If you are what you wear then I'm screwed!

I know that I've promised Jenny not to dwell on "weighty" issues in my blog for awhile. Frankly, I can be a bit tedious in my enthusiasm for the healthier lifestyle. This blog entry sorta skirts on the subject. Most women will say it does while most guys will say it doesn't. I could dance around the subject for awhile but my new endeavor to be precise and to the point won't allow me to.

My problem is that I have a very limited wardrobe. Now, if I want the real baggy look, I'm set. Most of my shirts that fit me are hand-me-downs from Jenny. Most of them are GHS shirts from the band or football. The brand named ones that I have bought fit OK. The one's that aren't have shrunk enough to be a little snug. I only have one button-up shirt but that's no big whup. I rarely wore them when I had a bunch. Same goes for Dockers. As for jeans, I have one pair that's my current size and two pairs one size up. That too is OK. As you can tell, I can start crafting a wardrobe that matches my persona. My dilemma is that there is so many different lifestyles of men's clothing that I don't really know which one to adapt as my own. You see, I have a unique opportunity to basically start from scratch with my wardrobe so that allows me to go with whatever style I desire. The problem is: Which one? After I started to think about it, I came up with a number of them. Since I am usually incapable of making a timely decision and this one would be made before Christmas, I guess I'll try to come up with as many as I can and let you, the blogosphere help me decide. (Its all a part of my latest self-help project: Let others make the hard decisions and I'll never make a wrong one!) I'm sure I missed a lot of different styles you may think of. Actually, I didn't. I just deemed them as being beneath my status as a renowned blogger! After all, there's no way you could picture me as an intercity youth, wearing FUBU shorts hanging to my knees with a white 4X t-shirt and a hat on with the bill to the side. Or, for that matter, who could picture me in geezer polyester with a white belt and cream colored shoes with Velcro straps. Hard to see me as a hunter with blaze orange clothes that smell like deer piss scent. How about "fisherman chic" with a boonie cap full of lures, a khaki safari vest and jeans covered with dried scales. Not very likely!

The first style I considered is "biker chic". There, you dress up in skin tight black leather with a lot of studs, a wallet with a chain and do rags. To fit this lifestyle, I'll have to grow a long beard and longer hair. I'll have to wear a leather vest without a t-shirt and get some serious tattooing done. There's a fine line between "biker chic" and the "flamboyant gay" style. The latter includes a leather motorcycle hat, a five o'clock shadow and manicured nails. Gotta watch yourself with these fashion genres. Now, I've got a brown leather barn coat I got years ago by sending in thousands of UPC bar codes from Merit cigarettes. It doesn't count here because no self-respecting biker or gay would be caught dead in it!

Next is "European playboy". I saw this alot when I spent two years in Germany in the Army. I'm aware that that was 35 years ago. Well, I haven't seen any renaissance in European styles in the meantime, if you know what I mean. This style could also be labelled as "mid 70's disco". The differences are minor. First, you start off with hip hugger pants without a belt (or loops for that matter). The European style will NOT have back pockets while disco does. The shirts are silk (or rayon for the cheapskates) and are unbuttoned for enough to show hair. Berlin's gay scene is filled with guys with no chest hair, yet still fulfill this requirement if you know what I mean. If you dress in this fashion genre, you have to listen to techno-rock and dance the "robot", eat food that normal people step on and hold your cigarette (whether you smoke it or not) between your fore finger and thumb with the back of your hand away from your face. You will wear light brown shoes without socks.

The next category will never be confused with the last one. This one is "square dancer". It consists of tight straight leg jeans, rolled up one turn and ironed with a lot of starch. The shirts are usually patterned like gingham, with a white yoke over the shoulders. It'll have pearled snaps instead of buttons. The black shoes will have a high gloss shine. (Gays will go with Paten leather.) and the ten gallon hat they wear will be white. Invariably, they'll be wearing a string tie but don't rule out a bandanna or a big bow tie. The "uptown" square dancer will have tight white leather gloves with no backs. Gays and gaudy types will wear matching white buckskin vests and chaps. They'll all look like "Smiling Bob" in those Ensyte commercials.

