My first disclaimer: I can’t say much about chuffy men. Not really. I’m still working on my winter fat from 2015.
My second disclaimer: This is not about the women of the world. Nope. This is about the men. (Frankly, I’m afraid to be critical of women. That’s gotten a tad risky, at home as well as in the world at large. Testy, they are.)
That said, it seems we men are bent on letting our grooming standards slip to the point of just getting plain ugly. Take the big chuffy guy going into our local Bi-Mart store. If he ever shaved, it had to have been last year, and I’m sure his hair hadn’t been insulted by a comb or brush longer than that. (I mean, I’m mostly bald, and I still brush what little is left.) But it wasn’t beard and hair that stopped me in my tracks. It was the flannel pajama bottoms he had cut off at the knees…to wear to town…and, I guess, to show off his leg tats and fat knees.
(I mentioned the pajamas bottoms to my good wife who said they might just be a wild pair of shorts, but I didn’t buy in. Nope. He was wearing pajama bottoms.)
And I see some of us old guys wearing shorts to town that look like they saw the laundry last month and have been slept in every day since. I guess I’ve turned into an old fuss budget, but I can’t help think, “Where’s the pride?”
The grooming standards I grew up with came straight out of the Great Depression. As one old timer who survived that rough period put it, “Shave, keep your shoes shined, your hair cut and your pocketknife sharp.”
On TV I see celebrities who show up for gala events sans tie, sans shave, sans haircut, studs in their ears, and nose candy hanging like metal snot from their noses. (I have no idea what to say about some of the sleeve tats.) It’s like we men are in some kind of pushing match to see who can move the grooming standards to the next level…and it ain’t one level up.
Nope, I have to believe the new standard for male grooming is, “Let’s get ugly and go to town.”
Rod
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