Every now and then someone asks me to explain the term "Summer Twat" which occasionally finds its way into these opinions.......Well, there is no real explanation. It is an entirely subjective pejorative I invented years ago in a fit of outrage. The cause was the appearance on some brain-dead yoyos of stupid three quarter kecks/cargo pants/combat trousers and their necessary fashion accessories, exposed male hairy legs, bald heads and nose/ear piercings. The only worse accessory is shaved male legs and faces coated with fake sun tan. It is the biggest assault on good taste since Jeremy Clarkson, Andrew Neill, Nick Robinson and Kelvin McKenzie were employed by the BBC. Nor is it limited to men: There are Summer Twatettes too, though generally they are much shapelier than the male version. But of course there are many different types, and if you are going to carry on this admirable moral crusade against dysfunction you should make yourself aware of them.
In truth there is little completely new under the modish sun. In this case the beginnings can be found in the eighteenth century. And being an Englishman I naturally relish an opportunity to blame the French, specifically les sans culottes. No, I am not going to provide more descriptive text, you will have to do your own research; however, the picture hereunder illustrates the start of the trousered disaster.
Traditional Summer Twat, way-back-when.
Afterwards, it took almost half a century for male trouser length to get to a sensible ankle level, which is where it stayed until the advent of Thatcher's Wretched Children, incoherent Punk Rock and a devastating loss of personal pride in a previously solid working class. Dress sense, as always, reflected the new generation's frustrated attitudes. Thus, gradual birth of the new sans culottes. Half cut jeans inevitably turned into - don't laugh - "designer wear" and then morphed into a sort of bastard offshoot of military combat trousers and the kitsch of earlier Bermuda shorts. Interestingly, during his first US visit in the 1960s John Lennon took one look at the original shorts and commented, "What an ugly race," an unguarded and ill advised observation that found its way into his FBI file and the paranoid xenophobia of J. Edgar Hoover. All over a pair of horrible kecks. Lennon was right - if only he could see what it all evolved into. By then Californian and Australian beach bums had also begun development of their own line in trousered ugliness, but it wouldn't really get under way until the late 1970s.
When the worst of the 1980s took hold it slipped in naturally with the useless and untalented scream of despair that was Punk Rock. They were perfectly complementary. Reasonable taste has receded with kecks length ever since. It's a kind of down market, distant couture version of how the Nazis subverted German culture. These days you can see it from Valparaiso to Seattle to Reykjavik to Edinburgh to Moscow to Beijing to Jakarta to Sydney, especially Sydney, and all points back again.
The most recent design version comprises a melange of side pockets, zips and string toggles at knee/calf height. These may be arranged in any number, preferably asymmetrically or even torn. It is obligatory for the pockets to be filled with bric-a-brac and the toggles to dangle uselessly. Footwear is usually a pair of disgusting black ankle socks inside a pair of equally disgusting dirty white trainers. Above the waist, and possibly the coup de grace, is a black or dark coloured tee shirt with shoulders covered in dandruff, all of it topped off with a beanie hat or a threadbare baseball cap. It all adds to the received ugliness, which is very important.
Summer Twat Standard Issue Kecks.
The British naturally evolved their own version of the unleashed beast, especially amongst Thatcher's new peons where money was as short as the kecks. Eventually the middle classes and Europeans followed, as they always do, and even tried to steal it and make it modish. It was of course a disaster because sheer hideousness of the concept was its main motivation, just as it was with Teddy Boy wear of the 1950s. Summer Twattery fitted in neatly with a comical pair of sparrow/fat legs. Superficially the notion is acceptable only if the wearer has a decent set of calves. But why should that matter if you are setting out to punish anybody who takes the trouble to glance at you? Or, for that matter, punish yourself. In the end this uniform means you have learned to love Big Brother. You have surrendered your pride and lost your individuality to the slogan, "I want to be different like everyone else."
Generation X Brit Summer Twat.
A La Mode Summer Twats.
American left, Français centre, Deutsche right.
Antipodean/Californian Summer Twat.
Ultimate Globe-Hopping Summer Twat.
Summer Twatette.
Summer Twattery.
Usually I will give the benefit of the doubt to anybody, but No, I will never learn to accept this assault on my good nature. I would rather walk cherubim style through the Antarctic for six months while balancing an egg on my forehead, or slide down a mile long razor blade and use my balls as a brake. Summer Twats are a branch of evolution that should be hurried to early extinction, preferably with the help of a firing squad and a tightly-sewn mine field. They are the epitome of capitalism, a product of Thatcherism, of Rupert Murdoch, of the Sun and Daily Mail and the sick pantomime of Cool Britannia. They are the representatives of the Military/Industrial Complex Eisenhower warned us about. They are employees of the transnational banking scam that currently attempts to steal the lives of you and your family. They are a soap opera that makes Coronation Street look like Principia Mathematica or The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Just say No, people. You know it makes sense. And this has fuck all to do with our lousy season.
