Vanity wars Him: Shopping outside the comfort zone By "Ambrose" The usual practice when men buy clothes is for the salesperson to ask at the end of the transaction, “Can I interest you in any shirts today?” Not like that you can’t, buddy. I’m looking to be romanced a little. As a woman I know once said, “Aren’t you even going to ask me out to dinner first?” We all have our comfort zones. Some people like to shop for cars. A lot of men, like the guys who will stand on a milk crate and speechify for a half hour about how much they hate shopping, will research an entire day to make sure they buy the right sports equipment. There are even men who like to shop for clothes. When I cross the haberdasher’s threshold, however, my heart is beating like a rabbit’s, and I know I’m not the only one. There are a few things that will bring my pulse rate down, though. I’ll buy just about anything if a pretty girl says, “That looks good.” Or if an attractive woman tells me, “That works well with your eyes.” Or if a grandmotherly woman says, “Get that.” Any combination of these sorts of recommendations coming from a member of the double X chromosome set and I’m sold. You might think that this is because I’m an easy sell, but I’m not so sure. I’ve been dressing myself for years. Generally I know what I want when I walk into the store. I want, for example, a red tie. “We have ties over here,” the woman at Lord & Taylor told me the other day, walking slightly ahead. I started to look at the red ones, but she had something else in mind. “Blue is a good color for you,” she said. “Try this.” It was, in fact, a blue-and-brown-striped tie, in violation of one of my longstanding personal rules: No Brown. “That looks good,” she said. “With the shirt you are wearing, this works really well.” We tried a couple of other things, and I ended up walking out with several ties, none of which were red, because, actually, red is really not a good color for me. “Nice tie,” my wife said when I wore the blue and brown-stripped number the next day. “Is that new?” I never get “Nice tie” from my wife when I do my own shopping. The secret is all about letting go. A good sales person knows that it’s all about the next sale. You’re going to buy something today—you are in the store, you’re a guy. Obviously you have spilled something on your last tie and you need a new one, so they are going to sell you a tie. What they want to do is get you back, and the way to do that is to sell you something that will get you “Nice tie.” It’s not just about the flirting. There are other ways to buy things that will make you look well dressed, instead of merely not naked. One of the things that you want to keep in mind is that having a signature look is different from having a closet full of stuff that all looks the same. A signature look is itself dangerous. You know who has signature looks? Cartoon characters. We should strive to be more fashion forward than Charlie Brown, don’t you think? The salesperson at Hugo Boss took the suit jacket I’d just tried on and laid it out on the counter, then pulled a shirt from the shelf behind him and tucked in under the lapels. He selected a tie, and slid that in. Neither the shirt nor the tie would have been something I’d have selected for myself, but seeing how the whole thing worked sold me. And then he did it again. I’m not a complete chump; I know when I’m being upsold. But I also know when to let go. It’s easy to look schlubby. Schlubby is how we look when we dress out of habit, instead of thinking about what we are doing. Flair takes practice, like any other skill. Instead of thinking, “I need a red tie,” listen to the professional who spends his or her days living with these shirts and those ties. I don’t trust myself enough to shop outside my comfort zone, which explains all the gray suits and red ties I own. When my anxiety alert is Code Orange (also a bad color for me) what I want to do is go for something familiar, then get going. Like most decisions made in haste, this seldom yields the best results. I get the best results by carving out a block of time, going alone, and being open to advice. “You will keep wanting to buy the red tie,” the first salesgirl had said to me. “All the magazines say men really go for red. That’s why we wear it.” I must have missed that article in the Economist, but maybe what she said is true. It also makes me suspect that the next time my wife comes down the stairs in red, I’ll be thinking, “Nice dress.” “Ambrose” now uses his yellow t-shirt with the black zig-zag stripe to dry the car. Her: Gym class for one By "Faith" I hate this guy. I love this guy. He is a constant reminder that I am unmotivated and in a bad way. He is the only one who makes me feel like there is hope. In the three hours before we meet, my anxiety level rises as I come up with a hundred reasons I need to