Similar to the last one, but not as gaudy is the "Marlboro Man" style. This one has a worn cowboy hat, regular jeans, a flannel shirt and cowboy boots. He'll have a five o'clock shadow, be chewing on a toothpick with a denim waist jacket. Gays in this genre will have the front and back bills on their hats bent down. Their 5 o'clock shadow will be trimmed and their cowboy boots will be made from armadillos and their toothpicks will be 24k gold.

One style where a gay guy wouldn't be caught in is the "grungy punk teenager" or GPT for short. The GPT will have pants that sag a good six inches down his rear. Because of that, he'll walk on the pant legs, tearing the bottoms up pretty good. The shoes are usually untied Skecher skateboard shoes and the shirt was the one he wore yesterday (and the day before). His face usually has more zits than a wrestler's ass and if his hair came in contact with a comb lately, it was purely coincidental. Usually his trousers, either denim or khaki, are able to stand in the corner on their own and the top three inches of his boxers will be faded from the sun. Wannabes in this fashion genre can be identified by their tighty whities, belt and unpicked noses.

Next up is the business professional. Even though its his day off, he'll wear a sport's coat with either a polo shirt or a dress shirt with no tie. He'll wear either Dockers or starched and ironed jeans with either tasseled or penny loafers. I think that if their shoes get scuffed, they throw them away. Their hair will be razor cut with a straight part.

Similar to the last one is the country club type. The only difference is his blazer will have his family crest on the pocket, he'll be wearing Hush Puppy deck shoes and if he's not wearing a jacket, he'll have on a cream colored sweater with his family crest. Slim clubbers will wear the sweater over their shoulders with the arms tied loosely around the neck. The bigger boned ones will wear their sweaters the normal way. They usually wear their glasses on the top of their heads. They would rather be blind than appear in public with their glasses over their eyes! The only difference between gays and straights in this genre besides the sex of their gold digger, would be the gay's tendency to wear silk scarves with their blue blazers.

The next two have similar names but are a little different. The first is "redneck chic". He wears either a white "wife beater" shirt or a sleeveless t-shirt to show off his "guns", barbed wire tattoos and all. His jeans will be Rustlers (the Wal-Mart brand) worn plumber style and his footwear will be clodhoppers. His hair style will include a flat top. He'll either have his head skinned on the sides and back or have a mullet. The mullet usually has short sides, but long sides are popular too. The rule of thumb on the sides is the closer you are related to your wife, the shorter your sides. Most of their tattoos were done by a friend instead of a tattoo parlor. Therefore, most of them are misspelled. Popular in the last five years is having GIT R tattooed on the knuckles of the right hand and DONE on the left. His gum line usually has more gaps than his resume and the only people who are worse at Jeopardy are his kids. The other similar style is "lazy redneck" or LR's. The LR's differentiate themselves from the other rednecks by the fact that they are too lazy to change their clothes so they invariably just wear the same holey sweat pants with an unmatching inside out sweatshirt with the sleeves either cut short or off completely. Their tennies don't have shoe strings and their hair is usually long and greasy. If their hat gets wet, it'll usually disintegrate!

The "college professor" types wear corduroy jackets with leather elbow patches and corduroy slacks. They usually wear their granny glasses at the end of their nose and wear houndstooth patterned hats. Their favorite shirts are turtlenecks and also like sweaters quite a bit. Like the LR's, they tend to wear the same clothes much of the time, thus saving a ton of money on extra outfits.

Now, this is just a partial listing of the available options I'd have. I haven't even mentioned nudism. Come winter, this option gives a whole new meaning to the term "blue balls"!

This decision is just too hard to make. I guess the only way that makes sense is to wait and see what style I get for Christmas and make that the style I adopt. My luck, Shane will get me a couple "wife beaters" and some clodhoppers! (At least, now a day's, Git 'R Done doesn't concern Shannon and Jenny like it used to!)