Apt messages or not, Allen Edmonds is clearly trying to appeal to a variety of men, with a variety of lifestyles and tastes. By placing the ad in The WSJ, Allen Edmonds is also sending the message that even Dealmakers, Country Squires and Gordon Gekkos—"men of business"—need to buy shoes, and hey, it's ok to buy nice, high quality ones. A-E is aware, like many retailers of men's dress, that men are reluctant to shop for fear of seeming "too feminine." The idea of consumption as a threat to one's manhood is a fairly recent one in the U.S., beginning in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when many men left the cloistering confines of European aristocratic life in search of the wide open frontier, where they could work outside with their hands and build homes, farms, bridges, buildings. This is where real men lived—outside in the fresh air beneath big blue skies. Women, on the other hand, lived a more private life, in the home, by the hearth. It was their duty to furnish the home and purchase goods to keep it and its denizens in working order. Women, in other words, were the consumers, not men. In his book, Manhood in America, Michael Kimmel describes one manufacturer's struggle in the late 19th century to convince burly, bearded and mustachioed men to purchase its shaving products:

[...A]ds for shaving paraphernalia linked shaving to hard work and success. One Gillette advertisement proclaimed its product was

'typical of the American spirit. It is used by capitalists, professional men, business men—by men of action all over this country—three million of them. Its use starts habits of energy—of initiative. And men who do for themselves are men who think for themselves. Be master of your own time. Buy a Gillette and use it.'

[...] Yet the very act of purchasing these toiletries created some uneasiness. Had not consumption been branded as feminine, the new urban department store a female world of abundance and delight? Several of the newly established department stores developed separate entrances, separate elevators, and separate departments for male and female shoppers, partly to ease the psychological threat to men entering such sphere there to engage in such feminizing activities as shopping (123).

The reluctance of men to shop for personal items for fear of being thought feminine (apparently, the worst insult imaginable) perhaps also explains why "fashion for men is rarely taken as seriously as fashion for women," why "menswear is seen primarily in terms of utility..." (Edwards, 3). Of course, we all know that men take dress very seriously, they just pretend they don't. (If you don't believe me, take this test: find a nice straight, WASP-looking male—perhaps a brother, boyfriend or business partner—and offer him $100 to stand in line at the Post Office wearing a fuchsia silk dress and matching marabou mules.) To those who say dress truly "has no bearing whatsoever" on their daily lives,or is something to which they give "no consideration," I say your pockets must be brimming with Ben Franklins—which Allen Edmonds is hoping you'll happily deposit with them.

Bibliography:

-Edwards, Tim. Men in the Mirror: Men's Fashion, Masculinity and Consumer Society. London: Cassell, 1997.
-Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America: A Cultural History. New York: The Free Press, 1996.