There were four maintenance men getting ready to work in the church gym this morning when we were going up to ride the bikes. They were all four biggish guys, the better to handle the scaffold or huge ladders or whatever they were trundling down the hall. As we passed, I couldn't help but overhear part of the conversation: " Did you see Pastor Nick's shirt last night? It was blue and looked great. It had the logo in red and it really stood out. They did a great job with that." "Yeah, it looked good on him." I couldn't hear a lot more but there was much nodding of heads and obvious agreement among them. And not one of them laughed.
So have men always been interested in fashion and such and they just hid it well, or is this something new that this Old Wife is just now noticing? I've heard the term "Metro-sexual". I think it was in a story about how Matt Lauer and Bryant Gumble like to go shoe shopping together. I read it is any straight guy who is in a clothing or design store who hasn't been dragged there by his wife. Maybe that movement has been spreading while I wasn't looking. But most of the guys I know are happy if they have clean jeans and a few t-shirts and if you try to get them into anything more fashionable, they balk
One pair of black shoes, one pair of brown. Tennis shoes. That's all most guys need. Oh, and here in the Southwest, cowboy boots. My sister visited our church once right after we moved to Oklahoma (she was from the East) and noticed that the preacher wore cowboy boots with his suit. She was appalled! But if you have cowboy boots you don't even have to bother with one pair of black and one pair of brown. Cowboy boots, like jeans, go with everything.. A guy figured that out, I bet.
Sometimes guys find what they like and that is the end of the discussion, no matter what the fashion trend. My husband will keep wearing the same button down dress shirts and the cuffed pants that he has worn since JFK wore them, no matter what style is "in". That way he is in fashion about once a decade, since styles seem to come around again about that often. The problem with this approach is that sometimes his styles are just not available. He'd rather wear raggedy old things than succumb to something different.
Take his underwear. Please. He has worn it so long that it is almost transparent. In fact once when we were at a doctor's office the nurse asked him to remove the undershirt he was "almost wearing." It's not that he doesn't have new underwear in his drawer. I have probably bought him a dozen new packages but he only wants the old ones. Hello! They just don't make them anymore! Or if they do, they have not worn down to the thickness of a moth's wing, which is what he really likes about them.
And socks? We could outfit a man-sized centipede with the new socks that are in his drawer that he refuses to wear. I have declined to even try to buy him any more socks so he trolls the internet and orders them online if he thinks they will meet his particular specifications, but they don't and there they are in the drawer, not even worn, just tried on. Usually only one sock per pair, in fact.
Except for TV newscasters and bankers you rarely see men wearing neckties these days. Even preachers don't always wear ties when they are preaching and I think I heard a collective sigh of relief when that happened. And yet the clothes that men do wear seem to be getting more colorful. Gone are the days when a white dress shirt was the only color available. I noticed a few years ago that almost every guy I knew had a pink dress shirt and now I see on TV that the "in" color is purple---watch any newscast out of New York. I suspect it will be awhile before the guys around here give in to that. No matter what color the shirt, of course, if they aren't wearing jeans, the pants are still always, brown, black or khaki. I'm not sure I'm ready for them to branch out on pants colors yet
If it happens I think I'll run it by the maintenance guys at First Baptist. Those fellows know when something looks good on a guy.
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