In general, I dislike making generalizations about men, because it seems as though every time I take a swallow of my pint of Bass and gesture importantly with my cigarette while expounding on the similarity between men and pigs, or the tendency of men to think not with their brains but with other spongy and somewhat more volatile parts of their anatomy, or the ability of men to file emotions under “R” for “repression,” then a few seconds later I think of at least one exception to the rule and then I feel bad about making such a sweeping statement, because god knows I can’t stand it when it goes the other way and men announce or assume a universal truth about women. One time in college, I sat with three male friends at lunch while they discussed the previous night’s World Series game, and one of them said, “Toronto’s got it locked up tonight,” and another one said, “Yeah, Key’s pitching,” and the first one said, “He’s fuckin’ amazing, dude, he doesn’t even throw that hard and he just mows them down,” and then I commented, while reaching across the table for the pepper shaker, that Key’s delivery confuses the hitters because he blocks the point of release with his shoulder and the guy at the plate can’t pick up the seams, and the second guy said, “Yeah, exactly. Wait a minute, WHAT DID YOU SAY?” and all three of them sort of plunked their forks down and stared at me with that “we can’t reconcile your breasts with your knowledge of the infield-fly rule” look that I have gotten from men so many times while talking about baseball, and I looked up from seasoning my soup to find them all gaping at me like I had just announced that I prefer to pee standing up or something, and I said, “What?” and the first guy said, “Nothing. So – you know, like, a lot about baseball,” in an admiring tone of voice, which I liked on the one hand, but on the other hand, they obviously wouldn’t have included me in the conversation if I hadn’t spoken up because they just assumed that a person with ovaries would have no interest in it, which irritated me. Anyway, I don’t like it when men stereotype me, so I try my hardest not to stereotype them.

So, although I frequently find myself wondering why men can’t dress themselves, I don’t want to say that all men don’t know how to dress themselves, because a lot of them can. For example, The Biscuit always matches and doesn’t wear anything goofy. On the other hand, once he finds a clothing item he likes, he tends to go a little overboard and buy at least three versions of the exact same thing, like the four nearly identical grey V-neck sweaters he owns, but even though I make fun of him by pretending that I feel cold and asking innocently if he happens to have a grey V-neck sweater I could borrow, I feel pretty lucky. Aside from an apparent urge to transform his wardrobe into a grown-up version of Garanimals, the Biscuit doesn’t commit any of the crimes against taste that I so often see other men committing.

First of all, he wears boxer shorts, fortunately, because I find tighty-whiteys utterly revolting on every level. I know that they give a man more support down there, and I know they cost less than boxer shorts, but I do not care. Tighty-whiteys look ridiculous, and I hate them deeply. I mean, remember the scene in Top Gun when Goose has just died, and Maverick stands in the bathroom splashing water on his face and brooding and questioning his identity by staring at himself really hard in the mirror, and we feel really sad and sorry for him, and then they go to a longer shot and we see Mav in his tighty-whiteys? Besides making me want to barf, the tighty-whiteys completely rob the scene of its emotional power by making Tom Cruise look like an 8-year-old. I don’t care if they bunch up in his flight suit; in order to remain credible as the hero of the film, he needs to put on a pair of boxers. And I hate it when a man keeps wearing a pair of underpants (and the word “underpants” alone makes me shudder – okay, hello. Adults do not wear underpants) that he has had since high school, and they have gotten all sort of beigy-gray from repeated washings and they don’t have any elastic left in the leg holes and they look like some sort of loincloth, but with a fly. Plus, not to get too graphic here, but the white element of the tighty-whitey sometimes offers more insight into a man’s toilet habits than I want, if you know what I mean. I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the tighty-whitey wearers among the readership – you must have your reasons. I only know that in the past, when I brought a boy back to my dorm room or apartment or whatever, I felt no qualms about calling a screeching halt to various R-rated shenanigans if I saw the dread striped Jockey waistband on the horizon.

But even if a man makes the right choice in the undergarment department, many pitfalls still await him in casual wear. Turtlenecks, for example, can choke the life out of my sexual attraction to a man. Men look silly in turtlenecks – I don’t know why, but they do, and unless a man has just come off the ski slopes, I do not want to see him in a turtleneck. I do not want to see him in the young prepster’s white-turtleneck-under-snowflake-sweater outfit; I do not want to see him in the Eurotrash white-turtleneck-under-navy-blue-double-breasted-jacket ensemble; I do not want to see him in the Jerry Seinfeld jewel-tone-turtleneck-
with-double-dyed-black-jeans-and-bright-white-sneakers combo. I do not want to see anyone with a Y chromosome wearing a turtleneck unless he plans to go out and shovel some snow, or unless he works as one of those penis-less Ken-doll models in the L.L. Bean catalog.

