Lady Things, With Frilly Bits... and shit

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

(Mods, I can say “Shit” here, right? If not, please accept my apologies and change the title accordingly…)

I found myself in the unusual position of having to purchase a new pair of work pants last week, since I’ve just landed a new job and the only pair of black trousers that I own are rather expensive, and whilst great for job interviews, are too good for everyday wear.

Anyway, I went to the local K-mart (K-Mart in Australia is a “Real” department store, not the crappy frequented-by-extras-from-My Name Is Earl kind of place it’s known as in the US) to look for a pair of pants, and was immediately amazed by how big the Women’s Clothing section was, and how the Menswear Section could comfortably fit in the cubicle of an aircraft toilet and still leave you with enough space to wash your hands, so to speak.

The Women’s Clothing section, on the other hand, was large enough to have it’s own postcode, I daresay, and it was chock-full of (to quote Rubbish Transvestite Emily Howard from Little Britain) “Lady Things, With Frilly Bits… and shit.”

Clothes in so many designs, with all sorts of (to me, anyway) superfluous frills and buttons and patterns… just think how many Coolies labouring in China or Vietnam or somewhere in which Dog features prominently on the menu at local restaurants had to labour away to make this stuff for women, but the men’s clothes were boring- business suits, white shirts, ties, maybe some polo shirts, a few jeans… nothing exciting, in other words.

The Fragrance section was much the same- half a dozen cans of Lynx for the guys, and so many different types of perfume for women that an entire Japanese Whale Harverst’s worth of Ambergris probably went into it (well, either that or a McWhale Burger).

Everywhere I looked, the stuff for women was generally full of unnecessary frills or girly pink, or worse, both.

And don’t get me started on the Makeup. I had a used to have a female friend who wore makeup, and she took so long to get ready I was half-expecting to see Glaciers advancing across the landscape by the time we left for dinner. Why? Because she had to mix and match her makeup with her shoes, which needed to be co-ordinated with her hair, which had to go with her watch, or something.

Yeah, anyway, so has anyone else ever actually stopped to wonder how much of modern industry is built around Girly Crap™? I mean, the market for Bloke Crap™ is large and extensive (Guns, Cars, Fishing, Alcohol, Porn…) but it positively pales in comparison to the unstoppable behemoth of Girly Crap, which includes everything from frilly socks to movies about people getting horrible diseases and forgiving their mother for abandoning them in 1954, to make-up, to household appliances :stuck_out_tongue: , to teddy bears, to… you get the idea.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this (hence the MPSIMS location) but, still… It kinda makes you think sometimes, doesn’t it?

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[QUOTE=Martini Enfield
Anyway, I went to the local K-mart (K-Mart in Australia is a “Real” department store, not the crappy frequented-by-extras-from-My Name Is Earl kind of place it’s known as in the US) to look for a pair of pants, and was immediately amazed by how big the Women’s Clothing section was, and how the Menswear Section could comfortably fit in the cubicle of an aircraft toilet and still leave you with enough space to wash your hands, so to speak.[/QUOTE]

See, there’s your problem right there. You went shopping at Kmart. Kmart, BigW, Harris Scarfe, Target - none of them are intended for men to shop at. They’re intended for women shoppers, who may occasionally need to pick up a shirt, or a pair of trousers or boxer shorts for their husbands/sons/boyfriends…

3

On the other hand, you guys have sensibly sized clothes with understandable sizes, too. Shirts – neck size and sleeve length. Pants – waist size, inseam, etc. And so on. Us female types, none of that easy stuff. We’ve all had the experience of trying on two garments of the same type, allegedly the same size, only to find one too large and the other too small. Plus here in the US anyway, the sizes are related to nothing. A size 11, for example, is NOT halfway between a 10 and a 12. It’s another set of proportions altogether. The only thing close to a meaningful size is a bra, which is sized via chest size and cup size.

And if that’s not enough, when you get to better clothing, you male types can usually expect alterations, no problem, even though the things are probably close to fitting exactly anyway. Us, no way. It’s a pricy extra luxury. And our stuff is going to wear out sooner.

Furthermore, not all of us go to the lengths you describe to coordinate makeup and clothing, unless it’s a special occasion. Maybe I’m just old, but I wear the same lipstick and eyebrow pencil all the time. If I’m not going to work, a party, or out to dinner in a nice place, half the time I don’t even bother with that. I just recently started using two different purses – a small black one for interviews or work, and a large brown one that I can fit everything into that I could possibly need.

And finally, one reason that women, especially younger ones, go to such lengths is for you guys. They believe that if they go to all this trouble they will be more attractive to you. Face it, for most of you, if you saw one young lady with loose jeans, a simple shirt, nondescript shoes and no makeup and another one with tasteful (or even trashy) makeup, a pretty dress and high heels, you’d look longer at the second one.

So, in conclusion, it’s ALL YOUR FAULT! :smiley:

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There is no fashion for males. In revolutionary disgust more than as an expression of my actual tastes, I wear t-shirts and jeans exclusively. I suppose if I had $3600 to spend and 4 months to shop and wasn’t at all averse to having tailors make me custom garments from designs scribbled on scratch paper, it might be possible to assemble a single ensemble, but it’s just not worth it.

