of sexual exhibitionism”
performing in pants “that displayed their crotch for a female audience
looking up from below stage level”.29
On the opposite end of the spectrum, a discussion of gender and fashion
becomes even more interesting when considering age. Entwistle notes that
fashion’s preoccupation with gender “starts with babies and is played
out through the lifecycle, so that styles of dress at significant
moments are clearly gendered”.30
Some might expect a toddler girl to choose, say, a pink tutu for
dress-up and play. As documented evidence of Cassidy’s influence on
traditional gender norms, what of this photograph of a very young fan
who came dressed for the concert in a white lace-up jumpsuit just like
his? “The fans love David Cassidy”, read the caption accompanying the
photo as captured by The New York Times. “They buy his banners,
copy his hairdo and wear his white suit in the 2-year size”.31
Dress as a phenomenon — perhaps even a happening — allows us to consider all relationships and interconnections associated with the white lace-up jumpsuit worn by David Cassidy while performing at Madison Square Garden on March 11, 1972. This enables us to ask questions about not only Cassidy’s embodied experience of performing in the jumpsuit, but questions about those who witnessed it. How was Cassidy’s embodied experience documented, and how might this embodied experience impact other instances of embodied experiences in similar garments, such as the 2-year-old fan? Consider the web of relation between the jumpsuit and Cassidy, and the relation between the jumpsuit and those who witnessed it, and the relation between the wearer and the witness, both before, during, and after March 11, 1972. As Negrin reiterates, “One’s awareness of one’s body is not just influenced by physiological changes in the body or by physical changes in the environment in which one finds oneself, but also through encounters with others”.32 In thinking more broadly about a particular garment’s universe, about dress as an embodied event, the white lace-up jumpsuit worn by David Cassidy on March 11, 1972, sits on a continuum, on to which chronological data points like these may be placed:
the embodied presence of Cassidy in his jumpsuit at Madison Square Garden on March 11, 1972, versus the embodied presence of Elvis Presley in his jumpsuit at Madison Square Garden on June 10, 1972. What does a white jumpsuit say on a beefish, six-foot, 170-pound, 37-year-old body, and what does it say on a slight, 125-pound, five-foot, seven-inch, 21-year-old one?
audio of the concert as captured by a young fan with a cheap cassette recorder.33 We cannot see David and the jumpsuit, but his embodied presence, and a synchrony between his vocal and kinesthetic performances, are implied. Say, perhaps, he was leaning forward in plié, thighs, knees and jumpsuit legs touching, bending the right elbow and holding the mic in such a way that set in motion the fringe at the cuff?
the physical movements and psychological states of the parents accompanying their daughters to the concert, covering their ears at the “20,000-voice screech of ‘David, David’”34 at first appearance of the embodied presence of Cassidy in the white jumpsuit.
the psychological states of the viewers, for whom the jumpsuit represented Cassidy’s living embodied presence. The young fans respond in state of contrived hysteria when he stepped on stage in it, a phoenix with sequin-spangled wings. “This is the peak”, as Cassidy put it. “After having built it up and seeing me only on television, magazines, radio and so forth, this is it — these are the few moments ‘he’ comes to life”.35
the psychological state of the wearer, who named the concert at which this jumpsuit was worn as the highlight of his career. “It was so emotional for me”, recalled Cassidy, “because my whole family was there. I felt so blessed to have that moment with them and have them see me doing something I knew I could do very well”.36
the final disposition of the white jumpsuit on March 11, 1972. As to avoid discovery by fans, the body wearing it was wrapped in a blanket, carried through the service entrance, deposited into the trunk of a Toyota, and left, “cold, miserable, and exhausted, at a crummy motel out in Queens”.37
An Egalitarian Message, Strung up in Puka Shells
“On adult bodies,” writes dress historian and American Studies
scholar Jo B. Paoletti in Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the
Sexual Revolution, “unisex clothing can accentuate physical
differences, creating a pleasant sexual tension”.38
David Cassidy, in the costumed embodiment of Keith Partridge,
personified this tension every Friday night. By the time he had risen to
fame on The Partridge Family at the end of 1970, unisex
clothing — either intentionally branded as such, or the result of women
wearing men’s styles, and vice versa — was readily available, coinciding
with the fight for gender equality and the sexual revolution that
redefined masculinity and femininity.
