Blowhard, Esq. writes:
The architecture is great and all (and I’ll return to it), but Vegas is one of the great people-watching destinations. So let’s take a look at the indigenous wildlife, shall we? [1]
It quickly becomes apparent that all attractive women between the ages of 18 to 35 use the city as an excuse to break out their Hooker Dresses. Here’s a picture of Heather Graham modeling the basic style.
Those cuts on the right side notwithstanding, all the elements are there: low-cut, short, and tight with strappy heels. Variations allowed for, of course (I mean, we’re talking about women here), but that’s the basic template the ladies work from. A couple of examples, taken at The Palazzo and Mandalay Bay:
(Pardon the rear shots, as it were, but I haven’t yet perfected my walk-up-to-strange-women-so-I-can-take-snaps-of-them-for-my-blog Game yet.)
The city is crawling with such sights. They strut down the sidewalk, they strut through the casinos, they strut through the restaurants, and they strut through the clubs with purpose. They may not be able to wear these dresses back home without discomfort, but they sure as hell will walk around here in all their glory and sexiness, dammit. You’re only young once.
So the galz know what they’re here for, but what about the guyz? They’re, uh, less impressive. “Collapsed manhood,” as a friend put it. A harsh assessment, but perhaps appropriate. I mean, look:
Don’t get me wrong — the dude is perfectly presentable…if he’s dressing to go to the grocery store. But when your girl puts on the dress with the spaghetti straps and heels, you might wanna put in a little more effort than just a t-shirt and khakis, fer crissakes. (Check out the beta stance he’s got goin’ on too.)
Alright, to be fair, some try a bit harder:
Nicer shirts, at least. Still, the girls look smokin’ hot (the dress that blonde who’s staring at me is wearing can’t be much shorter) but the guys look just OK. Those untucked shirts aren’t doing them any favors. Seems like a good rule of thumb is, if your woman is gonna put on the Hooker Dress, you can at least put on a sport coat, if not ideally a suit. Look at how the women are being ignored, too. Guy on the left is checking those oh-so-important college football scores I’m guessing, and the dudes on the right are talking to each other.
I don’t have any pictures unfortunately (some data I can gather next time I visit), but I spotted plenty of guys who were dressed well. Nice suits, no ties, and they looked comfortable too. Many such men looked like they were Middle Eastern or some other ethnicity I couldn’t quite place. Regardless, they were from cultures where men are taught how to dress when spending a night on the town with a lady.
But for every descendent of Cary Grant that one saw, there were about 100 of these:
Look at her: hair done, striding confidently, surveying the casino like she just bought it. You know she’s been looking forward to this trip. She indulged in an expensive pedicure and manicure this morning, chose her favorite color, that shade of red she just loves. You know she’s waiting for just the right moment tonight (On the dance floor? Sometime during dinner? When it’s time to slip into something more comfortable?) to take that pin out of her hair and let it come tumbling down. Meanwhile, look at him. LOOK AT HIM:
A comic tragedy of errors: 1) the rumpled, untucked denim shirt, 2) the shorts (shorts!), 3) the Man Bag, and finally, 4) the flip-flops. The only thing that would make this absolutely perfect is if he was fishing a baseball cap outta that bag.
What to make of this? Am I being too tough? Faunafrailty, who popped up in the comments to my last Vegas post, said she once saw some girls dressed in their slutty best heading to a college frat party “like a parade of prostitutes” and observed that the “non-effort of the guys just made it sleazy.” Maybe the guys dress this way subconsciously b/c it make their women shine even brighter? Or are they just too afraid or intimidated to stand with them as sexual equals? What do you think? [2]
[1] Your friend and humble narrator realizes that he is one of the last people who should be passing judgment on the sartorial choices of others. Yes, he is fully aware of this and shall proceed full steam ahead anyway.
[2] This is my way of saying I don’t know what I’m talking about so I need your cultural-anthropological insight.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
We are all the People of Walmart now!
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Honored that The Manolo linked to my piece. Thanks!
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The guys either 1) have put no effort into their appearance at all or 2) have modeled their look on something they saw in The Idiot’s Guide to Douchebaggery.
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I should probably add “douchebaggery” as a tag.
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We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And it would seem that the women are on a different trajectory from the boyz. They look like they’re seriously interesting in sex. The guys, not so much. Either that or the boyz are so overconfident in their relationships to said wimmin that they no longer care what they look like. I have a feeling a svelt guy in a nice set of Armani threads could have his pick of any of those girls.
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We need an “edit” option here. Let me repeat the first few sentences: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And it would seem that the wimmin are on a different trajectory from the boyz. The wimmin look like they’re seriously interested in sex. The guys, not so much.”
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I screwed up my initial comment to Blowhard, Esq., regarding the frat party. The one I witnessed was a Halloween frat party, which made it much worse. Slutty cops, nurses, devils, etc., parading into a Halloween party where the men didn’t bother to dress up in costume! The effect was that these girls were dressing up just to be evaluated by these lazy guys. (Though, IMO, girls dress up to impress each other as much as they dress up to impresse guys.)
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Overconfident Schlubs, what a strange development. It’s like they’re pet dogs to these girls, after all dogs eat up their own vomit but girls still think they’re cute.
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The women look great, the guys are barely in the game. That’s about standard these days no matter the venue. Guys gripe about “alpha males” and the need to have some game. Just showing up, on time, and dressed to play puts one in the top percentiles. Hitting the gym a bit and some basic hygiene go a long way too.
I was a little put off my all the “hooker dress” observations until it was clear you were admiring just how well the women were strutting their stuff.
