The Old Coot Can’t Size Things Up

Old Coot advice to young husbands – “Don’t ever buy clothes for your wife!” Men don’t know anything about women’s clothes. When your wife holds up a dress in a store and says, “What do you think?” You mumble, “Looks OK to me.” Old coots know better. We sidestep the question. We’ve learned the hard way and say, “I really can’t tell unless you put on the shoes and the jewelry you’ll wear with it and then model it in normal light, not the fluorescents they have here in the store.” That gets us off the hook. The thing is, we don’t pay attention to clothes. People walk past and what they are wearing doesn’t register. We notice they are short or tall, skinny or fat, old or young, but not how they are dressed. The “fashion” section of our brain is clogged with useless sports trivia.  

Women, on the other hand, know exactly what someone is wearing. The police have figured this out. When they interview witnesses to a crime they separate the men from the women. The men are a reliable source for quirky walking styles, height, scars, tattoos and weight. Women can provide information on the perp’s clothes. “She had on a blue pinstripe dress with an off-white collar. The eight buttons up the front were bone. It was a combination silk rayon material, probably size 8. Her earrings didn’t match the dress; they were gold; they should have been silver or green. Her shoes were Jimmy Choo’s, tan with an embellished ankle strap and open toes. They cost $385.

Wise men, old men, have learned not to buy clothes for their wives. Even if we did know what they liked, we would never pick the correct size. We know men’s sizes. They are all about bigness; small and medium start the scale, but men don’t buy them. Those sizes are for teens. We pick a size by how macho it sounds. The manufacturers have figured this out. What used to be large is now called XXL. Translated, this means – big, strong, tough guy. Pants are simple; they go by waist and length. Men can relate to that. It’s something we can see on a tape measure. Except, it’s a big lie. For example, a size 36 waist used to be 36 inches around. Now it’s somewhere between 37 and 41 inches. Our butts and guts have expanded and so have the cut of manufactured clothing. Manufacturers are wise to that too. We get to brag, “I wore a 36 waist in high school and I still do. (Oh yea, how can that be; you weighed 170 then and are pushing past 230 now?)  

Women’s sizes are trickier. Things are made to sound small: petite, extra petite, small, small-medium, medium, medium plus and plus. Nothing too controversial! Dress sizes are even better at disguising things. They start at size double zero. Size ten is acceptable. It has a good ring to it – makes you think you are a “ten” when you wear a ten. Doesn’t sound big at all. Nothing like a men’s size 36. Size 20 is quoted a lot in the “Diet” ads. “I was a size twenty before taking Doctor Slimfast’s pills. Now, I’m down to a size 14 and still losing. Like men’s clothes, the sizes have been altered to accommodate our expanding waistlines. What was a size 14 in 1950, is now called a size eight. 

Shoes are yet another issue. I swear women’s shoes don’t come in sizes. All shoes are size seven. In the back room, the boxes indicate otherwise, but no shoe salesman is dumb enough to tell a woman that her foot fits perfectly into a size eleven. He measures, goes to the back and brings out a pair to try on. If she decides to buy them, he glues a size #7 sticker on the box and sends her to the cashier. Shoes bought in these high-end stores cost forty dollars extra. No one complains.  

Men are just the opposite. They brag about big feet. “My son wears size fourteen,” they say. “He’s only eleven years old. Chip off the old block.” I guess it’s because we are always sticking our feet in our mouths. Bigger feet are harder to get in. Although, my size eleven fits in just fine. I manage to insert it most every day. 

I probably did it again, at least once, in this article. 

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