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 Adams is assuming that a large male turnout means a win for Trump? He must be unaware that there are males who are not White, right? And he must be aware that Trump has done an outstanding job with pissing off Black, Muslim and Latino men (and women). Or he’ll become aware on November 8th.
Yeah, but they’re damn near the only thing you can wear these days if you’re a woman and you want to cross-dress.
You know what fashion trend I will never understand?
Fake. Fucking. Pockets. On. Women’s. Pants.
WHY IS THIS A THING?!
Why do we need fake pockets? What is their purpose for being?
WHO was looking at a pair of women’s pants (which, I must point out, have always had shitty, tiny pockets to begin with), and thought to themselves “You know, I like the look of pockets, but we need to do away with their utility. Who needs pockets to keep things in?”
Either have pockets or don’t, don’t play with my emotions by looking like you’ll actually have pockets you fucks.
I totally thought of rompers when jumpers were brought up. In my defense, I don’t dress in very feminine clothing for the most part, and so I don’t know the millions of names for women’s clothing.
@Paradoxy
IKR???
@ Paradoxical Intention
I was out shopping today, and had that exact thought. And nowadays everybody (except me) has a phone the size of a dinner plate, where do the clothing designers think it goes?
@EJ
As I said in a previous comment, of course I have no problem with people wearing whatever they want to wear.
My problem is that certain details of clothing are arbitrarily chosen as “nice” or “proper”. I just loathe the idea of a workplace that would expect people to wear a pointless article of clothing for no particular reason.
– You get the job!
– Great! I’m so excited!
– Oh and one more thing, when you come in on Monday make sure you wear a ridiculously long shirt.
– Um, okay. Why?
– Because you will have to tuck it into your pants, so it’s better if it’s very long.
– Okay but… why do I need to tuck it in?
– It will be an extremely long shirt. Trust me on this.
– All right. Anything else?
– Yes, good thing you asked. I will also need you to tie something around your neck.
– Like… a noose?
– Yes almost that tight, but it’s supposed to hang down in front.
– Ah. So it will sort of cover my chest?
– No no, it’ll just be like a long triangular shape, sort of. It’s hard to explain but I’ll email you a picture later.
– Great! Sounds interesting.
– Just so you know, you will also have to get other shoes.
– Sneakers aren’t appropriate?
– Oh heavens no. We only allow extremely uncomfortable shoes here.
– But I have arthrit…
– Okay you’re fired. The shoes are non negotiable.
Fuck adults.
@Tara
That’s what your clutch or purse or handbag (or maybe all 3) is for, silly! And the designer’s name is from a Romance language, so they’ll be extra expensive sacs of pleather. I mean, you could always wear sweats or ‘mom jeans’ forever! Mwahahaa!
Women’s fashion, and the industry in general TBH, is just top tier fuckery ain’t it? People talk about oil, diamonds, bananas, etc. Cambodian Sweatshop, LLC ain’t far behind
@IP
Well, as I mentioned, there are some situations where I want a shirt that tucks in! For example, if I’m wearing a vest or corset, I usually don’t want the bottom of my shirt poking out the bottom, but I also don’t want people to see my stomach when I lift my arms.
I guess I could boil down the practicality of shirt-tucking to “covering the stomach when wearing fitted shirts.”
ETA: I do agree on the point about arbitrary standards of what’s “correct” dress. Standards of professionalism also dip their toe into racism and classism, so they’re definitely worth scrutinizing.
What Axecalibur said. In your 500$ Armani purse that would literally cost 20$ anywhere fucking else.
Hell, I’d rather get an “Armoni” knock off purse from a goddamned flea market for 20$ that I would actually use and not hide in my closet for fear of ruining it.
And speaking of that, I read an interesting article about the idea that buying small luxuries (like a new purse or whathaveyou) costs you SO MUCH MONEY and if you just didn’t buy five dollar lattes all the time, you could have A MILLION DOLLARS someday if you just SAVED that money instead of buying a small thing that makes you happy.
Of course, all of that was hyper-exaggerated to convince people to sell some old white economist dude’s book, and isn’t really grounded in reality.
So, the TL;DR of the article is: Buy yourself a fucking latte if you want a fucking latte and don’t let some old white dude tell you how you SHOULD be spending your money because he’s full of shit.
It’s five dollars, and it’s better to be happy and not have five dollars than to be sitting there wanting a latte and have five dollars.
Saving money isn’t bad, but don’t tell yourself that you should give up ALL of your little luxuries just so you can have the chance of having lots of money later. You’ll just be miserable.