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I have nothing but respect and admiration for ladies in hooker dresses. God bless ’em.
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With the ‘men,’ what you’re observing is the triumph of the ’90’s “don’t be a nerd” meme. Somewhere around 1995, the entire concept of the gentlemen was transmuted into presumptive nerdiness. So since then, it’s scruffy facial hair rather than clean-shaved, pants that don’t fit (probably a hat-tip to alpha gangsta culture), and, of course, illiterate speech, the whole thing designed to convey casualness rather than effort. Incidentally, what would happen if a few Ward Cleavers showed up in this crowd? The males would probably gang up on him for making them look like the slobs they are.
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The men look like little boys to me. Those are play clothes.
My hair salon does a lot of work prepping galz for proms, and my stylist (a man) has remarked to me how much older the teen girls look and behave compared to their dates. The girls come in and get their hair done up and put on these fabulous sophisticated dresses, and the more they get done up the wider becomes the apparent maturity gulf between them and their dates.
I look at these pictures and see the same thing. Galz who have been playing “dress up” for years, and guyz who dress like they’re 9 years old and it’s a Saturday morning no schoooool!!!!
So in part, my guess is this reflects a different idea of play.
But I agree, there is nothing whatsoever sexy about the way those men are dressed — and I agree it’s curious that they don’t seem to notice or care about what they’re projecting.
One of the golf magazines I read, Golf Digest, ran a piece in the October issue (doesn’t appear to be online) titled “Upgrade Your Look.” It showed three before & after examples; the “befores” illustrated dated styles and colors, a too-baggy shirt, too-long pants, too-long sleeves, and clunky footwear. The “afters” showed clothing that actually fit the models and tied colors together in a more artful way.
I took notice of the article as an example of the broader cultural influence of women’s magazines (what’s next? An article on waxing before your round?) but upon further reflection (ha ha) I have to say: it’s a net positive when men pay attention to how their clothing looks and fits, as long as they don’t cross the line into fussiness.
Count me as a woman who likes it when my man dresses sharp 😉
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The schlubiness is to signal heterosexuality in the male. These girls in the hooker dresses have no time and energy to suss out the well groomed gentlemen in Armani or the skinny hipsters in their midst.
I first noted the hooker dress phenomenon seven years ago when I went to a daytime traditional Catholic wedding in White Plains, New York and all the brides’ female friends seemed to have bought their outfits in Bebe, and half of the guys didn’t bring a jacket. At Christmas brunch at my parents’ country club in San Francisco, I see daughters from these preppy families in hooker dresses, but they still can’t help pulling down the hem when standing at the buffet line.
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I think that this might be the most accurate anthropological perspective of Vegas. Ever.
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Hey, thanks for the nice words, Shelley.
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The problem with the guys is that their mothers are still buying their underwear. The women they are out with assume that if this relationship continues, they will take over the underwear buying (along with everything else) eventually. And everyone is okay with that. Nobody has ever told the guys that they can look better, or that they should, or why it matters. If they are lucky, they will marry their more stylish dates, and then she will start buying his clothes and being responsible for how he looks in public. Lucky girls!
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I don’t have anything insightful to add, except that when I saw that picture with your comments on it, I burst out laughing — rare that anything online can do that for me.
Well done sir.
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Thanks, man.
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To expound upon the above observations, there are definitely several key factors at play here. Glynn makes a particularly important point — the “men” in these photos, mostly in their 20s and 30s, are dressed in their play clothes, and if you examine the evolution of male fashion in recent decades, you can start to understand why. When the “youthquake” movement came about in the 1960s, emphasizing individualism, as well as childlike behavior and style, the mandatory, all-encompassing suit all but disappeared from the male wardrobe, and the men that came of age during that transition period were really the first generation to grow into adulthood without ever being made to physically abandon their play clothes. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, they instead adopted the denim jean as their uniform of choice, and they have been clinging to them ever since.** A generation later (as we can see from Blowhard, Esq.’s lovely photos), the sons they have raised are emulating the behavior of their fathers. Now, that’s not to say that anyone in this scenario is uncouth, has poor manners, or is a terrible person just because the pendulum of fashion has swung in a drastically different direction — and of course, there are many exceptions to this lackadaisical look among twenty and thirtysomething males today. But on the whole, I think what we are seeing here is the direct result of what happens when men are raised by other men who are never forced by society to “grow up” (and dress like a “man”).
As for these so-called “hooker” dresses…well, I will hopefully write a book about that phenomenon some day, because there is far too much to say on the subject.
**I am 28, and my father is 62 ; I can hardly remember a time when I saw him wearing something other than jeans.
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I must admit that if I wasn’t for my job, I likely wouldn’t own a suit or sport coat either. I’ve seen my dad in a suit exactly once and I never saw my grandpa in a suit.
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Meanwhile, in South Korea . . .
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http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/19561776/for-s-korean-men-makeup-a-foundation-for-success
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Cho Won-hyuk stands in front of his bedroom mirror and spreads dollops of yellow-brown makeup over his forehead, nose, chin and cheeks until his skin is flawless. Then he goes to work with a black pencil, highlighting his eyebrows until they’re thicker, bolder.
“Having a clean, neat face makes you look sophisticated and creates an image that you can handle yourself well,” the 24-year-old college student said. “Your appearance matters, so when I wear makeup on special occasions, it makes me more confident.”
. . . South Korean men spent $495.5 million on skincare last year, accounting for nearly 21 percent of global sales, according to global market research firm Euromonitor International. That makes it the largest market for men’s skincare in the world, even though there are only about 19 million men in South Korea.
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