Pink bell bottoms. Man-dallions. Chain belts. Scarves. Long-sleeved
ribbed tops with lace edging at the neck. Ponchos. Floral-print shirts
and tight white overalls with rainbow appliques… While he was not the
first to wear these casual, everyday styles that sexualized males and
females, yet still could be read as androgynous, Cassidy lead the charge
to embed them in the collective fashion consciousness — simply by virtue
of his everywhereness. The average American teen would have much more
access to Keith’s casual, hip styles than, say, a custom-made white
sequined jumpsuit, and it’s easy to imagine her — and him — showing up
to school in paisley with a puka shell choker, just like David’s…
And for one lucky fan and reader of SPEC magazine, the chance
to “Win David Cassidy’s Complete Outfit”. “How’d you like for your very
own — to have, to hold, to wear and to show off to your friends — the
exact, beautiful, flowered-calico, buttoned-front, long-sleeved cotton
shirt David is wearing?!” read the advertisement in the October 1972
issue, as shown in figure 6. “And how ’dya like to have for your very
own (and maybe even wear, if they fit you) this pair of David's favorite
denim slacks?!” If the winner had a 28-inch waist, like Cassidy’s?
Golden.
Indeed, Cassidy and his character were cool enough to be influencers.
The Partridge Family likely carried a lot more cache with
socially aware viewers than The Brady Bunch, which it followed
on Friday nights; the former addressed the women’s liberation movement
and protests of unfair working conditions, while dopey plotlines for the
latter centered around Cindy losing her doll or Carol developing
laryngitis.
But you needn’t have been socially aware — or even agreed with those
seeking change — to fall under the influence. Cassidy is known for his
young, pre-teen fanbase, which I believe is unfortunately one reason
he’s not only dismissed, but left out of the gender-bending
conversation. Yet it’s important to note how profound this was. And
equally important to suppose why.
The various movements toward a rethinking of traditional gender roles
and rules — including women’s liberation, gay rights, and the peacock
revolution — began to impact how parents raised their children. For
many, states Paoletti, “this desire for equality resulted in a more
personal, long-term goal: a new generation of men and women raised to be
unrestricted by gender stereotypes”.39
While gender-neutral clothing for toddlers and pre-teens was nothing new
— for one, it was cost-effective as garments had many lives as
hand-me-downs — there were some interesting developments regarding who
was wearing gendered garments. Not only did girls’ fashion copy boys’
styles, Paoletti reports that girls were buying boys’ clothes. “Sears
acknowledged this practice by including size conversion charts in the
boys’ pages”, she writes, and juvenile fashion industry magazine
Earnshaw’s reported in 1978 that “as much as 25 percent of boys
jeans and pants were actually sold to girls”.40
The reverse wasn’t as common, but one manufacturer of girls’ stretch
pants started including images of boys in his marketing communications
when he realized that mothers were purchasing them for their young
sons.
However, not all parents found gendered clothing to be repressive to
children. Per Paoletti, many hung tight to the conservative and
heteronormative, feeling that unisex clothing would “confuse children
and possibly steer them to homosexuality”.41
Everyone seemed to agree that what one wore carried transformative
power.
Quantifying Cassidy’s influence is challenging — should we look at
concert photos of fans, best-guess their age and catalog what they wore?
— but it is known that many of the parents buying clothing for their
kids were familiar with him. And children who saw older teens and adults
in androgynous styles, whether they wore similar clothing or not, would
have “absorbed the egalitarian message of the unisex movement”, writes
Paoletti.42
Cassidy certainly, repeatedly, delivered this message.
Shall We Shag Now?
Man buns. Man ponies. Curly lobs. They’re taken for granted today,
but long hair on men was not always accepted without censure and
repercussions. Yes, Elvis, the Beatles and other musicians had been
inspiring young men to grow and style their hair as symbols of musical
taste and values, and counterculture youth who identified with the
hippie movement grew theirs long as statements of social protest.43 Still, as Delis Hill writes, “From
the mid–1960s well into the 1970s, for a young man in America to simply
grow hair long enough to cover his ear tips and brush the shirt collar
was sufficient for suspension from school”.44
Hill reports there were over 70 cases litigated in state and federal
courts between 1965 and 1978 against school dress codes that prohibited
long hair. While most of these cases were dropped as they went against
freedom of expression, the schools’ arguments ranged from classroom
discipline (“boys with long hair were disruptive because of their
primping and hair flipping”) and criminal activity (“boys with long hair
might try to sneak into girls’ restrooms”) to social order (“short hair
on boys was necessary for the maintenance of social norms”) and
violation of gender norms (“longhaired boys might be confused with
girls”).45
The last two examples offer insight into the profound, yet unexplored influence that Cassidy and his shag haircut had on both male and female youth in the 1970s — a time when long hair was very much considered a female trait.