“Julio, you can’t appreciate Valentino because you’re tacky,” a friend told me after I mentioned that spending more than $1,000 on a dress from the Italian designer — or any garment for that matter — is just silly.
I couldn’t agree with her more. I don’t really watch what I wear. There are times that I just roll out of bed, pick up an item of clothing off my “laundry chair” and, if it smells clean, put it on.
There are times when I feel like a failure as a gay man with my fellow heterosexual female friends for not fulfilling their “Will & Grace” fantasy of making snarky comments about their outfits.
Some of my fellow gay friends, who do follow trends in fashion, look at me like a foreigner in their world.
“You know, everyone in the gay scene in Guadalajara has a murse nowadays,” a gay friend said between drinks. “It’s all about the murse now.”
“Is that some kind of car?” I asked.
Shocked and appalled, my friend explained that a murse is a man purse. I guess I should have known. Gay failure kicking in.
Though I say I don’t really care about fashion — I truly don’t — fashion ads in magazines like GQ and Esquire tend to have some sort of unconscious effect on me. And guess what? I am not alone on this.
Out of curiosity, I walked around campus and asked a bunch of dudes to talk to me about male image and fashion. Some of them looked at me funny. Others just walked away.
The first guy I approached was cradling a stroller by the Vivian Engineering Center. When I asked him if huge billboard ads with ripped male models had any influence on him, he asked if his name would be printed.
When I said no, he relaxed and confessed that at times such ads made him feel as though he didn’t fit a standard or popular look. This was coming from a guy that could probably be one of those male models you see in ads for American Apparel.
I moved on to this dude that was smoking a cigarette by The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.
“I don’t really care for corporate ads so it doesn’t really affect me,” he said. I wanted to jokingly compliment him on the stylish haircut, but didn’t want to make him feel as though I was making fun of him.
When I brought up the shirtless ripped male models from Calvin Klein ads to a guy in front of the library, he was quick to point out that he doesn’t really look at the ads “that way.”
“They don’t really make me feel bad about myself,” he said as he pondered a little bit more. “Well, maybe not that bad.”
Like the guy cradling the stroller, he brought up the idea that fashion ads for men only motivate other guys to work out in order to get attention from the ladies.
“It’s not like I try to be like another dude,” interpretation major Christian Clavo said. “We just stick to what we like.”
Out of my clandestine poll of 10 guys, six admitted that such ads make them a little conscious of their body and what they wear. But the majority added they quickly forget about it.
In a clip from BBC’s “Secret of the Sexes,” a man is literally put on display to be rated according to his appearance. When he was wearing “bad clothes” — the kind I’m likely to wear — women said the likelihood to go out with him was very low.
When he went to a stylist and put on an expensive suit, women were quick to say that indeed they would go out with him. Who knew that by wearing something shiny, the opposite sex — or the same sex for that matter — would likely go out with you.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand fashion. As long as a T-shirt smells clean, I’ll put it on. Shoes? I’ll buy a pair when my toes begin to show. But like it or not, the ads that I see when I open the recent GQ tend to make me think about what I’m doing with my physical appearance.
Like the guys I talked to, though, I quickly forget about it and move on to the Zach Galifianakis article — who by the way has a kickass style. Or whatever.
-Julio Salgado