I had no idea cuff links are considered pretentious and a model for wealth and power. Just decided to google after reading this thread and that's what came up in forums. what's next? if you wear an earring on your right ear you're totally straight, but on the left you're totally gay? who makes up these rules grrr.
I wear whatever socks that my wife buys or my kids buy me. Im not an executive. Some are striped and some different colors. Im pretty sure no one is staring at my feet or what I wear at work. Who cares anyway? Favorite are my Olajuwons.
I've heard that businessmen wear crazy socks to remind them each day of the need to think creatively and to be innovative in unexpected ways.
My favorite socks are asymmetric and otherwise bland, but on the left sock, they've been stitched to look like I have a calf-band holding a knife. I wear these to meetings sometimes. When things get tense, I cross my legs, catch someone's eye, and with a straight face, pull my pants cuff up until the person can see the knife.
I like cufflinks though I don't own or wear any. If they weren't so ubiquitous now, I'd get some for special occassions. But, it seems in the corporate environment I work in now, it's daily wear for the higher-ups and a sure marker of corporate climbers as well. There seems to be a high correlation between guys with overt ambition and the wearing of cufflinks. Which is fine. I probably should be conforming, get the cufflinks and the goofy socks and be climbing. But that kind of stuff has always irked me. I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to corporate success, I suppose.
One of the main issues I have with socks is that it serves as a painful reminder of the vestiges of imperial colonialism. A system in which innocent, freedom loving locals in places like Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean were systematically subjugated to the oppression of the white man. This so called white savior came to the country and instead of bestowing positives began treating the locals as second class citizens in their own country. They would shame the natives into telling them that their way in their own native land was wrong. One of these type scenarios was in the white European proclaiming that wearing socks was not only right but the proper thing to do. For hundreds of centuries Africans and Asians walked barefoot and certainly without socks and got about their daily lives just fine. Now after centuries of institutionalized racism this imperialism left damaging effects on the local population. Wearing socks in many of these conquered countries has led to issues such as increased expense and health maladies. The locals have been shamed into thinking and have now been convinced there is only one way and that is the white European way.
