You don’t need experiments to understand how this works; everyday life is full of it. In his Treatise on Elegant Living, Honoré de Balzac wrote a series of maxims for men of style, number 40 of which states: “Clothing is how society expresses itself.” Men’s clothing of the moment reveals a deep contradiction: Strength means weakness and weakness means strength. Everywhere you look, the weak look hard and the hard look weak. The man in the salmon-colored shirt fires the man in overalls. A face covered with Nazi prison tattoos is the face of a man as powerless as it is possible to be, while the face of Mark Zuckerberg, emanating gentle geekiness, projects his world-encircling billions. The amazing thing is that we live in a world filled with alpha males—most of the world’s billionaires are male, about 80 percent of American political offices are held by men, and 83 percent of all board seats of Fortune 500 companies are held by men. But our culture, at this point, seemingly has no way to express male strength outside of a camouflaged jokiness.

Gentlemen, What the Hell Has Become of Us? - Esquire