The bro-ification of the American flag
Dudes wear their country on their sleeves and on their butts. Why has the American flag become the ultimate accessory of the American bro?
Nantucket on the Fourth of July: the bro version of Where’s Waldo.
What tapestries were to the kids who smoked a lot of weed and played in jam bands, American flags were to the bros at the small liberal arts college I attended.
The stars and stripes seemed to hang above kegerators in the dorm room of every boy (man?) who played a sport, or who hung out with those who played sports, or who wore pinnies and backwards hats while drinking out of red Solo cups and playing wiffle ball on booze-soaked grass.
But the flag wasn’t just on the bros’ wall. It was on the bros’ bodies, too.
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If you’ve been out of the college party scene for a while, or you don’t frequent lacrosse games for fun, you might not know what a bro is. The good folks over at NPR went into a deep dive on the subject a few years ago. Here’s their quick summary:
“Over the past decade or so, though, ‘bro’ has evolved into a shorthand for a specific kind of fratty masculinity. Baseball cap with the frayed brim (possibly backward), sky-blue oxford shirt or sports team shirt, cargo shorts, maybe some mandals or boat shoes. Y’all know who we mean. These cats right here.’’
Girls can be bro-y, too. In the interest of full disclosure, I had bro tendencies in college, namely of the beer-chugging, backwards-hat wearing variety. I still have an American flag tank top. I break it out on the Fourth of July. I don’t think my parents and extended family appreciate it as much as guys on the hockey team might’ve back in the day.
Because those bros were all in. They had American flags covering their American thighs, American flag bandanas wrapped around their American heads, American flag shirts on their American backs.
Retailers have sprung up to cater to this need for the stars and stripes. Chubbies, a startup in San Francisco that makes shorter shorts for men (and is also known as “the quad liberation department,’’ according to their website) has achieved rapid growth due to their marketing toward college fraternities.
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“I think we had some variation of an American flag-style short from day one,’’ said Tom Montgomery, one of the founders of Chubbies. “We launched officially on the 4th of July in 2011. From then on, [the ‘Mericas] have been a staple.’’
They are the company’s best-sellers.
If you look at photos from the social media profile of a 20-something from a Fourth of July party, you’ll notice a sea of bros and girl-bros draped in all different manners of American flag apparel.
“Our clothing and accessories that feature the American flag are always among our most popular seasonal products,’’ Ian Murray, CEO and co-founder of the clothing company Vineyard Vines—those preppy clothes with the whale logo—wrote in an email.
The flag has become prevalent in bros’ wardrobes when it isn’t the Fourth of July, as well. Sales figures back this up.
“We do see sales increase around the 4th of July,’’ Murray continued, “but we have also noticed that our customers are excited about patriotic products year round.’’
Shep Murray, Ian’s brother, co-founder, and co-CEO, added: “This year the American flag polo and Shep shirts have been exceptionally popular. We have an entire ‘Red, Whale and Blue’ section on our website.’’
How did this happen? How did the bro co-opt Old Glory? How did the venerated emblem of our nation end up soaked in sweat and beer, displayed across the chests of young revelers?
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Mark Tappan, Professor and Director of the Education Department at Colby College, said today’s flag-centric bro culture could be rooted in to the hyper-masculine attitude of post-9/11 politics.
“That’s the link, somehow, to sort of linking masculinity to patriotism,’’ he said. “Wearing the flag is a sign of one’s masculinity, one’s membership in the bro culture in some sense.’’
Much of the recent flag iconography started with 9/11. I remember when kids in middle school started putting American flag stickers on their assignment notebooks after the attacks. I had one on mine. Cars suddenly sported American flag magnets, and houses sprouted American flags over doorways where flags depicting cornucopias filled with fall fruit previously hung.
In his book The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity, the psychologist and political scientist Stephen J. Ducat says the “virile bombast’’ that the White House displayed leading up to the invasion of Iraq was so prevalent that it surprised even some of the most conservative allies of the Bush administration. Politicians proved their masculinity, he argues, by going to war.
And war requires patriotism. And patriotism requires the American flag.
An article from The New York Times a few weeks after the attacks detailed the new demand for the flag:
“Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the oldest flag factory owned by the oldest and largest flag company in the United States has tripled production. Managers have extended production by more than two hours a day and added a Saturday shift. All 8 workers laid off in August have been called back, bringing the work force to 228. And many employees have gained a different perspective on their work.
Americans started buying flags hours after the attacks. Wal-Mart sold 116,000 flags on that Tuesday and 250,000 on Wednesday, compared with 6,400 and 10,000 on the same days a year earlier. By Friday, Sept. 14, Wal-Mart was running out, but still sold 135,000.’’
Today’s 20-something bros came of age when displays of patriotism were expected. No matter your political leaning, everyone was on Team America in the aftermath of 9/11—any holdouts left over from the days of burning draft cards were swept aside in a sea of red, white, and blue. Country songs that bordered on militaristic flooded the airwaves (“American Soldier,’’ by Toby Keith, “Only in America,’’ by Brooks and Dunn).
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You could argue that bros have been around since the Founding Fathers slammed back a few pints and went out to mess up some Brits. But bro culture as we know it now has been gaining steam since the early 2000s. The NPR article from 2013 agrees with this timeline, and as a 2014 article from Slate puts it:
“As nearly everyone has noticed, since at least the early aughts, men—especially straight, white men between the ages of 15 and 35 who happen to wear their baseball caps backward and enjoy the occasional brewski or bro-hug with other similarly situated men—have been referring to one another as bro with increasing regularity.’’
During this time, the flag made its mark, and there was no turning back. The bro and the stars and stripes were inextricably linked. The founders of Chubbies, for example, all graduated from Stanford by 2008, and started their line with the ‘Mericas style because it’s what they liked to wear.
“To be honest, we just loved it,’’ Montgomery said. “And we were always trying to make products we thought were awesome, and we launched on Fourth of July, one of the biggest holidays. It’s a made-in-America brand, it was just what we wanted to make and what we wanted to wear. It worked out for the customer who was similar to us.’’
It is worth noting that the company does well with dads, too.
What rhymes with freedom? America.
“[Wearing the flag] links to the sense of what other people call ‘precarious manhood,’’’ Tappan said. “The notion out there these days that men—particularly white men—feel that masculinity is sort of under siege, and there’s anxiety about proving one’s manhood, or proving that one is a real man in some way.’’
However, for many of these men (and women), the American flag has also turned into something of a joke. “’Merica’’ gets splashed across T-shirts, and images of bald eagles and the Founding Fathers appear in social media posts along with the flag as though to say, “let’s see how far we can push this.’’ Many of these guys are often playing a character that goes along with their red, white, and blue bandanas and shorts. He is gung-ho about his country to the point of absurdity, and tells jokes like, What rhymes with freedom? ‘Merica. There’s a sense of irony to the excess, as though they’re making fun of the blind patriotism that they’re also serious about.
The Fourth of July is a day to be patriotic. And old habits die hard: I will proudly wear my tank top from college. I applaud those with red, white, and blue splashed across their swim trunks and bikini tops.
But when the stars and stripes make up a significant portion of a bro’s year-round wardrobe, the proof of proving masculinity—self-deprecating or not—is in the pattern.
I can only imagine what bros would say to all this. I’m guessing they’d most likely echo country singer Blake Shelton: “If you don’t love the American flag, you can kiss my country ass.’’
Boston’s biggest bros:
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