BACK AWAY FROM MY PANTS!

Editors note: I've been having massive internet problems, and problems with typepad for the last few days, so I apologize for being gone. I'll hopefully work out some of these glitches in the next little while. Please don't leave me. (sob)

For women, clothing is a way to define who they are.

For men, clothing is something they have to own so they won't get cold, or arrested for indecency.

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. I've known women who only shop when their bell-bottoms have finally worn out, and men who own more shoes than J-Lo.

But in general, men and women have very different views about clothes and how to take care of them.

For example, I have a male friend who often appears in public in hole-riddled sweat pants. It embarrasses me to have to see portions of his butt, and it embarrasses me more to see other people pointing and laughing at his exposed flesh. He, on the other hand, doesn't seem to care.

I try to tell him he should buy new sweats. But he says he wouldn't wear them anyway, because they wouldn't be "broken in" enough. I thought sweats was something you never had to break in - hence the whole idea of sweats.

Women, on the other hand, find excuses to buy new clothes. If I have a button missing on a shirt, or even hanging precariously by a few threads, I will buy a new one instead of sewing it back on. This may have something to do with my fear of domestic tasks, or it may just mean I'm shallow and vain. Either way, I get to go shopping.

Most men, including my husband, also have only one kind of clothes in their wardrobe, unless they are a lawyer or accountant and have to wear dressier clothes to work. But my husband, who is an engineer, can wear jeans to work. So his wardrobe basically consists of different stages of worn blue Levis. For dress up, he has a pair of black Levis.

Women, on the other hand, don't just have casual and dressy, but every category in between. We have casual, semi-casual, dress-casual, work-casual, work, work-dressy, dressy, evening, and special occasion clothes. We will buy an outfit to garden in. Men will garden in their work clothes, and go out to dinner at a fancy restaurant in the same outfit.

Men also tend to think of laundry in a far simpler way then women do, basically tossing everything into one pile and adding some detergent. Women make laundry a complicated, if not scientific task. We separate by color, fabric, and levels of dirtyness. We add bleach to whites, fabric softener to linens, and make sure to wash everything in the appropriate temperature. We hang dry. We hand wash. If men had to hand wash their clothes, they'd walk through a sprinkler.

I suppose to some extent, men have a deeper relationship with their clothes though. Another friend of mine has had the same "lucky" shirt for 12 years. You can see through it, it's so thread bare, but he still wears it when he watches his favorite baseball team play, and then lovingly puts it back in his drawer. He's afraid to wash it anymore though, so it can pretty much walk to the drawer on its own.

Us women are far more fickle. Our favorite shirt is easily replaced when we see a new one hanging in the store that we like better. We'll toss aside one shirt for another with no explanation. Especially if the new shirt makes us look thinner. And god forbid a friend of ours owns the same item of clothing.

But as fickle as we women are toward our clothes, they are still our most prized possessions. I once helped move a friend and stood guard over the contents of her closet because she was afraid the men would damage, lose, or separate them somehow.

It turned out this was a legitimate concern. The men of the house came toward the closet with the intent of throwing the contents into the back of a truck, uncovered from the elements.

"We'll just shake 'em out if they get dirty," I heard one of them say.

I had to beat them off with a stick.

Comments

[Rabbit]

I HATE to shop for clothes (or to shop, for that matter), so my closet is a little emptier than most women's. Thank God for holidays and my mom's love of Kohl's.

[Mister Groonk]

I separate my clothes before washing. By color only though.

Back in college I had an unfortunate incident involving a girl friend's(not "girlfriend", mind you) laundry and my pristine white gi(karate uniform).

We washed them together. My gi came out pink. Not even a manly pink.

This sucker was SUPER PINK!

So now, I separate.

I agreed wholeheartedly on the ninja shopping technique, though.

Get in. Get out. Get on with your life.

[AJ]

Very true. And we shop like secret ninja assassins: We sneak in, head directly to the Target, make our kill, and get the hell out.

(and "Target" is capitalized for a reason)

[Helena]

"If men had to hand wash their clothes, they'd walk through a sprinkler."

I can totally SEE THIS happening.

Can we talk about how you can have eight pairs of black pants and still not have THE perfect pair of black pants? *sigh*

Maybe it's the Perfect Ass I'm looking for. And no pant in the world can help me with that.

[Leesa]

This is SO true. My hubby has several different kinds of jeans and then scrubs for work. He also has his college t-shirts. That's it. He doesn't care about holes or stains.
I on the other hand could clothe most of our town:)

[sandra]

I actually threw out a pair of pants yesterday because the button came off (rationale: they must be old if the thread is that worn!).