The color of alien pants
On June 4, Peggy Kolm posted her article Red hills of distant planets. Prior to that date, one title proposed for the article was “The color of alien plants”. During a discussion about the article, the proposed title was misheard as “The color of alien pants“. And the idea for this article was born.
Really, what color would alien pants be? And for that matter, would they wear them at all? This isn’t to suggest that all aliens are exhibitionists: maybe they just don’t need clothing.
Human use of clothing dates back (most likely) between 100,000 and 500,000 years. Its main purpose (initially) was protection against environmental threats; as humans evolved and lost natural physical protections like body hair, we needed extra help surviving harsh weather and difficult terrain. Clothing has evolved along with us, growing more sophisticated as we have: sewing needles date back as far as 30,000 years; flax fibers are known to have existed 30,000 years ago; and there’s strong evidence that humans have been weaving for a good 10,000 years or more.
But the use of clothing developed out of a natural need. The ape family, our closest biological relatives, didn’t develop the use of clothing – but then, apes still have relatively tougher bodies with protective hair covering them.
Evolution happens because of adaptation to environmental changes. Clothing was a sort of evolution – just not one that physically changed our bodies. But it was due to environmental factors.
So why would we assume that an alien species would encounter the same environmental factors that we have? Or that their evolutionary response would be the same?
It’s completely plausible that, depending on the climate they encounter, an alien race could evolve sentience and human-level intelligence without losing their body hair (assuming they had hair to begin with). They could adapt tougher skin to protect from harsh weather. They could even develop internal genitalia that doesn’t need as much surface protection as human genitalia does. In those cases, the need for extra protection is dramatically lessened, and therefore the need for clothing. If clothing isn’t necessary, it’s entirely possible that it never develops.
Of course, while clothing developed as a form of protection for us, it currently exists for many more reasons. The development of our intelligence brought about the concepts of shame, privacy, and modesty, leading to clothing-as-concealment. There are countless cultural meanings for clothing: status symbol, group affiliation, rank within armed forces, representation of traditional heritage, and so on. All of these meanings serve a purpose, and those purposes are just as likely to be existent in alien cultures as in our own; so alien use of clothing could develop for those reasons. Or… it might not.
And what about color? We place a lot of emphasis, for various reasons, of the color of clothing – again, there are countless cultural influences. Will aliens perceive color with anything close to the same significance we do? And we know it’s possible for animals and even humans to be color-blind – will aliens be able to see color at all? Will they even have eyes?
The biggest problem we have in determining what to expect from aliens with regard to clothes is that we can’t help but anthropomorphize. We have a habit of assuming that, whatever an alien might be, it will in essence be a slightly “off” version of ourselves. Of course, with the vast diversity of life just on our own planet, making such assumptions about extra-terrestrial life is a mistake. And we’ll look pretty foolish offering a pair of jeans to an alien that has four legs and a tail.
Actually, only male genitalia are vulnerable… loss of body hair combined with venturing beyond an even, clement climate zone was a likelier motive. Regarding body hair, one controversial hypothesis that has been neither disproved nor fully explored is Elaine Morgan’s aquatic ape theory; it posits that humans took briefly to water when they first became bipedal, and that helped stabilize our bipedality. Some tantalizing specifics do support it — for example, the unique (among apes) human affinity for water, our high relative level of body fat, our long head hair.
Although you mentioned three of the major cultural reasons for clothing (modesty, status, group identification), it is also true that humans use clothing for decoration. Some colors (yellow, red) were also used to demarcate Others — “polluting” occupations (tanners, prostitutes), religions, etc. In most times and places, you could tell who someone was at a glance by their clothes. It was the basis for many ballad and story plots — and is still so now, in RPG games and much of fantasy; the major device, of course, is cross-dressing, which blurs the most fundamental boundary (and was/is often punishable by death).
In terms of alien clothing, I think that the decoration motive will be there even if all other parameters differ; they will also need them for carrying implements. In one of Anderson’s stories, humans realize that what they thought was just a large flying animal is actually a sapient (his famous Ythrians) because s/he is wearing a prominent, decorated belt bulging with tools.
As to what aliens will perceive as pleasing, or at all, that will certainly differ depending on both biology and culture. This is true among human societies, to say nothing of what goes on in the senses/minds of cats, octopuses and whales!
Well, I did say “…and so on.” If I’d tried to list all the reasons that humans wear clothes I’d never have finished the article!
I wish I’d had the time to look at crossdressing in this context, though it could certainly be an article all on its own. The very concept of crossdressing is reliant on the dominant gender binary in our society, and it’s fascinating that we’ve chosen to assign certain clothing as only “appropriate” for one gender. How would this be looked on by aliens that are asexual, or have less rigidly defined genders? As Jaym pointed out in her recent article (http://bit.ly/9SzAW2), gender in nature is far more flexible than we allow it to be for us. An alien species with three genders that are more fluid than fixed might be very confused by the concept of “female-only” or “male-only” clothing. They may even consider it barbaric and repressive.
True, the list is long. But considering that humans have often worn uncomfortable or restrictive clothing and accessories, the decoration/status aspect has to be close to the top of that list.
Cross-dressing is a very long, fraught and interesting topic indeed.
I for one would like to see more ‘cross-dressing’. In the real world and in fiction, but also across more than gender lines. I love to see kids dressing up like the elderly, for example, and people wearing flipflops and shorts in the snow (the memory of that Alaskan frisbee game will be with me for life).
And what about ritual clothing? This was touched on, but it’d be interesting to speculate about what would happen if all political and rligious figures went about in casual clothes. The Pajama Revolution!
Choice of clothing, body paint, and other adornment is so closely tied to status, tribal affiliation and gender that I think it’s potentially a source of major misunderstanding if and when we do encounter intelligent aliens.
If it’s not us who are misunderstanding the aliens, it’s the aliens who will be misunderstanding us.
I read an interesting story years ago about a human tailor who ended up with the first alien ambassador to Earth as a client. His task was to create an outfit that sent the right message when meeting with humans for the first time. A difficult task!
That sounds like a great story. Do you remember the title/author?
The idea of tiny clues/cues being the key to communication is a well-used and excellent theme in SF. I remember an episode of Star Trek: TNG in which Picard had to learn to recite a phrase in an alien language, and the slightest mistake in his intonation could be considered an act of war. That was more a matter of rigid protocol, but the concept is the same. Even between human cultures, wearing the wrong thing can be considered a gross insult or a mark of disrespect. I can only imagine the potential for controversy between cultures whose clothing is completely different shapes because the two peoples don’t even have the same limbs.
liked this post!
Personally, I’d probably put modesty nearer the top of the list, at least of the initial evolutionary reasons for developing clothing. I remember reading something several years ago about how alpha-males in chimp societies would attack any lower-ranking males who showed signs of sexual arousal. So when these low-ranked males developed erections they would try to hide the fact, usually covering it with their hands. So it’s not difficult to see this developing into a habit of covering certain anatomical bits as a matter of course.