Nose hair is a plague on our culture. Men need to keep in mind that there’s hair growing from everywhere. Tweezing, waxing … there are tools—little electric things can be put into ears and noses. It’s not painful. Everyone needs an additional mirror to help see these things. In our city, we spend a lot of time standing cheek by jowl with others, and it’s hard not to notice when a bush is growing out of someone’s ear.
These guys I met on Oprahwere in their late thirties, early forties, and still wearing clothes from college. It was a Peter Pan complex, basically. They didn’t want to grow up.
I see parents dressing like their children sometimes, and it disturbs me. When we do fashion shows at malls and the juniors’ items come out, I deliver the opposite of a parental advisory warning. I say, “If you are over the age of sixteen, look away! These clothes are not for you.”
From a fashion perspective, I find men are often averse to grooming because it puts their masculinity in jeopardy.
Men in Europe are more comfortable in their skin—or maybe it’s just that they’re more secure in their manhood. Men flirt with one another in France. They don’t want to go to bed together, but they don’t feel like their identity is threatened by finding another man attractive.
A strong division of gender roles is so pervasive in America, and I think it’s dangerous. Liz Claiborne Inc. does a lot of consciousness-raising around domestic violence causes, and one day I contributed to the cause by doing a series of interviews on the topic with bloggers.
One of my questioners told me that she draws a line in the sand regarding gender. She said only men could be abusers. She said we have to take the boys aside and tell them how not to do it and the girls aside and say how not to let it happen to them.
“Everyone needs to know how to recognize whether they’ve become a victim or a perpetrator,” I said. “ Everyone,regardless of gender, needs to know both sides of this.”
“I would never talk to a girl about how to avoid being an abuser,” she said.
Well, I call that sheer ignorance. She’s not looking at the bigger issues. I’m very pro co-ed everything. Everyone needs the same messages. Each gender’s interested in what the other’s doing. We need to tell everyone everything. What they choose to pay attention to is their issue, not ours.
In America, there’s so much pressure to be straight that if men even have warm feelings for someone of the same sex, they suddenly feel they must watch Girls Gone Wildon repeat until they’ve proven they’re not gay. I feel sorry for them, actually, because that’s a lot of stress to be under. We’re none of us all one thing all the time.
Maybe these guys just don’t want to be vulnerable in that way, to put themselves on the line by doing some work on the way they look? Jerry Seinfeld famously said, “People think I’m gay because I’m single, I’m thin, and I’m neat.”
Well, straight men, relax! I know just as many gay men who are big slobs. The rules of attraction dictate that you should cut your fingernails, toenails, and hair. Because I have sensitive skin, I try to skip shaving at least one day a week, but I try to pick a day when I’m only doing groceries and hanging around my house.
Self-interest and grooming intersect. Even if you don’t like it, wouldn’t you do it just to make sure you don’t repel people who might go to bed with you? If heterosexual males are trying to attract a heterosexual female, shouldn’t they maybe at least try to smell nice?
The question is what level of dressing up and grooming is appropriate for the occasion? What you need to do for a wedding versus what you do to go to the movies is different, but you should maintain a decent baseline standard.
Does grooming take time? Yes, it does. But we need to make a commitment. Taking a shower takes time, but if you never take one, you won’t be invited out very much, so you’ll have plenty of time left over. Should you ever blow off showers? Maybe if you’re in a coma … but no, in that case someone will bathe you.
New parents are almost as bad about this as macho men. I hear from a lot of mothers of young children: “I don’t have time.”
I say, “If you think about your family as a brand, are you not a brand ambassador?” When I see frumpy mothers with impeccably turned-out children, I think they’re making their children the family ambassadors, and that’s too much pressure on someone who still picks her nose. And it’s simply not occasion appropriate for a little child to be on the jungle gym in couture.
Speaking of inappropriate, have you seen all the tabloid photos of three-year-old Suri Cruise wearing heels? It’s outrageous. People say, “She’s setting a fashion standard.” I say, “Preposterous!”
At three? It’s not appropriate. If you’re going to the playground to play, you should wear sneakers—Mary Janes at the very most.
Now, I liked playing dress-up just as much as the next kid, and men’s clothes are boring to dress up in, so I think all children should have free range on their mothers’ heels. But there’s a difference between a child playing dress-up and a toddler seriously wearing high heels in her size while out in the world. I agree with the people who have said it sexualizes her. High heels are meant to make women look longer and leaner. That’s not necessary for little girls. We don’t want alluring little girls. There’s something sick about it.
You don’t need to—in fact, you shouldn’t—wear cocktail dresses twenty-four hours a day. You can wear anything, as long as you wear it well. It just comes down to silhouette, proportion, and fit. At every age. You can be in jeans and a T-shirt, but you’ll look good if you’re paying attention to the shape and size that’s right for you. Besides, baggy clothing is dangerous. Isadora Duncan was strangled by her long scarf when it got caught in the wheel spokes of a sports car. Let that be a lesson to us all.
AS MUCH AS I encourage people to dress appropriately for events, I will grant that invites these days can be confusing. Dress instructions can be murky. People seem to stretch to think of new instructions. Fortunately for women, “black tie” no longer means a floor-length gown. It just means dressy. For a man it means a tuxedo. “Formal” to me means the same thing as “black tie,” so why not just say “black tie”? “Semiformal,” I assume, means a suit and a tie for a man and a nice dress for a woman.
The kind of thing I don’t like is a mash-up like “festive formal.” I guess it means a man could wear a bright-colored tie and cummerbund, and a woman could wear a dress that is both nice and fun?
Well, it’s too much for me. I want to be comfortable, so if I see “festive formal,” I’ll just dress black tie and let other people be festive. If someone’s going to break out some amazing dress, they’ll do it whether or not they have the “festive” go-ahead, but for the rest of us, we’re just confused.
When I was asked to present at the 2010 People’s Choice Awards, the invitation specified “Hollywood chic.” What in the world does that mean? I wore a suit.
But nothing’s as bad as “black tie” during the daytime. I’ve seen it, and it’s totally wrong on every level. Technically, if it’s formal and daytime, men should not wear a tuxedo but rather a morning coat, but who owns tails? Nobody. Even I don’t own tails, and if anyone in New York would have such a thing, I would. There should be no such thing as black tie in the daytime. It’s not correct! If a man does it correctly with the morning coat, he’ll look like he’s in an Edwardian costume.
There is a way to clarify weird instructions on invitations. If I’m confused, I will call the host or the planner and ask, “What’s expected?”