Guys’ clothes suck. Except for the casual-wear jeans-&-tshirt stuff which is well-made and comfortable.

Even in broad general categories —e.g., I want to riff on the general idea of a “jacket” but I don’t want the buttons to go down the fucking center with the two sides just barely meeting there, show me some variants — they’ve got nothing. I blew $1400 at Dunhill’s to have them modify a smoking jacket and was only mildly pleased with the results. At least I didn’t look like every other male at the damn wedding-event. But next time I’m just going in jeans and a t-shirt, fuck it.

5

Enfield’s Corollary to the above: The hotter a woman and the more attractively she’s dressed, the less likely she is to actually want to talk to any of the guys she’s succeeding in gaining the attention of… :wink:

6

As a girly girl, I am awful. I hate pastels and frills…

I have 5 identical pair of black work pants, and 5 indentical polo shirts [each a different color, but the exact same shirt] as work clothing. The polo shirts come from a mens store because they are cut square, and are hence looser and not body hugging like womens shirts tend to be. They are better made, they are in bright vibrant color [well, except the black one, and the gray one] and were almost $20US cheaper than the more flimsy girly polo. I wear a pair of mens loafers. They are a lovely soft heavy leather, with padding around the opening so they don’t rub the ankles. Womens loafers are of a stiff flimsy leather, not as well made and more expensive.

I don’t give a crap about style, it is the minimum I can get away with at my new job as a customer service drone. I answer phones and type stuff into a computer, and call our vendors to arrange service, I could do it in my jammies.

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Forget that, I’ve tried on two items of the exact same cut, fabric, and style from the same rack and manufacturer, and found one too big and others too small. (Bear in mind it was maternity wear, but still)

8

What about mail order as an option? Several friends don’t bother going to stores, they find a decent mail order company, buy a few things, find something that fits, then order one in every color.

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Ahhh. Martini - once you know the secret you’ll realise K-Mart is the best place to shop for pants in Australia. Two good reasons - King Gee Tropicals and it’s the only place I know of you can still get Amco jeans.

K Mart shoes are, however, a whole dif’rent kettle o’ shit.

mm

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So what you’re really telling us is that you’re just a woman in comfortable shoes?

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You are so right. I think men’s dress and suit pants are made for guys who are at least six feet tall, but miraculously have 29-inch waists. If you have to go up a couple inches in the waist, they fit your waist but everywhere else they fit like a circus tent. And that even goes for khakis, too, which is why I also just wear jeans most of the time. Regular “Lucky” brand jeans just come in one length, and amazingly enough it’s the length I need! Yay.

12

Not a chance. There’s nothing hotter than a girl who looks happy and comfortable with no makeup, loose jeans and a t-shirt.

13

What Enginerd said. Given a choice between females in expensive girl-clothes, naked women, and women in jeans and t-shirt, I’m actually going to ogle the ones in jeans and t-shirt. No kiddin’ — I have probably 10000 times as many files consisting of cute women in jeans than of porn.

14

Try being a “big” guy. Apparently, if your waist size is larger than a 48, you’re supposed to be 7 1/2 feet tall. With cankles the diameter of a Rubbermaid trashcan.

I call all of my jeans “clown pants”. If I caught a stiff tailwind I could fly in these things. The flapping of the extra material in my pant legs could cause injury in small children. It’s not pretty…

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That’s not mentioning, by the way, the fact that Big & Tall stores are legal franchises for highway robbery…

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It’s because retail businesses realize they’ve just barely convinced men to shop for clothes at all. The least amount of difficulty and they’d lose us entirely.

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Absolutely! In fact, you know the kind of sloppy clothes women tend to wear when they’re doing something practical, like an old top so you don’t mind if it gets paint on it - and they have their hair up in an untidy jumble as they’re sitting outside painting a bookshelf or whatever?

That is just sooooo adorably WOW!

Beats all that expensive flashy crap they think matters, hands down.

18

in one sense yes … but not in the sense that Robin Williams means :smiley:

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K Mart shoes are a foul, foul abomination.

Lowes sells King Gee stuff, but I’ve found the best place to go for my clothing needs is Trade Secret- where they have Man Clothes in sufficient quantities to allow some variation in what I wear, without costing more than I earn in a month.

I used to love Mambo, but I’ve not bought anything of theirs since they stopped making the amusing T-shirts and Mambo Loud Shirts. To me, that WAS Mambo, and what they have now is a Heresy of the highest order…

20

That’s not meaningful at all. Band size starts with how big it would be around your chest in a specific place-- a place you would have to take your breasts OFF to measure. Then cup size is discovered by “first putting on a properly fitting bra” (if I HAD a properly fitting bra, I wouldn’t need to measure the damn thing!) and then measuring around the greatest distance there, applying the quadratic formula, dividing by pi, and converting it on a supplied chart. (Seriously, you add 5 to your band size, and then compare your actual greatest-distance-around to that, and the difference in inches is your cup size.) This means that when you talk about, say, a 34B cup and a 38B cup, those aren’t the same size/volume/shape of breast on two different ribcages-- they’re two completely different breast sizes! Also, the names of the cup sizes aren’t the same past D-- two sizes above a D cup can be a DDD, an E, an F, or anything in the world.