Men's Fashion Secrets

I was 17 when it occurred to me why women wear pointy shoes. It's because in women, unlike men, big feet are not considered a good thing, and pointy-toed shoes make their feet look smaller. I still didn't understand why women had to have so MANY shoes, at least until I was 22. I was out somewhere with some girl who had on this outfit that was all violet. Everything matched. Even her lipstick, and her shoes. And I remember thinking to myself, you know, she probably doesn't have any other outfits that those shoes even go with. That's when it hit me. I had an epiphany, a moment of clarity, and in that instant everything in the universe (or, at least, everything having to do with women's footwear) made total and complete sense.

Violet outfit, violet shoes. And there are like a hundred bajillion different shades of violet, too, so a girl would probably almost have to have a different pair of shoes for every single outfit. Men are different, of course, and only have to have two or three pairs of shoes, black or brown, and maybe a pair of tennis shoes or boots or whatever. But more than that, guys don't care if their shoes match their outfit. In fact, lots of guys don't care if their shoes even match each other.

Here's a guy secret. Just like women have so many different shoes, guys have a hundred different shirts. The reason for this is just as simple: A shirt is the only way that a guy can add any variety at all to his outfit, and for a lot of guys even that is just so he doesn't have to do laundry every day. If there was a smell-resistant t-shirt, guys would never change them.

Guys don't care about fashion, or colors. In fact, most guys can name four or five different colors, and even then can get them wrong. There are many, many colors that guys don't have a clue about, like lavander, aqua, teal, mauve, amber, sienna, marigold, turquoise. Well turquoise is probably blue-green like that tacky Southwest road-side jewlery, but other than that I neither know nor care. The only trouble I have is when someone mentions a color and I have to pretend that I know what they're talking about, like when my wife asks me if I liked the mauve dress she had on and I say yes, because I don't know what mauve is and I don't want to have a twenty minute conversation about that, the dress, and how insensitive I am for not remembering it. Or I wind up wearing an indigo jacket and it turns out that indigo is actually a color that I hate.

(Note: I don't actually know what color indigo is, and as far as I know I don't own a jacket that color. I was just making up something to give as an example. To give an actual example would require that I remember something I wasn't paying attention to in the first place.)

I think that men's complete disinterest in fashion also explains a number of things. For example, the top hat, hat big ol' stovepipe-looking thing. I believe it was invented by a real short guy who just wanted to give the illusion of height in an age when platform shoes would have been out of the question. The enduring mystery, however, is why a giant like Abraham Lincoln would wear one. Or what about overalls? Invented by someone who didn't care what they looked like and just wanted to put on all of their clothes at once. One can argue, of course, that a guy's still got to wear a shirt with overalls, but honestly, when you see someone wearing overalls, do you pay attention to what kind of shirt he's wearing?

It's one of the great things about being a guy. You never see guys really worrying about clothes, unless they're like trying to impress a girl on a first date or something, and then they just ask another girl for advice, like a friend or a sister. I always thought it would be good revenge for someone's friend or sister in one of these cases to dress a guy like a dork, but fortunately most girls don't think this way. To them, this is just a chance to play dress-up, with really big dolls. Plus, it's the girl's honor at stake, too; if I look like a dork and I tell everyone my sister told me I looked good, well, there goes her job at Marshall's.

Of course, there are drawbacks to a lack of fashion sense. Once when I was about 12, I put on a brown plaid blazer (the kind that folks thought looked good back in the 70's), a blue and white striped shirt, and a tie with a red and white design on it. I realized later how stupid it looked, unfortunately, I was on my way back home.

Another drawback is that guys can be sold anything. All it takes is for a couple of even moderately-attractive girls to tell him something looks good on him, and he's sold. It doesn't even matter what it is. A guy could come out of a men's clothing store having spent $1500 on a kilt and an ascot, and as long as the sales girls told him he looked good, he'd be happy.

As I've gotten older, I've become more aware of clothes and what looks good on me, but that's only because, the older you get, the more work the clothes have to do to make you look good. Think about Mick Jagger, for instance. How he looked in 1968 versus how he looks today. At what point should he be more aware of what looks good on him?

Anyway, I like to think that I'm not at the point yet where it doesn't matter what I wear or how I wear it. Maybe it's just vanity, I don't know, but I just don't want to end up like one of those old guys with his pants hiked up to his armpits, driving around in a big ol' car and scratching himself in public.

In other words, I hope there's always someone I can make fun of. Not that I would make fun of the elderly. Well, unless I was elderly myself. I figure at that point, everyone is fair game.

When all else has failed, I can always rent a tuxedo. Everyone looks good in a tux. Well, every guy does. Only a few women actually do, and then only when they do that sexy fishnet stocking thing like the Rockettes, but that's not really formal wear, At least, my pastor wouldn't think so. The problem is, there are very few places you can go while wearing a tux, and very few of them seem to involve sitting in front of the TV eating cheese puffs. Which is my natural environment.

By setting all this down in writing, I'm probably giving away too many guy-secrets. For all I know, now some guy-secret-police are going to show up at my door and beat the crap out of me. They'll probably look like Dirty Harry, the Terminator, and Rambo. Three guys who totally didn't know how to dress themselves.

Tattoo Ettiquette

Is there tattoo ettiquette?

As tattoos have grown in popularity, I expect sooner or later someone will at least attempt to establish some kind of manners about them.

I don't have any tattoos, so it's never been a big concern of mine, but for some reason it just now occurred to me. I'm sure that those prone to tattoos and tattooing must at some point ask themselves certain questions, such as:

At what point in a relationship is it appropriate to have your girlfriend or boyfriend's name tattooed on your body? Are there different waiting periods for different body parts? Should tattoo artists be liable, ethically or legally, to enforce these waiting periods?

What's the best method for handling a mis-spelling?

Should a picture or cartoon reflect your mood, your personality, or both?

How long does a cartoon character have to be ingrained in pop culture before becoming an acceptable tattoo? Is Betty Boop too old? Is Pikachu too new? Is a guy with a He-Man tattoo a good example of this, or a bad one?