![]() Instead, he saw himself as the man, and designer, to ‘put sex back where it should be’ countering what he described as ‘the problem of the fig-leaf mentality.’ 5 In an attempt to remedy this mindset, he designed two styles of trousers one with an oval pouch, similar in shape to an athletic support cup in which the genitals sat, and another with a sheath-like pouch protruding from the front into which the penis was placed, with a smaller pouch behind for the wearer’s testicles. Historian Thomas Alan King has noted that the elimination of the codpiece as a fashionable garment ‘did not so much veil the penis as produce the phallus, that sign of privacy vested in the natural group of masculinity and registering a man’s autonomy from any incitement to display.’ 3 Although the codpiece has been obsolete in fashion since its demise five centuries ago, British journalist Rodney Bennett, noting the fashion for closely fitting crotch-hugging trousers in the 1960s, observed that ‘once again, we have a codpiece, albeit a concealed one, to give a fellow self-assurance (should he need it).’ 4 Eldridge Cleaver, however, was not satisfied with concealed codpieces. ![]() In other words, the codpiece was significant as a symbol for social, temporal and territorial power rather than just sexual prowess. His variety of male sexual expression was one where the penis is on display, in a way not seen in Western male fashion since the demise of the codpiece in the fifteenth century, a conspicuous element of clothing that is noteworthy not for its importance as a sexual invitation to women, but rather as an aggressive and eye-catching warning to men. It was a particular form of masculinity and male expression that Cleaver believed had been suppressed through conventional male clothing and through the design of a new style of trousers wanted to ‘free up’. ![]() Men wear their penis either down the right pants leg or the left strapped to the leg.’ 2 ‘We’ve been castrated in clothing’ he told Jet magazine in 1978, ‘My pants open up new vistas. ![]() IN TYPICAL POLEMICAL FASHION, artist Eric Gill stated in his 1937 treatise Trousers and the Most Precious Ornament, that ‘any protuberance by which his sex might be known is carefully and shamefully suppressed It is tucked away and all sideways, dishonoured, neglected, ridiculed and ridiculous – no longer the virile member and man’s most precious ornament.’ 1 A little over four decades later, former Black Panther activist, and newly established fashion designer, Eldridge Cleaver reiterated the sentiment. Eldridge de Paris advertisement from the International Herald Tribune, 1975. ![]()
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