Of all the obnoxious responses to my post last night on #Brexit, the most puzzling one came from former Honey Badger Brigader Rachel Edwards:
https://twitter.com/naughty_nerdess/status/746215478138306560
My first reaction? DonDraperSaysWhat.gif.
I asked my Twitter followers if they had any idea what she was talking about. It turns out she was referring to a recent blog post by our dear old friend Scott “Yeah, the guy who does Dilbert” Adams in which Mr. Adams suggested that v-neck sweaters are “the uniform of a man who is owned by a woman.”
So Ms. Edwards was evidently trying to suggest that I’m so totally owned by women that I not only wear v-neck sweaters but … I really really like it. Which would be a rather weird insult even if I did own any v-neck sweaters. I mean, I’m not going to lie, I have owned v-neck sweaters before, but I’m pretty sure I got rid of them all in my last big clothes purge after realizing I hadn’t worn any of them in maybe 15 years.
But enough about my sweater preferences. The big question is: why on earth does Scott Adams think that v-neck sweaters are some kind of dire threat to American masculinity?
Let’s take a look at Adams’ blog post on the subject yesterday, titled (and I’m not making this up) “The Humiliation of the American Male in 2016.”
Perhaps the biggest unreported story of this presidential election is the humiliation of the American male. Unless I’m blinded by confirmation bias – which is entirely possible – it seems to me that the humiliation of American men is now institutionalized in the media.
His evidence? A TV commercial in which a henpecked husband gets sent back to the store after buying the wrong brand of dishwasher detergent.
[T]ake careful note of the American man’s v-neck sweater,” Adams writes. “That’s the uniform of a man who is owned by a woman.”
Adams continues:
You’re laughing because you know it’s true.
Wrong on both counts.
How many of the married men reading this blog have received those same sweaters as “gifts” from women? Personally, I’ve received about 25 over the years. None from men.
25 sweaters? Twenty. Five. Why … are women giving Scott Adams so many goddamn sweaters? Who are these women?
I received three of those sweaters so far this year. I throw them away. Nice try.
Note to self: Never buy anything for Scott Adams, ever.
Many of you can’t talk about this topic without being accused of sexism, losing your jobs, and being cast out of your social groups.
First they came for the sweater-talker-abouters …
But I can talk about it because I endorse Hillary Clinton for president. I did that for my personal safety, because I live in California, but still, I’m on the progressive side now. That gives me some extra freedom of speech.
This is a reference to Adams’ hi-larious fake endorsement for Hillary Clinton that was really an endorsement for Trump — who Adams thinks will win the election in a landslide by rallying a silent majority of men who are too afraid to talk about sweaters publicly.
The dishwasher soap commercial should give you a hint of how big that turnout might be. You might not notice the size of the coming tsunami because American men generally don’t voice their humiliation in public. …
But in the privacy of the polling booth, the men who don’t talk are free to act.
Take that, mean imaginary ladies who force men in v-neck sweaters to go back to the store to buy the correct soap!
You can criticize Donald Trump on many dimensions. You can say he’s not really a great businessman. You can say he’s offensive. You can say he lies. You can hate his position on issues. You can say he has insufficient policy details. And lots more. But I think we all agree that Melania never asks Donald to go back to the store because he’s too dumb to buy the right kind of soap on the first try.
I predict you will see the largest male turnout of any presidential election in American history.
I’m not so sure, Scott. I can think of one thing that might derail the Trump Train: Photographic evidence of Donald Trump wearing the V-Neck Sweater of Male Humiliation.
But surely there can’t be such … oh, wait a minute. Literally 30 seconds of Googling produces this:
Congratulations, Hillary, on your impending landslide victory!
So… having a dick run for office will bring all the silent dicks out swinging to the yard so they can be eternally avoided. Alright then.