While we’re on the topic, want to know the most ridiculous bullshit male-fashion “rule”? When wearing a suit, you’re always supposed to leave the bottom button unbuttoned. I don’t have time to look up the exact origin, but long story short there was an important dude who had a big belly and always left his bottom button unbuttoned. He was important enough that this became “the fashion” to the point that suits are now tailored in such a way that keeping the bottom button done up will actually cause undue strain on the stitching of the suit. Like basically your suit won’t fit properly if you do up all of its buttons, yet they don’t just… leave off the extraneous button.
As a woman, I find it super hilarious to hear complaints about men’s fashions and arbitrary style rules.
Imagine what it’s like for us!
I know you all aren’t trying to act like you have it worse than woman do so I’m not offended or annoyed. I just think it’s … adorable.
Sweaters and ties and shirts tucked and untucked and collars and pocket liars and rompers and ohmygod I love this thread.
Scott, no. You, blinded by confirmation bias? Please no. Stop destroying my faith in the world.
Totally agree with everyone re throwing away gifts – and then boasting about it on your blog. And he tops it off with “Nice try,” all you conniving ladies who want to enslave me.
*snort, snigger*
@wwht
But but what about teh menz though? :p
@IP:
I agree that tucked-in shirts are incredibly uncomfortable, though I don’t believe I hold the same belief that they’re always ugly.
Of course, as an overweight guy they don’t tend to look any good on me, so that’s another strike against me ever personally trying to rock the look.
Getting back to Adams for a moment, the appeal of Dilbert was always that it seemed to be on the side of the underdog. Watching his weird fanboying over Trump, all I can think is: the boss with the anatomically-impossible hair was supposed to be the hero?
You can endure a lifetime of deprivation for the promise of eventually being able to say you have an arbitrary large amount of money. What a tradeoff.
Imaginary Petal: you jest, but at the company where my uncle worked until his recent retirement, he had a tie and jacket on hand — as did all the other technicians — because if you were seen on the Nteenth floor without suit and tie you were escorted out. So when zebigboss needed their Outlook fixed, you had to have the clothes on hand.
I saw this! A tad bit confusing. Like a hurricane is a tad bit windy. Seriously make sense, MRAs. Or puas, or whatever, I don’t care.
The other day I asked some MRA or pua or whatever in my Twitter what Cuck meant. No answer. Rofl.
@IP
Sooo… you can’t tuck it into your pants because it isn’t long enough. And it needs to be that short because you’re not going to tuck it into your pants. :p
(NB I’m entirely in this for the logic-of-arguments angle, I have no opinion either way on shirts being tucked in or left out, and it’s not even an issue that affects me personally.)
That said, this whole thing:
was brilliant.
This macho stylist begs to differ
I know what you’re thinking, but, hey, his name is Alpha Male. So, either his parents had a particularly prescient sense of humor, or he’s the guy
Does he actually think people would lose their job for talking about sweaters? Maybe if he was loud and constantly brought it up and caused a hostile work environment with his daily rants about sweaters being the shackles of the married man… But maybe that’s what he means?
I think it’s an important distinction, Adams. For one, this is mainly projection on your part… So if you recognize the sense of humiliation is imagined, you can examine where it comes from and maybe grow as a person. You know, rather than lashing out like a child.
@IP:
I wear a suit and tie to work every day. Some days (like yesterday) I wore a three-piece suit, just because. The person next to me wears jeans, and whenever the temperature is above freezing he has short sleeves on.
Nobody else in the place wears a tie. Some of the women wear heels, others wear sneakers or those little slipper things that women wear nowadays. One wears hiking boots.
I am very fortunate to be in an environment in which my fondness for suits and ties can be expressed as a personal thing, rather than being a uniform. I acknowledge my privilege.
(Can I just rant for a moment about beards though? I grew one for my significant other because she likes beards and wanted to see what a bearded manfriend was like, but fuck me these things are uncomfortable. My skin absolutely hates it.)
Am I a bad feminazi? My boyfriend just wears whatever he wants. I did buy him a hoodie once with a pattern of Darth Vaders on it, but that’s because he specifically requested it. Should I invest in a v-neck or is it too late for that and I should simply castrate and be done with it?
Women can’t be trusted with pockets, I know I can’t be trusted. If I have functional pockets I’ll put stuff in them and then the lines of my butt will just be ruined!
I would be a fucking butt ruining femnazi c***.
(There was a period in the 90s when cargo pants and carpenter jeans were fashionable for women, I was soooo happy.)
I was really happy back in the 70s and 80s when women’s work wear moved into the suits with either pants or skirts. Aha! thought I, I’ll have pockets galore just like a man. Nuh, uh, what we got were shoulder pads bigger than any man would wear in a business suit and bonus stupid fake pockets.
The shoulder pads have gone, but those pockets that aren’t really pockets seem to have a life of their own.