Excerpts from
On The All American Man by Sarah Clyne Sundberg:
At the moment, the yearnings of the fashion-conscious male New Yorker (because this is very much about manliness) are directed at bygone days of American glory. The era of industrialisation, hard physical labour and adventures in the great outdoors. These men aspire to a rustic, almost childisly masculine, ideal.
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As with most subcultures, this may be more about image than action. Dreams of hunting and mechanized industry are often left at that. The codes of dress, on the other hand, are very real. Rolled-up selvedge jeans, tweed jackets and high-top leather boots.
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...these men dream of an age when clothes and consumer good from the US were the finest in the world.
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The Protestant work ethic has always been central to the American self-image. The fact that most products sold in the US today were manufactured in Asia or Central America gnaws at the American soul. ... Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, once symbols of American industrial might, are now part of what is termed the "rust belt".
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I think the desire for quality American-made goods shows a way that our country has gone wrong in the past ten years. That maybe if we get back to being the kind of country that makes things and works hard, that is known for being workers, not just spenders, that would be a good thing, says Emil Corsillo, one half of Hickoree's Hard Goods.
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Factories may have closed and fewer Americans than ever before can trace their roots to any of the founding myths: cowboys, farmers, railroad workers. The fact is that these figures have always been largely mythical. Thomas Jefferson's agrarian republic of yeoman farmers was never a reality. Despite this, Americans have been nostalgic for a self-sustaining agrarian society since the days of the American Revolution. Perhaps these urban men, who use the internet to write of their longing for a simpler time, would not be true Americans if they didn't dream.
List of blogs mentioned in the article:
The Pursuit Aesthetic
The Art of Manliness
A Contionuous Lean
Drinkin' and Donin'