“Stupid feeemales are so overpriveledged and such entitled, fragile princesses worrying about murder, rape, abuse, and blamed for everything, etc. We men have to worry about V-neck sweaters, scented effin candles, hard chairs, ‘that time of the month’ and the…:gulp: ‘friendzone’! We men are the most oppressed gender! White, straight men are the most oppressed in the world and if they’re other worlds out there with alien life then I bet we are more oppressed than them too!”
http://replygif.net/i/246.gif
Your tears are delicious Scott.
Imaginary Petal: Ah, thanks for explaining. As you can probably tell, fashion policing tends to set of my own anxiety. 😛
I don’t think I’ve ever given anyone in my life a V-necked sweater, male or female, and I’m personally pretty against giving clothes as a gift in general. Except socks, I love socks.
(Not to say you shouldn’t do it. I just don’t because I have a very large fear about getting someone the wrong size and upsetting them.)
@leftwingfox
Oops, sorry about that! It was meant the opposite way. I think we’re similar in that way.
I’m so glad you did a post on this. Adams’s horrible blog needs to be ridiculed more.
He recently turned off comments on his blog, because it turns out that online Trump supporters are really, really racist and homophobic, to the point that even Adams got embarrassed about it.
@Fruitloopsie: Scott Adams would like to inform you that it’s not a contest, okay?? Let’s not COMPARE the bad things that happen to women (something about periods? Who knows) to the REALLY REALLY AWFUL things that happen to men.
And he can say that, because he endorsed Hilary Clinton.
I wonder how many minions Trump has fired for getting the wrong soap.
Come to think about it, a man’s practical IQ is probably inversely proportionate to the size of his entourage.
I have a V-neck sweater. Also, a boat-neck sweater, a Henley sweater, and a dolman sleeve sweater. Several cardigans. And zip-up sweaters. I also have other sweaters.
I used to have a cowl neck sweater. That was really nice in the winter.
Once I had a turtleneck sweater. It was kind of tight around the neck, so I don’t buy those anymore.
My boyfriend doesn’t wear sweaters. He says they make him too warm. And itchy. So I don’t buy him V-neck sweaters, although I wish I could, ’cause ownership.
Instead, as revenge, whenever he’s asleep, I filch one of his credit cards to buy myself sweaters via the Internet, lots of sweaters. UPS and Fed-Ex are constantly at our door with boxes of sweaters for me. My boyfriend wonders where I get the money to buy all the sweaters. Shhh.
Scott Adams is a great example of what happens when someone thinks their magical thinking and vague sense of pattern recognition is hyper-rational.
It’s a special kind of delusion. Like wearing your lucky shirt, only you start deciding it’s some kind of hard rule everyone needs to follow or they’re not rational.
When it was just the business environment, people could go “ha ha yeah managers are dumb and do say things like that.” And no harm came from the fact that engineers also say those dumb things and some managers are great.
But now he’s trying to turn his imagined rules into real ideas and finding a nice credulous bunch of authoritarian followers in the MRA camp.
How nice that Scott thinks that men are so dumb they can’t buy their own clothes.
David, you wanna know what I thought upon seeing the picture of Trump?
Those sure are some stubby little fingers that Trump has.
And the douchenozzle Adams is rude to just announce that he throws perfectly decent gifts he receives into the trash bin – has he ever considered maybe uh…I don’t know…TELLING PEOPLE WHAT TO BUY HIS UNGRATEFUL ASS if they’re planning on buying him a gift? He might get sweaters because nobody knows what else to get him. If I were one of the people who have bought him a present in the past, only to discover he throws them out for possibly THE MOST RIDICULOUS reason ever to exist, I wouldn’t get him anything for the rest of his unnatural life. And I’d hope that the planet suddenly shifts into “Snowball Earth”-mode so I could remind him “HEY WOULDN’T IT BE NICE IF YOU STILL HAD THOSE SWEATERS?”, maybe I would even pay people to continually chase him back outside into the freezing cold.