stay at work or home. From the second I am done, I can’t imagine what all my fussing was about. I do need his help. I can already tell I am not going to be able to move tomorrow. I would never work out that hard without him. Then again, I never follow through on my promises to exercise faithfully between our weekly sessions. I had a personal trainer once before. It was years ago and a relatively new concept for the non-aspiring athlete. My experiment was practically guilt free. The gym was within walking distance of the office, the session only lasted thirty minutes, I could afford it, and I needed it. I was stuck in a mid-thirties malaise brought on by a reality check. I was no longer in my immortal twenties, and not yet in the fortified forties with a soul protectively thickened by another ten years of disappointment. I reckoned that if I spent enough money, I could find my twenty-five-year-old body again and everything would be good. Once I looked better in my jeans, there wasn’t a boss, client, child, or spouse that could defeat me. My trainer was a kid, young and intense, with stegosaurus hair and a piece of rope tied somewhere about his wrist or neck. He was also extremely serious about physical fitness and so wired that his energy level alone convinced me to give him a try. He had me take lunging steps across the room. He had my back up against a wall, pretending to sit without a chair. All of my long-silent muscles started to scream, which was the point. He would also encourage me to drink coffee before a work out, lots of coffee for the extra energy buzz. This kid was Red Bull way before its time. I didn’t stick around for more than a month, probably just eating the cost of the last few weeks instead of showing up. It was hard work that I didn’t like so much. Plus the soreness proved that I was in such bad shape that unless I did this a lot on my own, too, I could never get enough traction to see the results I needed. So I did the only logical thing. I quit. A decade later, I ran into an old friend. We exchanged compliments. Mine were sincere. “You have a gym at home?” I asked, repeating what she had said while picturing a glistening workout room with mirrors and treadmills but missing the inhabitants because that’s how it goes. “You have a personal trainer, and he comes to the house?” I said, again echoing. Only this time, I could not really picture the situation in my head. It was too foreign to me. Three times a week, she explained, and she had been doing this for the last five years. That meant that for every year she worked this hard, she ended up looking two years younger. I went home and rested my forehead against the refrigerator door. If I had stuck with it, I would now be twelve. My new personal trainer is nice. He is the kind of guy my mother could have raised. He doesn’t yell if I am late; it’s not a problem if I cancel. I still have a hard time getting to the gym without angst. I will probably never lose the “me time” guilt. A big difference today, however, is that instead of thinking that by working out I can subtract the years, I am now focused on addition. I want to avoid the broken hip for another fifteen years beyond the age for which I am genetically encoded. So it’s fitting that I get confused on the locution. I’m not certain that for me there is much of a distinction between personal trainer and physical therapy. Another big difference is the exercise. Forget bench presses, sit-ups, or suicide line drills. Exhaustion and stiffness are delivered through equipment that looks soft and friendly but will kill you in your sleep. Nothing looks dopier than a balance ball, but it feels as heavy as a cannon ball after the 117th repetition. And forget about complaining. It’ll only seem to others that an oversized balloon could wrestle you to the ground. Rubber bands deliver fire to every muscle that has been hiding for the past few decades, they elicit as much respect as a pink hair scrunchie. BOSU (both sides up) balance trainers feel like a surfboard underfoot, forcing half the muscles into working just to keep from falling, while the other half of the body contemplates a squat, bend, or lift. Wait, did I suggest surfing? An elephant at the circus balancing on a kickball is more accurate imagery. All the equipment is sky blue or cherry red, but those colors are a lie. They should be caution yellow and pass-out black. I saw my old personal trainer a few weeks ago. I was going out of a place while he was going in. I recognized him, and cocked my head to try to remember why. He said my name, and extended a solid handshake. He will do well in life, I thought, and then went to the grocery store for a fresh bag of coffee. “Faith” was hoping her old personal trainer would have shown evidence of a beer gut by now. SUBSCRIBE NOW Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top