It’s not about body language or not being fat or being beautiful, it’s about perception of male clothing that works in our favour. And it’s about money. You’ll have to spent upwards of 20 times as much as you spend on your jeans and t-shirt at Walmart or REI. That money is not so much for the garnment but for the middle aged guy that will be honest enough to tell you if something is not for you.

Oh, and wash your hair and don’t pick your nose in public.

Kaleberg also has a point that always makes me wonder about certain pieces of clothing. High heels for one. I have never understood them. The idea that a shoe would be made so uncomfortable, and then it’s ‘popularity’ enforced to the point where people felt they had to wear them… I’m not really sure what to call that, subjugation?

I tend to prefer the more colorful stuff myself, and unless I’m playing a role or pretending, I can’t wear a suit. Something about the outfit just really makes me uncomfortable. Wearing it is kind of like a lie. On the other hand, if the intent is to lie, (act or something) then I can wear one, and carry it off. It just doesn’t last very long.

personally, I believe that Beau Brummel has a lot to answer for. I would like to stamp his effect on men’s fashions into the mud to the bottom of a very polluted river where it belongs.

pardon my grammar… the subject makes me emotional…

Have you ever worn steel shank shoes? They aren’t very popular these days because they set off metal detectors and they weigh a bit, but they change the way you walk and the way you stand. A steel shank shoe doesn’t flex like a sneaker. Watch a movie set in the 1930s or 1950s and watch how the men walk. Then look at a more modern movie set in the same era. One of the neat things about LA Confidential was that the actors actually knew how to wear their clothes.

It is probably even more extreme for women. Few woman reading this will remember the phrase, “displaying one’s carriage”. Men and women walk differently because of their different pelvic alignment. Men swagger; the angular momentum is counterbalanced by their shoulders. Women roll their hips, but they can keep their upper bodies steady. This not only makes it easier to carry large loads on their heads with minimal additional energy expenditure, but it affords a means of sexual display in which sexual differences are exaggerated. (Consider that women are usually represented as much paler than men, exaggerating the actual difference of perhaps 2 or 3% which results from a different vitamin D, folic acid tradeoff).

Watch Audrey Hepburn carefully, and see what moves and what doesn’t, and how that allows her to take advantage of the flow of her dresses. There are dresses made for swirling and their are dresses made for slinking. I remember one great dress in a Bette Davis movie that was designed for both slinking and swirling, and it probably required a fair bit of coaching and practice to wear. A Chanel suit works best with subtle body movements, but an Armani suit works best with more shoulder motion.

The fashion magazine Allure has had some good articles on wearing clothes. They are into the nutsy boltsy side of fashion and beauty. It’s actually more like Make magazine with its how to and how it works approach. I’m not sure if you can find copies in your college library, but it might be worth checking.

Another example is the writer who wrote about how, when he gets a new suit, he in effect beats it up to subdue it so that he can wear it without its overpowering him—i.e., so he can wear the suit, not have the suit wearing him. Obviously, the beating up is so he can gain the psychological upper hand.

Perhaps it’s easier to see in this example: think how a person who can truly afford a new Lamborghini drives it in contrast to a person who stretched to limit to buy one.

Trust me, I’ve seen Brad Pitt on the street in a rumpled T-shirt & jeans and that detracted not a whit from the glamour. That’s what the root meaning of glamour is: a spell cast on the beholder to make the beheld more attractive than s/he really is. I’ve never seen a rumpled T-shirt and jeans looks so, so . . . fabulous. It’s all about the ‘tude. Sean, be the suit. You’ll look fabulous too.

Of course, the more egregious examples are us scientists and mathematicians. But it’s hard to see clearly that close to home.