The Macaroni in ‘Yankee Doodle’

Yankee Doodle went to townA-riding on a pony,Stuck a feather in his capAnd called it macaroni. Two macaroni doctors, with their wigs and canes propped up behind them. As The Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine noted, at this time the word macaroni "Changed its meaning" from a sophisticated Brit to "a person who exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion." Seemingly overnight, the term "Macaroni" became one of ridicule, and entire industries sprung up in order to deride these macaroni men. Humorous depictions showed macaroni men wearing giant wigs topped off by comically small tricorn hats and attached to thick pigtails. One song described a macaroni as thus: "His taper waist, so strait and long, / His spindle shanks, like pitchfork prong, / To what sex does the thing belong? / 'Tis call'd a Macaroni." The Oxford Magazine similarly described the macaroni as not belonging to the gender binary: "There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male, nor female, a thing of neuter gender, lately started up among us. It is called a Macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasure, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion." The public shaming of macaronis grew so commonplace that it became an industry: in the early 1770s, Mary Darly, a cartoonist by trade, devoted so much energy to caricaturing macaronis that her store in London became known as "The Macaroni Print Shop." Darly's ridicule of macaronis became the first widespread use of the caricature as a means of social commentary.