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That's almost good enough to love the idea, and yet... I don't know what about catering to male egotism is so liberating, even if that indulgence is carried off by other men.
Dwayne reminded me of this, so allow me a riff---I am over the limit.
I used to have a very good friend from junior high and high school who was overly conscious of his good looks and took it upon himself to groom me up, supposedly for the girls. I was fully aware of his sexually ambivalent motives, even if he wasn't entirely or dismissed them. But there was something very controlling about the whole process of being dolled up for dances, dates, and so forth. How do I put this? I liked the attention, but I didn't like the paternalism, the presumption that I either didn't know how, or didn't understand its importance or was afraid of being considered queer for dealing with this aspect of teenage social life.
This was in the late fifties when it was considered very cool to look good, and looking good meant being well dressed in a slightly flashy way. In LA this had a smooth, vaguely latin criminal look as the after taste.
Public school officials didn't like it a bit. When beltless continental pants were the fashion a school rule stipulated that boys had to wear belts. Naturally ultra thin belts became the immediate revolt, so the rules changed again. Belts had to be at least one inch thick. So the answer was cut off the belt loops on pants and wear the belt as an artifact. The Mexican kids went in for a particular shoe with thick wedge soles and no separate heel. So these were outlawed. Then fashion changed to taps, and of course taps were banned. Duck tail hair cuts were banned. Then the boys went for deep open neck shirts unbuttoned to about the navel, and of course those were banned almost before they got started.
It seemed like every few months something became a fashion, then was banned, and another fashion came up---always designed in advance to be banned. The girls went through a different cycle of styles and censorship, but none of it seemed to reach anything remotely resembling what I considered sexy (that is challenging dominate sex roles) in either case. I kept up with these fashion changes in school and then revolted against the whole idea or so I thought. Once out of high school, I went in for the no underwear, jeans and sweater look with no hair cut---i.e. straight into the early beat counter-culture. (Great for art school dates slumming on Sunset or Hollywood Blvd, but bad for the drive-in set on Van Nyes Blvd or fancy restaurants on Ventura). My high school buddy Bill was appalled, and acted as if his girl friend had refused to shave her legs. This amused me to no end. Look, Bill we're not dating so I am not shaving my legs for your ass.
The truth was of course that Bill looked better in the former style than the latter. On the other hand, I looked pretty good in the latter but not in the former. By early college, Bill had a heavy beard, and since styles had changed I was tempted to manage his looks the way he had managed mine, but I wasn't into the effort it would have taken. He was inherently good looking (Antonio Banderas style)anyway, and it was just a matter of adapting to particular turns of fashion to bring it out. So for example he looked like a cold hearted bad guy with a mustache, but a soft hearted mensch in a close trimmed beard. His older brother did much better in the early sixties politico days---which considering sibling rivalry, told me what was going on between us beyond some latent homo thang. It had more to do with power than anything else. It was a kind of male hierarchy of status by grooming, so that I was Bill's younger brother (subordinate) to his arch enemy and deadly rival (dominant) older brother.
Masculinity is very strange stuff.
Ten to twenty years later, my son revolts through a persistent pursuit of the straight arrow jerk look (guaranteed to burn the crotch off half the Castro---a fact he was blissfully unaware of). He wasn't particularly good looking as a kid and young man, but almost all of his inherent geeky straightness could be easily turned around with a little sun, a little dirt, and some softening around the edges: longer hair, earth colors, all of which suited his character. (I consistently pursued this with outdoor dirty stuff like climbing, hiking, camping, mountains, beach, or art movies, poetry readings, etc). But no, he would have none of it. Phototropic white, squeaky clean, extremely short hair, white t-shirts, etc. the current prep look at Cal with the uptight prep attitude to match. Ridiculous, since he was easily five steps further to the left than any of his friends.
What was he thinking? If I wear deodorant, nobody will know I am from Berkeley and that scruffy looking guy sitting next to me and talking about weird stuff, is my father?
Sure, Mike, nobody would ever guess....
Chuck Grimes