Every Man Has The Right To Wear The Shirt Of His Own Choosing

I have earned the right to wear the shirt that has become a badge of the survivors. Yes, the survivors. We who have spent decades assailed by advertisers, salespeople, friends, lovers, and even members of our own family to dress respectably, especially in public.

For every suit, shirt, tie and polo that hung in my closet and then on my back at the insistence of a woman, be it my mom, any of my sisters, or any of the women that have graced my life, I now have a replacement.

That replacement, of course, is the shirt that has become the universally recognized symbol of emancipation for men all over the world.

I am writing, of course, of the Aloha shirt, more commonly known as the Hawaiian shirt, and it's many variations.

These colorful, fanciful, and fun shirts were first produced and sold in Hawaii in the 1930's, and like many things Polynesian, made their way to the states with the servicemen returning home after WWII.

The Hawaiian shirt was always popular where I grew up, Southern California, but not necessarily in the neighborhood where I lived in Southeast San Diego. No, there was a different look going on there.

Few people know this, but Hawaiian shirts are responsible for the tradition of casual Friday - seriously, look it up. 

Now it has come to represent freedom for men who have lived rich, full lives of constant struggle against neckties and their non-stop strangulation, against regimented workplace uniformity, against restrained, understated, muted, dull-as-dreck conformity. 

For awhile in the mid-2000's it looked as if the Hawaiian shirt was losing ground to the bowling shirt, but that fad proved as temporary as Charlie Sheen's sobriety. The Hawaiian shirt is back on top, where it belongs.

The Hawaiian shirt - proudly shouting "Screw you, I'm old enough not to give a damn about how bad you think I look."

Of course, my wardrobe is not limited to Hawaiian shirts - I have a few Guayabera shirts for special occasions  and of course the 50 or so T-shirts that proclaim my love for a particular thirty-years-out-of-date recording artist, pop culture artifact, or beverage.