Don’t worry dude, I’m sure Trump will come to rescue you. (snork)
I find men in simple solid colored sweaters pretty sexy. It’s not as if I think men should wear clothes they don’t like because it pleases me, but I’ve known as lot of women who like a man in a sweater. It’s pretty funny when whiny men reject a simple thing they could do to be more attractive to women, yet they’re perfectly happy to obsess about wrist circumference, holding frame, and other ridiculous bullshit in their quest to find out why they’re not getting laid.
… huh. If Scott Adams has such an angry aversion to soap, maybe people are giving him new clothes because his existing clothing is funky as hell. And not that good “Bootsy Collins” kinda funky, either.
Might be time for a wardrobe upgrade, dude. Or at least time to stop choosing each day’s outfit with the tried-and-true bachelor technique of digging around in the hamper until you find the least-horrid-smelling shirt.
IP:
That’s… that’s a bad thing now? Asking for a friend.
@Moggie
Oh my, this has turned out to be rather controversial. :p
I refer to my explanation in my other comment up there. It isn’t a bad thing, but in my opinion it should definitely not be a good thing. Because just look at it.
I could complain about Scott Adams 5ever, u guise. God, he just annoys me so much.
I particularly hate when he acts like he’s convinced people because he asks rhetorical questions of his audience and then fills in what he assumes is their response. I saw a post of his some time ago that I’m unfortunately not able to track down now, but he was talking about Clinton vs Trump in terms of the policy proposals they’ve made. “Sure, Hilary has more plans now,” he said (I’m paraphrasing), “but if you think about it, if you were looking for the next CEO of a company, and your candidate wouldn’t be starting in the job for another year, would you expect them to have any plans yet for how they would do the job? No, you wouldn’t.” Hey, back the fuck up there, Scott. Yes I fucking would, actually.
His point is that we should vote for Drumpf because he keeps his women in line? I am curious as to how he thinks that will help Drumpf run one of the most powerful nations in the world. I am genuinely concerned that there are people who would vote for a guy simply because he doesn’t go for dish soap.
I think vee-neck sweaters can look really good, on both men and women.
(Haven’t ever heard of a sweater being a knitted smock before, it’s basically just a pull-over top, typically knitted but doesn’t have to be.)
Dilbertman is dumb. I’m pretty sure he’s just trying to say ridiculous, outrageous things so as to stay relevant long past the age where his actual productive art was.
Oh Scott Adam, I found him as a kid to be the most boring comic. And even more I see how much of a conceited jackass.
Hmp, men. Always fixated on clothes…
Honestly, guys, don’t you understand that there’s more to life than what you wear?
Funny coincidence – I was thinking about how I was going to phrase basically this exact thing as I started reading your comment. And yeah, totally agree. As an occasional offender myself, it’s really really obvious Smart Guy Effect. And it seems like his success doing The Thing has done a poor job at tempering it.
@button-downs-tucked-into-pants
I think it depends on the outfit; if you’re just wearing a button down and dress pants, then yeah it’s not gonna look great unless you’ve got clothes that fit you really well. But dress shirts weren’t really meant to be worn alone; add a suitable vest and that button down will look a million percent better, and unless you’re going for a specific “messy formal” look, it’s gonna look best with a tucked shirt. (Also depending on the context, a corset also does a great job)
Also keep in mind that many dressier button-downs are long as fuck and if you don’t tuck them will hang almost down to your knees, which will look way worse than any tucking related issues.
IP, just for you, I now have my shirt untucked. I’m at home, so I can get away with this. If I tried it in the office, it would not be a popular look.
@Alan,
In the US a jumper is a woolen dress thingy, usually worn with a blouse and tights/leggings. 🙂
@dlouwe
Why would you buy a shirt that is way too long? :/ In fact, why are they even made.
@Moggie
I know. This is why I will never be able to get a job that has a dress code. I’m just not gonna be a shirt-tucker, ever. It’s uncomfortable and looks terrible. Maybe if I’m very vocal about this, I’ll be able to work at some point in the distant future. :p