Posted 4:04 PM by Blah blah

Should Men Look As Good As Women?

Article from AskMen, by Jordan Stein:

I don't know where this notion that men should look as good as women came from, but I'd like to have a few words with the guys who put it out there.

For years, we were cruising. We were investing minimal time and effort in our appearance and still netting quantifiable results with the opposite sex. Where our demands prompted some women to make meals out of celery sticks and others to contend with the excruciating pain of ever-decreasing bikini lines, theirs were pretty easy to indulge. We were the fortunate beneficiaries of rock-bottom expectations.

Then, suddenly, a tidal wave of change was upon us. I can't pinpoint the exact timing -- I was too young and too oblivious to shifting patterns and trends back then -- but it occurred around the tail end of the century and it forever altered the male condition. An explosion in men's products, magazines, models, and fitness left ordinary guys excuseless for not looking their best. And there was absolutely nothing legions of couch jockeys could do about it.

keeping up with the janes
Aesthetically, I think, women are supposed to outclass men and I, for one, was comfortable with that. Still am. If turning more heads than the fairer sex were up there on my "to do" list, I'd relocate to northern California. Yet I find myself suffering in silence because the guy on the cover of Men's Health is making me feel inadequate about my physique. If this is how it feels to have society's concept of beauty constantly rubbed in your face, I'm not interested.

But my lack of interest, unfortunately, is no match for my lack of choice. I don't want to hop on the bandwagon, but I know that if I don't at least tailgate, my stock could go the way of Enron. Necessity, it seems, is the mother of reinvention.

new and improved
The new me now wails on his abdominal muscles three days out of a week, drops a hundred dollars on a pair of jeans because the yummy clerk assures him that they “hug” his ass and squanders precious shower minutes exfoliating his face.

The new me considers the ritual of kneading dry skin with moisturizer to be nothing more than a geographical hazard of living in an unforgiving climate and remembers to throw on designer bowling shoes before going out, because the new me's friends will disown him if he ruins their chances of getting into a cool club.

The new me drinks lots of water to restore life to a chalky complexion, wears trace amounts of good cologne, doesn't let his fingernails get to be bite size, and even likes to layer.

By succumbing to an imposed construct of hotness, the new me has become society's bitch.

great expectations
Since stepping it up, I've had the occasional woman tell me I smell good or comment favorably on my shirt, but they're not surprised. It's not like they're thinking, Wow, it's about time he hung up the sweatpants and retired the baseball cap. On the contrary, they expect this level of decorum from me, from you, from all of us.

I'm being forced to work twice as hard for a fraction of attention, but I guess some is better than none. When I leave the house, I'm surrounded by multitudes of well-dressed, well-groomed automatons who, like me, still begrudge the fact that somebody raised the bar on the male ideal while they were fast asleep.

In the aftermath of the rude awakening comes the sense that trying to look as good as women is a near impossible feat. They have an uncanny ability to draw stares, notwithstanding great or average looks. They have flowing hair, ours recedes. They have natural curves, we have gym memberships. They can entice with ample cleavage, we can disgust with abundant chest hair.

lessons learned
I've learned that sticking to a program designed by somebody who spends their days racking my weights makes me look better in clothes -- a potential first step in getting a woman out of hers.

I've learned to reduce dressing to its most basic elemental form, which serves the dual purpose of ease and expediency: Dressy and casual, perfect and imperfect.

The Perfect Look
The perfect look is slick. It's the most expensive dark suit you can afford; a tailored pair of slacks and dress shirt, a thin merino or cashmere sweater, and classic leather shoes. It's spending a little more on items you know are going to last.

The Imperfect Look
The imperfect look is paired down and slightly unkempt. It's a cool pair of stonewashed jeans, an untucked shirt that doesn't drape below the mid-thigh, a solid color, casual sweater, a fitted T, and a few days' growth. It's shopping at stores whose prices end in eight.

The upside to this entire fiasco, on those days when my glass is half full, is that the exercise will probably make me healthier and the extra time spent grooming should help me look my best. The downside is I'm not sure who I'm doing it for.

I still don't think men should look as good as women. I still don't think we can. I do think, however, that we need to look our absolute best, or else face the wrath of a very vain world. You know, the same one women have been living in all along.