The act of buying clothes makes me feel like a sellout. Makes me feel like everything I hate in this world--superficial and lame.
Middlebrow once said: "Eric, you have to think in terms of dating as a project." And I think that he is right. It is impossible to get your head around something so wispy and sparkly and nebulous as love, but I can certainly break dating down into concrete indentifiable and accomplishable acts. And it is these little tasks that, once completed, will start the inexorable push toward love. Or so he (we) theorizes.
And the first thing is clothes. Women like clothes. I dare anyone to get huffy about this either. Bring it on, because you are lying and you will lose. Women like clothes. They like other things too, like puppies and unicorns and literary theory, but they especially like clothes. And clothes make the man. So go to the mall. The mall has it all.
But I'm draggin my heels all the way there, kid.
I've always had a certain mistrust for people who like to play dress-up. It always seemed so fake and pretentious and expensive and such a blatant paean to "adulthood" (whatever that is). Now that I am adult I don't mind it so much. But whenever I went to parties and saw twentysomethings gussied up it reminded me of T's home videos of his young four-year-old daughter prancing around in a bridesmaid's dress with too much makeup and fancy hair. She was playing dress-up and so were the women at the parties. It was Halloween, but for sophisticates. And for some, it was always Halloween.
There are certain class-aspiration issues I have with dressing up, but that is another story, a story that would derail this blog for some time.
No, I was always going to be the guy in a T-shirt and cargo shorts and basketball shoes, and that's the way it was. That is the way I saw my life back then. There was no need for fancy clothes because, well, clothes are just things you put on your body to prevent you from running around naked in public. And shoes are things you wear so you don't hurt or cut up your feet when you're walking around downtown.
I saw an ad for $4000 thigh-high Gucci boots yesterday. They were very expensive, and extensive, and so attractive they would put you in intensive care...
No, SERFS was my filter and if women didn't like E's Nondescript Couture then they could just be filtered out. Fine. I will filter. I will filter with impunity. I am Regular Guy and I don't wear fancy shirts.
Now everything has changed. I am making an attempt, an attempt to meet the Women of the World halfway.
The problem is I am starting to like it.
I have always liked shoes (women's and men's) but now I am doing something about it. I have more non-T-shirts now than ever before. I look amazing. Spectacular, in fact. I even shave sometimes. And when I travel, I make sure I am looking sharp, just like Cary Grant, but in an invisible hat and tie.
I am a tall drink of water.
So why do I feel so ridiculous?
6 comments:
Collar-shirt wearing, stubble-shaving, trousers-sporting poser!
Can you not think of clothes as fun? I think of it like painting or collage, seriously. It's like cutting a colorful swath in the world.
Think of it like being part of the free-style choreography of this vivid world.
(rah rah rah, go to the mall!)
We do love clothes. Or shoes. Sometimes both. And literary theory, of course. Perhaps this is why we love shoes. Because they defy (to some extent) theory. They are either comfortable or not; they represent some long repressed aspect of our personality. I, too, like dress up, mostly because I don't have to do it all the time. If I had to wear the professional uniform every day, I think I would hate it.
Speaking of Halloween, I'm thinking Wonder Woman. Son said he would make me a crown.
But I think women like clothes for themselves much more than they care about men carefully considering how they dress. For instance, I went on a date this week, and the guy showed up in a white t-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops. Did I mind? Not so much (perhaps in part because it was a Wednesday and lunch). What bugged me, though, is that I thought a lot about my clothes. I consulted at least two friends and changed twice (sad, but true). And I don't think he thought about what he was wearing at all (maybe I'm wrong). So I only care about what men are wearing so far as I am constantly in search of balance. If I am going to plan and reconsider, then so should they.
Lis has identified the principle of dress-up reciprocity. I have to admit, I was the guy in t-shirt and jeans. Wait, I'm still the guy in t-shirt and jeans, but I'm married. I'm sorry Sleepy-E, but your going to have to play dress-up. If you were dating in Bellingham, WA--where I romanced Dr. Write--well, it would be a different story. But you live in the city, as you know, where nothing works and where everyone must look good.
One of my old gf's loved to dress me up. I was her living Ken Doll. Did I complain? Nah--only when she tried to dress me in what I thought were inappropriate or uncomfortable clothes for an occasion. A sports jacket for a family reunion in August?! I don't think so.
It's true: MB is not a dresser-upper. (However, I think he did dress up when he took me out to dinner. But mostly I remember the food.) But he's trying to break out of the khakis and a shirt paradigm. The funky shirt! While I think it may be true that men don't think about it as much, I also think they just don't look like they think about it as much. It could be that lis's date thought as much about his clothes as she did, but that he was going for a "I didn't think about my clothes" aesthetic.
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