The Dictatorship That We Crave

There's no way I can buy myself a decent pair of jeans that does not require my nuts to end up in my throat. Not only do skinny jeans make walking and talking a challenge of epic proportions (not to mention tying your own shoes), the way I see it there are very few men who actually look good in a pair of nut crunchers. I call it the dictatorship of skinny jeans. The fascism of fashion. You think we live in a democracy. Well, you think again.

Where does this obsession for skinny jeans come from? It's an obsession that could be called ironic at best given that 31.8 percent of children and a whopping 68.5 percent of American adults are overweight or obese. You need to be veteran Oscar material to look them in the eye and tell them with a straight face that skinny does it for them. 'Damn, you look great!' Now, I have seven mirrors in my house, and big ones at that, and I know skinny jeans do not become me. It's called knowing your own limitations, plus I want to look like a man, not a kid. So where do I go from here?

Did you know that a lot of folks out there are like $15 light switches? It's the strangest thing. One day you hear them preaching how heavenly bootcut jeans really are, and come the next season they don't understand why in the world I would be wearing bootcut jeans. It's like I'm talking to a bunch of clones. They look the same — and I mean really the same — but what they're saying is the exact opposite of what they were saying just fleeting moments ago. They're like politicians that way. 'Show me the money and I will tell the masses what you want me to have them think I believe.' Skinny jeans: switch on, switch off. 'Only an idiot would be wearing bootcut jeans. You must be a dinosaur.' 

You may have noticed that I'm conveniently ignoring all the women on this planet who may feel the urge to slip into something skinny. That's because I'm a gentleman and I would never (not unless I'm tortured or tickled) call them $15 light switches or, you know, sheep. The fact that 90 percent of all women have been wearing Skinny Everything for at least five years in a row of course does not make them so (it makes them fashionable), nor has it for that matter made them skinny in the process. Maybe I'm used to women wearing Skinny Everything. Maybe the time has come for us men to finally start wearing women's clothes. Alex, you first.

Mind you, there was a time not long ago when women started wearing pants (did you know that women were not allowed to wear pants in the U.S. Senate until 1993?), a masculine prerogative which they stole from us in the name of equality and firm booties that we can drool over but, often, not touch. Maybe skinny jeans for men is a way for women to get even and we're too stupid to even notice. All I know is today I tried to buy myself a brand new suit. Little did I know suits have been relentlessly skinnified too and there's no way I will ever look like a man wearing a suit that makes me look like a teen dressed up for a job interview. The skinny suit: less fabric, same price, and you're the idiot who buys it.

I don't think so.

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The nut cruncher. For men who've got them.