No hair and baggy pants

It’s Pet Peeve time. I was bewailing the fact that women color their hair in order not to look old, which is socially unacceptable for women in our society. And I was bewailing the double standard this represents. But the absolute proof of that double standard lies in the hair style that has been the fashion for men for too long now, and the equally appalling fashion in men’s britches.

I call the hair style the skinhead look. All these men with their semi-shaved heads. Do they think this style makes them look good? Actually, I don’t think looking good, looking attractive, enters into it. They may think it makes them look cool, or tough (especially, I think, tough); and it certainly makes them look like “one of the guys,” since so many men are doing it (and they say women are slaves to fashion). It’s possible that they think looking this particular brand of cool and tough makes them sexier as well; but if they do, oh, ladies, we’ve got to get busy and disabuse them of this notion. Some of them may insist, as my friend Tim does, that the hair style is “so much easier and cooler.” But you notice Tim doesn’t defend it as making him look better.

I swear that men – at least heterosexual men – so rarely care about looking as good as they can look. They care about easy, and comfortable, and manly. They care about “cool” and tough...and what qualifies as that is determined by other men, not women. And they care about fitting in, looking like all the other males in their group, whatever their group may be. What they do not care about is looking a woman’s idea of attractive, except possibly when they first fall in love. In general, women just have to take them as they come.

Including in those damn baggy shorts! I remember when watching a basketball team play had the added attraction (for a woman) of being able to watch all those good-looking legs and male derrieres sprinting up and down the court. Ditto a tennis match. Now the players all look like they’re wearing droopy drawers, and don’t even have derrieres. The man filling his car next to you at the convenience store cum gas station is no better. There are just these sticks that show from below the knee to as far as the inevitable running shoes, with or without socks. Except in grossly fat people, the part of the leg above the knee adds considerably to the aesthetic appeal of the human leg. Men certainly know this as regards women’s legs: they like for as much of it as possible to show (unless the lady in question is the aforementioned grossly fat.) But do they return the favor?

The oversized jeans slung so low you wonder how they keep them up are also utterly without aesthetic appeal. Besides the fact that here again the human form is totally masked, being able to see the top two inches of a young man’s underwear is not a turn-on. Do you suppose they think it is? Or is it simply part of the not-caring mentioned above?

I realize in the General Scheme of Things this is not terribly important, any more than whether or not a woman colors her hair is important. But I do think caring about aesthetics contributes to the overall tone of civilization. It’s a positive to try to make the world a better-looking place, rather than an uglier place, whether it’s by planting a garden, or wearing clothes (or hairstyles) that look good on you. The no-hair and the baggy britches have been around long enough. How do we get guys to grow their hair back, and strut their stuff in real shorts, and trousers that let us know they’re men, not dirty clothes bags?

Of course, men could now take the opportunity to castigate those awful...capri pants?...that look good on almost no woman, unless she’s very slim, the pants are quite form-fitting, and she has on heels...which are an absurdity when you’re doing casual which supposedly these pants are.