Výborně, Švejk!

Nicola on undergraduates in right-wing drag:

There are two ways to wear a bow-tie or a tweed jacket: as if it is the most natural thing in the world, or as a deliberate and self-conscious bit of drag. The problem is that there are very few people today for whom bow-ties and tweed jackets do come naturally. For everyone else, it’s drag—it has to be drag—and drag isn’t serious.

Drag isn't serious? Color me skeptical. Švejk is hilarious, but would it be fair to call him unserious? Sometimes fun is fun, but real work is being done when I begin to think David Bowie in almost-drag is genuinely hot, or a well-dressed campus right-winger is genuinely aristocratic-looking.

I'd also be curious to hear Nicola name a style of dress that she doesn't consider a costume. Does anyone's clothing really feel like "the most natural thing in the world?" Isn't all dress to some degree self-conscious?

Lastly, I'll see Nicola's Chesterton ("Satan sank by gravity") and raise her one from Bartlett's: "Sydney Smith never attained the eminence in the church that might have been expected. Comparing his own career with that of his brother, Robert Percy, Sydney Smith observed, 'He rose by gravity, I sank by levity.'"