Sweater Men and Sweatertopia

At some point, the Generation X "flannel boys" grew up. Once over the age of 30, they are now known as "sweater men" or "sweaters" - the female counterpart is "messenger bag girl".

The Sweater Man is a middle class, politically liberal, and usually (though not always) Caucasian man who is in touch with his feminine side. He identifies as antimaterialist, though his high place in the socioeconomic food chain is what gives him the privilege of being so.

He often wears an oversized, moth-eaten sweater (kept for sentimental value), but don't let the absence of such a sweater fool you, as any self-respecting Sweater Man wears his sweater on the inside.

Sweater Men practice zazen, identify as feminist, and love Ethnic Everything (especially if they can take bits and pieces out of the cultural context, to add to their identity). They wear Buddhist hand malas identified as "karma beads". They frequent coffeehouses - which are the Sweater world's Town Hall or community church - but they drink tea more often than coffee.

Where working class Alphas join the military as their rite of passage, Sweaters do one of two things: do an unpaid internship, or join the Peace Corps, after graduation from college (which is nearly universal in Sweatertopia). They often work lower paid jobs that require a high amount of education, necessitating the employment of their mate - but Messenger Bag women always rise to the occasion, and often make more money than their Sweater husbands, which being good feminists, the Sweater Men don't begrudge.

A Sweater Man's feminine side makes him perfectly suited to his Messenger Bag female counterpart, who is in touch with her masculine side.

Their mating dance consists of enacting the trope of Coffeehouse Love that is Sweatertopia's equivalent of courtly love. As Sweaters are both men and women in one body, as are Messenger Bags, this dance usually consists of both staring at each other across a coffeehouse table while they figure out who is going to do what, and to whom. This struggle is so traumatic and jarring that they ultimately decide to be "Friends with Benefits", which is a very common and popular Sweater relationship format.

Sweater men disdain the Shiny Jackass Professional, whom they see as the symbol of all that is bad and wrong with Western Civilization. After all, SJPs invented nicotine, nuclear weapons, monarchy, capitalism, and the military. Therefore, SJPs are banned from Sweatertopia.

Sweaters require a specially rarified environment to function at optimum performance. This environment is similar to a terrarium or a salt water aquarium and must be kept in perfect order at all times or the Sweater will weaken and eventually die. They are happiest in the company of other Sweaters, and large Sweater communities such as Portland or San Francisco are ideal. In the absence of large Sweater populations, small, self-contained Sweatertopias are acceptable - usually a university town.

Sweaters require a special diet. Current research supports that raw and organic are the most ideal diet to feed the Sweaters in your life, but while indeed a large number are vegetarian or vegan, few actually practice raw.

Every ten years, Sweaters elect a king. Usually this king is some important member of a downtrodden group. Ten years is as long as it takes for the king to become too popular, at which point he becomes a victim of the Law of Sweater Entropy: where something becomes too popular and mainstream and Sweaters must reject it. Without fail, though, in twenty years the law of Entropic Reversal takes place and the rejected item becomes "ironic".

The king of Sweatertopia is presently Barack Obama. Of course President Obama is the President of the United States, but this does not adequately sum up his role in Sweatertopia. Sweaters' veneration for this man is beyond merely the average American's respect for a president; it is a combination of rock star awe and darshan, what Hindus describe as the feeling one has in the presence of a living saint. It is actually quite rare for an American president to be elected the King of Sweatertopia.

Ten years ago, this role was given to His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet, but the Dalai Lama lost his crown as King of Sweatertopia when he violated the Sweatertopian Mandate of Heaven. One of the key laws of Sweatertopia is that everything must be okay. The Dalai Lama lost the Mandate of Heaven when he appeared too many times on television and spoke honestly about the position of homosexuality within traditional Buddhism.

The Dalai Lama stated that this mainly applied to monks (who are celibate and shouldn't practice either homosexuality or heterosexuality), and has indicated willingness to have a constructive dialogue with the Sweater community, but this did not save his career as the King of Sweatertopia. The outcry was nearly violent.

As is possible with any Sweatertopian king, there is real danger that King Barack may fall from grace when he says something that disappoints Sweaters everywhere or indicates that he is not Okay With Everything. This is the danger of making a president the King of Sweatertopia, because when he is actually forced to act presidential and concede to the wishes of his opponents, usually he loses the Mandate of Heaven - this is how King William (President Bill Clinton) was forced to concede his crown to the Dalai Lama, when he allowed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to pass.

As for politics, Sweaters are nearly always liberal (ranging from merely moderate Democrat to Green to full blown Socialist), but they do not comprise the bulk of self-identified liberals.