Men: Chimps Of The Fashion World

Perhaps the greatest part of being a man is that the bar is set so low for us. We’re not expected to know how to dress, cook, decorate, clean, or groom ourselves. Women just sort of assume that we’re completely incompetent. That’s why I always love the amused smile that appear on the face of girls when the see men shopping. They look at us the same way they’d look at a monkey who can fly a kite. You almost expect them at any moment to point and say, “Awwwww…That’s adorable. He thinks he’s people.”

If a woman tells another woman that a dress they’re wearing is ugly, it turns into a scene from High Noon. I think that’s why they tend to tip-toe around the issue if (or more accurately, WHEN) their boyfriend dresses like a slob. What they fail to realize is:

1. We really don’t care.
2. We know that women are more than happy to do it for us.

Really, all you need to know about fashion, you can tell by looking at the styles. Women have all manner and styles of dresses, skirts, blouses, sweaters, and shoes. God, don’t even get me started on the SHOES. The last time I noticed a woman’s feet was because I was holding both her ankles up over my shoulders. Then you come to Men’s clothing: suits. Basically, you can get three styles of suit: black, grey, or striped. Even fashion designers say, “You know what…three colors is pretty much all men can handle anyway.”

I had this theory for a while that women like to passive-aggressively project their opinions of their man’s failure through fashion. Some girls wanted me to dress more sensitive, some more rugged, some more upscale. It was as if they subconsciously expected me to change depending on the shirt I was wearing. Then I decided that women only date men when they run out of stuff to accessorize. Married women just have kids. My mom had two boys and then, finally, a girl—the youngest. By the time my sister was 2 weeks old she had more clothes than I had owned in my entire 12-year existence on Earth.

Even well-dressed men are still dwarfs in the world of taste, as far as women are concerned. A man who's fashionably attired is sort of loked at as a huge step forward for our gender: like chimps using tools.

Today I decided that I needed a drastic bedding up-grade. Let me tell you, when a MAN decides he needs new bedding, that's how you know it’s a disaster. If I had slept on my gear for another night, I’m pretty sure that I would have woken up in a government containment area, like at the end of E.T. I had been dragging around the same motley assortment of blankets, sheets and pillows since college. There are rape wards that haven’t seen as much potentially scaring sexual activity as my blankets.

So I wandered around the mall for about three hours of pure hell. After staring blankly at different bedding sets for an hour I took my phone out and tried to decide whether to call a fashion expert to walk me through the next two hours or the Suicide Hotline. I’d like to tell you it was an easy choice.

One part of me wants my living space and my body to look absolutely stylish, but the other part revels in being able to get away with throwing on jeans and a hoody. The deciding factor in how I dress is that it takes me 15 minutes to buy jeans and hoodies for a year. If I wanted to look nice it would take up entirely more of my life than I’m willing to part with. When I’m wandering around the men’s section, all I can think about is all the vastly more important and constructive things I could be doing with my time: like…videogames…starting fires…cheese-eating competitions…you know, stuff that really helps make the world a better place.

I guess I’ll just have to marry a woman who’s willing to dress me. In the meantime, I’ll just continue to approach shopping the way married women approach sex: bored, distracted, and praying for a speedy conclusion.