24.3.04
This Country Sucks: Reason No. 142
I went shopping for pants today. Shopping for me, no matter what I'm shopping for, is a grim and frustrating exercise. Apparently, I am in very few ways built like a typical American. I wear among the smallest shirts most stores carry - (15.5x32-33, or Medium) - am taller than I should be (at least the stores think) given how skinny I am (need a 32" inseam, or, preferably, 33", with a 32" waist) - and have feet that are simply too big (size 13; sometimes 12 works).
None of this is vanity - this is just by way of setting the stage for how frustrating shopping is, generally, for me.
So I decide that I want a new pair of pants. Not jeans - I already have several pairs of jeans, and they work more or less. Not khakis, and not black, as I have those already. And not olive, or sand, or pebble, or gray.
You can see where this is going. Well, I could, too, but...
I went to the mall with an open mind. Or as open as my mind manages. I was determined to look at every pair of men's pants in the mall (save Abercrombie...just a bridge too far, for me) if necessary to find a relatively interesting pant. I did not really think this would be necessary.
There are more than a dozen stores in my local (quite fashionable) mall that sell men's pants. Probably close to 20. Assuming each of the smaller boutiques has four or five kinds of pants, with about 20 or 30 in each of the four department stores, you would figure there would be, at a minimum, over 100 options for me. Surely, there is among over 100 pant options, a suitable pant, even for our picky narrator?
There were NOT over 100 options. Instead, in each of the more than a dozen stores there were the SAME 10 PAIRS OF PANTS repeated again and again. In Hecht's, toward the end of the journey, I nearly lost it as I gazed out again over a sea of hundreds of pairs of Docker's, Haggar, etc. in the same shades of Navy, Sage, Desert and Black that had been featured in the last several hundred pairs of pants I had seen before.
The singular - SINGULAR - exception to this oppressive blandness was the previously much-maligned (in my mind, at least) J. Crew, which featured not only red but orange pants (both tastefully washed-out). Tragically, even at fashionable J. Crew, they were "Relaxed-Fit." And 60$, though at that point my unemployed, broke ass would actually have forked the dough over if the pants had fit well.
This flippin' country. Today was a real object lesson in what can happen when you combine the herd mentality of the fashion world with the basic homophobia of the American Male (i.e., colored pants = gay) (it must be homophobia - the only other explanation is that the fashion industry doesn't trust American Men to make their own fashion choices, and the 1970s and any golf pant manufactured prior to 1992 stand in stark opposition to that line of thinking) (not that I wouldn't kill for some of those golf pants right now).
Point being, I'm annoyed. As usual. Also, if you know where I can find a good pair of pants, let me know:
mingle08@hailmail.net
None of this is vanity - this is just by way of setting the stage for how frustrating shopping is, generally, for me.
So I decide that I want a new pair of pants. Not jeans - I already have several pairs of jeans, and they work more or less. Not khakis, and not black, as I have those already. And not olive, or sand, or pebble, or gray.
You can see where this is going. Well, I could, too, but...
I went to the mall with an open mind. Or as open as my mind manages. I was determined to look at every pair of men's pants in the mall (save Abercrombie...just a bridge too far, for me) if necessary to find a relatively interesting pant. I did not really think this would be necessary.
There are more than a dozen stores in my local (quite fashionable) mall that sell men's pants. Probably close to 20. Assuming each of the smaller boutiques has four or five kinds of pants, with about 20 or 30 in each of the four department stores, you would figure there would be, at a minimum, over 100 options for me. Surely, there is among over 100 pant options, a suitable pant, even for our picky narrator?
There were NOT over 100 options. Instead, in each of the more than a dozen stores there were the SAME 10 PAIRS OF PANTS repeated again and again. In Hecht's, toward the end of the journey, I nearly lost it as I gazed out again over a sea of hundreds of pairs of Docker's, Haggar, etc. in the same shades of Navy, Sage, Desert and Black that had been featured in the last several hundred pairs of pants I had seen before.
The singular - SINGULAR - exception to this oppressive blandness was the previously much-maligned (in my mind, at least) J. Crew, which featured not only red but orange pants (both tastefully washed-out). Tragically, even at fashionable J. Crew, they were "Relaxed-Fit." And 60$, though at that point my unemployed, broke ass would actually have forked the dough over if the pants had fit well.
This flippin' country. Today was a real object lesson in what can happen when you combine the herd mentality of the fashion world with the basic homophobia of the American Male (i.e., colored pants = gay) (it must be homophobia - the only other explanation is that the fashion industry doesn't trust American Men to make their own fashion choices, and the 1970s and any golf pant manufactured prior to 1992 stand in stark opposition to that line of thinking) (not that I wouldn't kill for some of those golf pants right now).
Point being, I'm annoyed. As usual. Also, if you know where I can find a good pair of pants, let me know:
mingle08@hailmail.net
perma-linky posted by jkd : 18:56
