Guest Post: Cynthia on Male Style

(Psst! This is a guest post from Cynthia, who is both smart as a whip and smartly dressed. See it all happen at Be Fabulous Daily.)

…it provoked the idea that a woman tends to look her most beautiful in clothes that make her look strong, not glamorous or sexy or powerful…

– Cathy Horyn on Azzedine Alaia

Months ago, I posted something about Mark Wahlberg as one of my style icons.  And Rebekah asked me to ponder why it is that I relate to male style.  I think there are probably many reasons, but here are a few.

Basically, all these reasons go back to one thing:  women are still not as often seen in the public sphere being smart or effective or talented.  Women are very often seen being decorative, wearing ballgowns and 5″ heels, or wearing aprons on cooking shows, and lately we have some overgroomed conservative crazies who are out in public actively working against their fellow women’s rights, but these roles of celebrities are very narrow.  The talented women who are out there working away at creative endeavors don’t seem to end up in the spotlight.  Or if they do, they end up in the spotlight in staid suits, looking very unstylish.  So I think it’s no surprise that inspiration for a woman with ambition ends up coming from the other side of the gender line.

1)  Men got mojo

Talent is what’s really attractive to me.

See, plenty of guys are physically attractive, and plenty of them are nice.  But for me to find men attractive, there has to be something going on up there (points at imaginary head) that is out of the ordinary.

I have a whole lot of focused intensity and discipline, some of which is innate and some of which comes from years and years of uphill battling against a demanding career.  I have so much spare intensity and discipline that instead of being a happy TV watcher come the evenings, I practice dance like it’s a second job.

I am attracted to people who have a comparable intensity.  An obvious manifestation of this is talent.  The man who can play music.  The talented scientist, or the persuasive writer.  The guy who knows how to build things that work.  Or even the guy who knows way more than he’s paid to about trees and how they grow and how to take care of them.  The talent and the intensity focuses a person’s features in a way that is attractive.  Caring deeply about something gives them the ability to hold a conversation that’s not trivial.  Witness Jack White:  a slightly doughy, stringy-haired, very pale dude.  His talent brings focus to an otherwise pretty ordinary body, and his personal sense of style creates a striking, attractive look where objectively there’s nothing much to look at.  And if you have ever watched It Might Get Loud, you know that you don’t just want to watch Jack White.  You want to be Jack White.  You want to be that cool.

I’m attracted to people with mojo, and I’m also, arguably, one of these people.  In my job, I have some of the freedom that goes along being “the talent”, and I want to emphasize my mojo, and so, I might model myself after someone like Jack White:  play up the contrasts of my super-white skin and dark hair, add bohemian embellishments to my day to day wardrobe.  Like rocker boots and heavy outsize jewelry mixing and layering with girly dresses, or frilled and colorful embellishments colliding with conservative elements.

I know there are plenty of women with talent.  But if you look at our cultural icons, our rock stars and our public intellectuals, there are still a lot more male icons to choose from than women.  It’s not fair but that’s how it is.

2)  Men are protagonists

The stories are about them. They make things happen. Oh, maybe not exclusively so, not anymore, but I’ve read widely in literary fiction of the last few hundred years, across many cultures, and I’ve watched a zillion movies.  In literature and in movies, even if the main character of a story is a woman, most of the story is likely to be about her relationship to and reactions to a man.

I’m a protagonist.  The story is about me.  I make things happen.  Who models that behavior in our cultural world? Usually, men.

So, what should I dress like if I want to have influence and get things done?  Well, maybe I won’t dress exactly like Clive Owen up there, but I’ll tone down my outfits to crisp lines and neutrals if I need to project power.  I actually like suits and think they can be part of very stylish and even feminine dressing, and I don’t think the “business culture” that demands suits necessarily puts unfair constraints on women in the workplace.  I think women can wear suits and own them on our own terms, but we have to demand better than the average boxy pantsuit.  That’s a long-term style goal of mine; I’d like to get to where I can wear suits and look like this, instead of looking like a low-budget Hillary Clinton.

Seriously I just wanted to post a picture of Clive Owen.  Oh wait…that makes this about my reactions to a man.  See what I did there?

3)  Famous men in public are getting things done; famous women in public are often decorative

Of course, not all of them, not all the time.  For instance I love Michelle Obama, because she is using her limited latitude as First Lady to show us a very different model of the Presidential helpmeet.  Instead of being a dainty thing always dressed in a perfect suit, Michelle Obama is openly athletic; she dances where people can watch her; she shovels garden plots like a laborer, she has guns and she’s not afraid to show them to you.  Michelle Obama is strong, and she gets things done.  And then she turns up in fantastical feminine dresses in her decorative state role.

But mostly, what we see of feminine “role models” in public looks like this:

While we might see famous men in public on red carpets looking more like this:

Ya know, normal, right?  He could do something real in that suit — teach a class, close a deal, go to the grocery store, dash across the street to make the bus.  I’ve seen male scientists dress pretty much like this to give formal keynote talks at important meetings.  I’ve never seen a female scientist wearing anything remotely like a ballgown.  And a lot of times, our women in public are nowhere near as demure and respectable as Ms. Hathaway in her long gown.  As I said to Rebekah in the comments of the Wahlberg post:

I think actresses (especially younger ones) make terrible style icons for real women, because it seems like we see them in one of two contexts — either they are in a cocktail or formal gown, on the red carpet, or we see them in more casual clothes that are essentially clubwear, and both of those styles are unwearable by women in their day to day lives. They aren’t people who look like they can get things done.

The other day, I saw a blogger post an outfit of the day inspired by some sweet young thing actress who was wearing shorts to a formal event.  I looked at that OOTD and I have to admit that the first thing I thought was “wow…you must not have to work.”  I think that a lot when I see bloggers outfitted up in 5″ heels and miniskirts for their day. What are they dressing for, practicing for, trying to be?  In my life, I need to look serious, and I think I do that in a fairly feminine way.  But, that means dressing more like George Clooney doing his job on the runway — elegant, stylish, classic, but practical, not costumeish — than like his female counterparts.

Who has questions or comments for Cynthia? Show ‘er your mojo and step right up!

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