Daniel Akst says Americans should smarten up and stop looking so bloody awful. He theorizes that we've taken to outsourcing good looks to celebrities because they look so damn good while the rest of us have dropped out of the looks game and settled for looking fat and disheveled.
Speak for yourself, buddy.
True, anyone who's been thrust into a densely packed tourist area--say Washington, DC in the summer--will see far too many people in shorts and sneakers huffing along with their fat kids, but not everyone has given up on looking presentable.
The problem is that standards have gotten so low. One day your place of business announces that the dress code will now be "office casual," meaning suits are no longer required. The next thing you know the guy in the cubicle next to you is wearing shorts, sandals and a T-shirt that reads "This isn't a beer belly, it's the fuel tank of a love machine." I worked in an investment bank that had switched to office casual. The bigshots still dressed up, but the everyone else seemed to be in a race to the bottom. After a while, we started getting memos about appropriate office attire: No shorts, bare midriffs, denim, etc.
Why do people need to be told this?
Akst says that if we take the trouble to wear clothing without an elasticized waist and lay off the starchy foods, we'll find better mates and be better paid. I say: Don't you want to be able to see your reflection without shuddering?
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