As a matter of fact, men should look to Jerry Seinfeld as an example of how not to dress. In real life, Jerry probably has a walk-in closet packed to the gills with impeccably cut Armani suits, but on the show, he dressed like a dork. I remember guys like this from college, the guys that wore the super-dark black jeans (or visibly ironed jeans) with blindingly new sneakers, the guys that tucked in their shirts but didn’t wear belts, the guys in sweatshirts with no t-shirt on underneath. These guys looked pained when a girl said the word “fuck” and viewed staying up until midnight on a weeknight as the height of dissipation. Nice guys, most of them; cute guys, some of them; sticks in the mud, every last one of them. They couldn’t let go, and it showed in their fussy style of dress. A tucked-in shirt without a belt looks indecisive and out of place – either put a belt on or untuck it, especially with jeans.

A word about jeans. Men really need to buy the correct size. I don’t mean the skate rat-meets-Mother Ginger in The Nutcracker style, in which I expect the Polichinelles to come pouring out of the left pantleg. I mean the men who err in the other direction, forcing their post-college flab into jeans they have no business wearing in public. Women long ago learned strategies to disguise unwanted pounds, and men should do the same, because if I want to see a man’s buttcrack, I’ll call Roto-Rooter, okay? And if you boys don’t think you can get “camel toes,” think again. Remember John Schneider’s sackbusters on The Dukes of Hazzard? Well, nobody likes a nut wedge, so do us all a favor and buy jeans that fit. And another thing – NO PLEATS. If a man does not have the flattest of all possible stomachs, pleats will do little or nothing to hide that fact, particularly when the man’s beer belly makes all the pleats puff out into little fins, and pleated jeans – well, my former boss used to wear them, and only the fact that he used to work as a bodyguard for Jean-Claude Van Damme and had a national championship in Wing Tsun fighting prevented us from making fun of them to his face.

My former boss also wore the occasional tank top. Again, we lived in fear, so we never dared say anything, and the martial arts training kept him in decent shape, so it didn’t look too horrible. Then again, it didn’t look that good either, due primarily to the explosion of hair proceeding from each armpit. A man with a great upper body can look positively mouth-watering in a tank top – until he reaches for something. Then the little troll caked with deodorant under his arm ruins the whole picture. Some guys I know like to make fun of French girls (or German girls, or Israeli girls) for not shaving their armpits. Um, excuse me, but just because you don’t wear a bra doesn’t make your pit fro any more appetizing, so wear them at the gym if you must, but outside an aerobic context, either shave up or put on a t-shirt. Other men ineligible to wear tank tops include men shaped like Jabba the Hutt and men with back hair. I have lunch-
lady arms, and you don’t see me wearing tank tops. Guys, please show me the same courtesy that I have shown you.

Speaking of hair…or the lack of hair…please, please, please, men of the world, the rest of the women and I BEG of you…should you begin to lose your hair, PLEASE have some dignity and do NOT wear a toupee. I cannot believe that men who wear rugs think that they’ve fooled anyone. The wig invariably juts off of the man’s head in a manner reminiscent of the continental shelf dropping off in the middle of the sea, we can’t see his scalp, it doesn’t match the remaining natural hair, and little children ask their mommies why the ugly man keeps petting the dead cat on his head, and yet they look in the mirror and think, “Chicks dig it”? HOW? It looks like CRAP! Furthermore, nobody CARES. So you went bald – who CARES? It looks FINE. Please leave the roadkill IN THE ROAD because it does not belong on your HEAD. Enjoy it, for god’s sake – think of the money you’ll save on shampoo. Women – at least, women that I know – don’t mind if you’ve gotten “a little light” on the top. We do mind if you grow a ponytail with the stragglers; we strongly discourage the combover. On the one hand, I feel sort of sorry for these men that try so hard to look young and suave, and then I remember the frantic efforts of women to stay young-looking so men will still favor them with attention and I don’t feel sorry for them anymore.

Okay, one more criticism and then I, who hardly cut a dashing figure myself, will take my leave of the Fashion Police Department. Straight men must learn to wear purple without fear. For hundreds of years, purple represented the command of royalty, and the most powerful men and women in the world wore it proudly. Now, you can’t get a lot of heterosexual American males to wear purple on a bet, unless you call it “eggplant” or “moonsblood” or something, because the association with lavender has tainted the color purple and they won’t wear it because someone might think they like guys “that way.” (Many of them swear off pale pink for the same reason.) Get over it. If you really believe that a gay man will walk up to you, admire your purple sweater, and say, “So – I see by the color of your sweater that you’re gay. Would you like to have sex with me?” while giving you some sort of secret handshake, then permit me to throw open the gates of Fort Knox so that you can buy yourself a clue. These same people will wear white socks pulled up to mid-calf, but buy them a lavender dress shirt and they freak out. Lord, give me strength.

I must reiterate that I don’t have a terrific fashion sense myself, so I feel a little bit hypocritical harshing on the sartorial blunders of men. But somebody has to do it.

Share!