New Clothes

I was reading about this new idea: the butt cam. The idea is that this camera is mounted inside the dressing room at a high-end fashion store, with a viewing screen, so that you can try on expensive jeans, and see how you look from behind. In some ways that seems like a good idea (although the paranoid part of my brain wants to know who else can see what I see when I'm checking out my butt), and it certainly seems like it should eliminate that pesky question, "Does this dress make me look fat?"
It won't, of course. That question is unavoidable. The thing is, men like things to be simple. If you ask me, "Is the ceiling white?" I can answer yes, if it is, or no, if it's not. Even men understand, however, that the fat question is not what it seems. If it were, the answer would be easy: "No, the dress does not make you look fat." What the wearer is really asking is, "Do I look fat in this dress?" except, of course, that she's framing the question in such a way that I'm supposed to believe that if she does look fat, it's the dress's fault. So I am now expected to evaluate the way that you look in that dress , and find a tactful way of suggesting that maybe that dress isn't something you should buy if it doesn't hide the extra pounds that you have put on. I am also expected to do this in less than twelve microseconds, since any hesitation longer than that is enough to hurt your feelings, since, in your mind, I should have been able to answer 'no' instantly. Of course, if the extra pounds are just in your imagination, then my job would seem to be easy, but I'm still going to try to figure out why you're even asking me this.

I read something the other night that gave me some insight into the problem. In the September Reader's Digest, somebody wrote that women think they are fat if they can't fit into the jeans they wore in high school; men think they are fat if they can't fit into a foreign car. The bottom line is, women tend to be very insecure about their own appearance (years ago, it occurred to me that I should have gotten into women's hair-care products. Between black women buying relaxers to straighten their naturally curly hair, and white women buying home perm kits to curl their naturally straight hair, there is a fortune to be made!). This can be hard for men to understand. Don't misunderstand me, I know that some women are not at all insecure, and some men are very insecure, but generally, women need that reassurance that they are attractive, and men don't.

So, now we're getting deeper into this question: women ask this question wanting to be reassured that we still find them attractive. For some reason, the fact that we have not kicked them to the curb and gone out in search of a prettier companion isn't enough. When you stop to consider, eating disorders are almost exclusively female problems. Every once in a while, you hear about a teenage boy with anorexia nervosa, but that's very unusual. If a guy gets an eating disorder, it's that he eats fast food at every meal and has his first heart attack before he graduates high school...

The real irony is that women have long joked about the fragile male ego. To some extent, they're right; men do tend to have fragile egos. Just not nearly as fragile as women do.