The Macaroni Men of the Mid-18th Century

In the mid-18th century, certain young Bristish males of the highest social classes garnered a sense of worldliness by taking a grand tour of Western Europe. Returning home, they adopted distinct eating habits and attire that would set them apart as more special than their less traveled and wealthy peers. The style they adopted involved high powdered wigs, a thin countenance highlighted with tight waistcoats, shoes with buckles and high heels, and face powder. They flippantly spent money by gambling at cards and ate the Italian pasta called macaroni. It didn’t take long for the British establishment to ridicule these “Macaroni” men for their transgendered sense of style. The _Oxford Magazine_ wrote of them in 1770: “There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male nor female, a thing of the neuter gender, lately started up among us. It is called a macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasantry, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion.” In yet another layer of snobbery, the British Doctor Richard Shuckburgh made fun of the American Revolutionaries by penning the late 18th-c tune “Yankee Doodle:” the Americans were such rubes that they didn’t even know how to imitate bad British fashion trends! (“Stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni”) The Americans loved the tune and appropriated it, as we know.