Thursday, February 12, 2015

Clothes Make the Man (Sometimes)

A while back, I made a comment on social media that got some odd reactions - mainly from the people who only read half of it.

My comment was basically "Sometimes, when I'm driving through town to work, I see a guy and I just want to walk up to him and strip him down. And then put him in better clothing to see if it makes any difference."

Obviously, the people who only read the first sentence thought that I was simply talking about stripping down random men on the street, probably for prurient reasons. But those who read all the way to the end realized that I was truly trying to focus on the greater good. After all, there are a lot of good looking guys in the world who simply have no idea how to dress.

What's worse is that so often it is guys who obviously have a lot of money who look the worst. They're usually - in my opinion - trying one too many trends at the same time. It's like the old pre-bar adage of needing to take off one accessory before going out. If they're already doing skinny jeans and a lumberjack beard, maybe they shouldn't also do the clunky boots that make them look like they just left Dogpatch. That kind of thing.

But then there are also the guys who seem to find the right thing to wear... once... but then miss the mark the next time, after proving that they can do so much better.

In non-real-world terms, it's like Chris Hemsworth - the guy who plays Thor in the recent movies of the same name. (Full disclosure - one of those is on TV right now as I'm writing this.) For me, I think he looks good in the Thor costume. It gives him good shoulders (although I assume he has pretty good shoulders, anyway) and between his hair and the way the cape attaches to the armor, his neck fills out well. In real life, when you see him, he has a really long, skinny neck. And he looks kind of out of scale.

The times that I've seen him on talk shows, I've thought it would be nice to strip him out of his street clothes and put him in the Thor suit (or maybe just attach the cape to his street clothes, I guess), because that seems to be a better look for him.

I kind of wonder what I would think if I saw him walking across the street in front my car some morning. I don't really know how he dresses in real life, so it could go either way, I guess. And I can't really imagine me whipping out a full set of Norse armor to put on some random guy walking through downtown Minneapolis at 8:30 in the morning, anyway.

Oh... I totally admit that I also could use someone showing up and completely redoing my wardrobe. So if there are any fairy godmothers out there looking for that kind of gig, feel free to send them my way.

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