Confessions of an Ex-Preppy

After bashing GQ for a while, I want to talk about why I love GQ: for their great style tips. They’re so good it’s worth having to deal with covers of frat girls every other month.

The first editorial section after the ads is Manual, which is a collection of columns filled with practical advice. For someone like me, who never thought in a sophisticated way about fashion, they’re a godsend. One of my favorites recently was a page in the December 2009 issue that made a great case for buying a tuxedo that fits rather than renting a baggy one that makes you look “like an out-of-work cater-waiter.” Considering that just a few rentals equals the purchase price and that the events at which you wear tuxedos are important, it’s worth it.

The column has before and after pictures showing a very impressive difference. It has savvy detailed recommendations: buy a semispread collar instead of winged collar, for the tie consider only solid black, show some cuff, and don’t ruin it with bad shoes. In other words; it’s a classic look; don’t fuck with it.

Here’s GQ appealing to our intelligence. Don’t worry, it won’t last long.

In the January 2010 issue, once you recover from the shock of the cover, the Manual section has thoughtful tips on ties, black men’s hair, and an easy lunch to pack for work. These tips are about sophistication. Our culture values lack of sophistication, so these pages seem almost rebellious. They certainly clash with the content of BQ (Boys Quarterly).

The Style Guy is an advice column. This month there are interesting questions and answers about cowboy boots with suits, black shirts with tuxes, and the finer points of wearing turtlenecks.

But the editors of BQ got a couple of questions in this column from their readers: one BQ reader asking advice about getting his eyebrows trimmed in the shape of lightning bolts and another one asking how to get rid of the sweaty smell in his apartment. Advice columnists usually make a point of choosing to answer questions representative of all the questions they receive, so there must be many men who know even less about fashion and personal appearance than I do. Except they’re not men, they’re boys who have yet to learn that they need to open the windows and have the carpets cleaned periodically in order to keep the place from smelling like sweat.

I wish there were a men’s fashion magazine for just men, not boys. I’d sure like to start one.

In church this morning, I was appalled at what some people were wearing. I’m a goddamned pagan, and I go to church only when Catherine asks me to, but I have enough respect for what’s going on there that I go to the trouble of changing out of my couch-potato clothes into a nice button-up shirt and dress pants.

It’s not actually about showing respect for God, religion, or the church as much as it is about showing respect for everything in general. But since church should be a place where people of every type feel equally welcome, including rich and poor, it is a great context in which to think about what it means to dress well and the minimum it is reasonable to expect from everyone. Even if you can only afford to buy all your clothing at Costco, you can still choose clothing that closely fits your body, and you can even find something that’s nicer than what you wear around the house.

In photos of church services from before the 1970s, you won’t see anyone in camping clothes, even at churches in working class neighborhoods, so this change in attitudes must be due to the influence of the Sixties. I looked around church today, and for the most part, the only people who were dressed well were people age 60 and older, that is, people born before 1950. Children of the Sixties rejected the fashion values of the elite and didn’t pass on those values to their children, who are now the slobs in church today.

I can think of two reasons why someone under 60 is a slob in public. One reason is being human: doing what everyone around them is doing without really thinking about it. We’re social animals. Most people don’t want to stray too far from the herd. They read books that are popular, they watch TV shows that are popular, and they dress in ways that are popular. And now it’s popular to dress like a slob. If these slobs had been born before 1950, they would have dressed up for church just because that’s what most people around them would have done. But now it’s the proletariat fashion values most people are mindlessly accepting. That’s just what most humans do.

The second reason someone dresses like a slob in public is because of ideology. Some people do question historically traditional fashion values and deliberately dress in public like they dress at home. I’ll explore their objections in future posts, but for now, I just want to point out that the second group is the real problem, not the first group, who will just go along with whatever is most popular. So those of us who want to rebel against the dominant fashion values should focus on people who justify slobbery.

Today I start my exploration of a dark forest full of dangers at every turn: the January 2010 issue of GQ. Wish me luck. If you want to protect your intelligence, be warned that reading GQ can be hazardous to your IQ. But if you know how to protect yourself from it — that is, if you have an IQ over 80 — you can emerge intact with valuable bits of treasure that are buried inside.

The cover provides a mild shock that momentarily tests my resolve to undertake my journey and forces me to remind myself why it is worth the risk to my mental faculties.

January 2010 cover of Frat Boy GQ

Is it worth dealing with page after page of Frat Boy GQ just to find those few pages out of Grown-up GQ? See, when you subscribe to GQ you actually get two magazines in one. It is as though two completely separate magazine staffs write under the single banner labeled “GQ.”

The staff of Grown-up GQ seems to be composed of mature, thoughtful, sophisticated gentlemen who are no less traditional than they are contemporary. They would feel at home with the gentlemen of any age because they dress and behave with high standards, and they go below the surface of things. They show me all kinds of details about style, nuances that I would miss on my own because I do not have much experience with men’s fashion.

By contrast, the staff of Frat Boy GQ seems to be composed of immature, stupid, shallow peasants who seem to actively work at keeping their intellectual and emotional development from going past that of adolescence and who are going to take Western civilization back to the Dark Ages unless we figure out some way to keep them down.

For Frat Boy GQ, women don’t even exist. You will never see them in its pages. Frat Boy GQ likes girls, and the younger and nekkider the better. These are not women who will challenge the frat boy to grow up, make him think, or encourage him to share his introspection or thoughtful analysis of the world around him. These girls are interested in only one thing: having sex with a frat boy. With covers like these, it’s kind of ironic that the G in GQ stands for Gentlemen’s. BQ would be more appropriate. You get two magazines in one: GQ and BQ.

The covers aren’t always so stupid, so it’s invariably a mild shock when I pick up a new issue of GQ and see the cover of BQ. But as much as I loathe BQ, I know that it is what I must endure to reach the nuggets of style gold in GQ. And they are there. I’ll show you in a future post.