Can I ask how old she is? I remember my teachers wearing some stuff like that when I was young but none of the teachers I know now (in their 20’s) dress like that. I have a lot of teachers in my family and circle of friends and I don’t think that is really the norm to dress like that anymore. Not saying it doesn’t happen, and I see other women who dress that way (like the quacker factory stuff on QVC - shudder) and they aren’t teachers. I don’t know what they all do though - I don’t see people wearing it at professional office type jobs very often.
I don’t blame you for being turned off - I would have a hard time seeing a woman dressed that way and with a ‘mom’ haircut as a sexual being too. Hey I am a mom and I know it’s hard to find time to go all out every day but it is not that hard to get a decent haircut either. People’s personalities come through in their appearance and if you aren’t a match, don’t feel bad about it.
It really did drain any sense of sensuality from her. It was very difficult for me to think of her as a sexual being.
I’m 40, part of the Generation X crowd that was supposed to bring youth culture into middle age. I’m finding that the age seems to be a crosssroads when it comes to women; those in their late 30s tend to have a very young, almost youthful appearance and dress, while those in their early 40s are more likely to have outlooks that are far less youthful. not to menton the “mom hair”. A 38 year old woman might have her car stereo set to a top 40 station, while a 42 year old will have a stack of smooth jazz CDs.
Polo shirt, knee-length shorts, clean new sneakers, short white socks.
One observation: you seem pretty concerned with youth. For instance, I would never consider someone 40 to be a gen-Xer. I’m a gen-Xer, and I am not even 30 yet. And obviously, you seem to notice if the people around you are sort of young and hip or dowdy and old.
None of this is a bad thing–though you wouldn’t like me–at 29 I am headed straight for dowdy (well, weird dowdy. I make a lot of dirty jokes. ANd my best friends are all either over 50 or under 21). It’s to say that this need for a sort of youthful zest is a quirk of yours that you need to find a match for. But you need to approach it as something you value, but that other people may not, so don’t look at it as being appropriate or inappropriate, or whether or not it’s ok to write her off because she isn’t your sort of person. I promise you that she’s someone’s type of person, and better to present who she is honestly from the get-go.
This is muddled, I know, but it seems to me that you are looking at this woman and thinking "What a WASTE. If only she’d do something with her hair and get some decent clothes, then I would be able to consider having sex with her " The world is is full of interesting, quirky people. You certainly don’t have to date the ones whose quirks don’t match yours. But that doesn’t mean they are doing anything wrong in being who they are.
Wikipedia disagrees, but just barely. I’m 35, my teenage years were the 80s, and I consider myself a little bit pre-X.
elmwood, perhaps she doesn’t like fratboy clothes any more than you like schoolteacher clothes. I’m sorry, but it’s time you start dressing like a grownup.
For me, it’s the short white socks & clean new sneakers that would be a total turnoff. Geez, man, them’s some nerdy footwear! Hip, cool adult men wear sandals, loafers, etc. Save the white socks & sneakers for the gym!
Just sayin.’
For the record, I’m 42, and I don’t dress like teacher or have Mom hair, or listen to top-40 radio, either. Today, I have on a short, bias-cut feminine dress, gold sandals, and my hair is pulled back into a short ponytail with a gold barrette. I listen to adult alternative radio. And if anyone calls me frumpy, I’ll beat them with my cane!(I tore a calf muscle the other day.)
BTW, I do have Birkenstocks, but I also have very ugly feet. If I wore socks with them, I’d look like a German tourist.
According to Wikipedia and other sources I’ve seen, Generation Xers were born after 1965, and could go back to 1961. I was born in '66. There is no fucking way I am a baby boomer.
See, this is why I hate fashion. I can never keep up with what “hip, cool adult men” wear, I don’t know all the semi-arbitrary rules, and so I’m pretty much doomed to unwittingly wearing something hopelessly dorky that’s turning women off and [Stuart Smalley]I’m gonna die homeless and penniless and twenty pounds overweight and no one will ever love me[/Stuart Smalley].
I hate it when Manda JO says what I meant to say, but better and more clearly, even if she is bordering on Gen-Y (Gen X has, for the most part, turned 30 and some have hit 40. It’s just that no one was paying attention to us…again.)
Well, I’m 20 and I don’t see anything wrong with shorts to a coffee date. A coffee date is tremendously casual and there isn’t a thing wrong with wearing shorts to such an event on a hot summer afternoon. Maybe it’s just because I’m a youngun’, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with his choice of attire, considering the “date.”
And I also think it’s silly that everyone is now jumping on him for wearing (GASP) shorts and sneakers (with a polo, mind you) to a casual date. Casual is the operative word here- they weren’t out to dinner or a show.
Perhaps he does act young for his age (or even cling to it), but that doesn’t mean he has to accept some middle-aged looking and acting frumpy woman. So what if he likes 40-somethings that dress young, look young, and act young because that most closely reflects his personality? So what if he doesn’t think the school marm look isn’t sexy? So what if he doesn’t want to bang someone with a soccer mom hair cut? That doesn’t make him a bad person, sheesh.
If I listed off the criteria I tend to adhere to for guys that I date, I’d look like a vapid, superficial, tremendously shallow bitch. Not to say I wouldn’t stray for the right guy, but I’m generally attracted to the same hair color, eye color, height range, weight range, clothing style, and personality type. And not strangely at all, I’d imagine that every single person posting to this thread maintains similar standards for those that they date. There’s no reason to jump on the OP because of his tastes.
He’s 40. He should not wear shorts and sneakers to even the most casual of **first ** dates. Clinging to youth is no more attractive than racing toward old age. And no one is saying that he should date her anyway, just pointing out that he’s not exactly in a stone-throwing position as far as age-inappropriate attire. And finally, criticizing other people’s tastes leaves one open to similar criticism.
And we are not. At least I am not. I’m just saying that their’s nothing wrong with the woman in question, she’s just not his type. He wants someone who is fighting middle age, not someone eager to settle into it. That’s fine. But speaking as someone eager to settle into it, I gotta say that just because that woman isn’t right for him doesn’t mean she’s somehow wrong. She knows what she looks like, she knows how she dresses, if she wanted to be young and hip she would be.
