Beauty and the Scrounge

Started this in 2008. Not much has changed.

There is a social phenomenon I’ve lately been observing. For a while I thought it was limited to the US but my wife and I are finishing the first month of an extended vacation in Italy and France and I see it here as well.

First a little background, I’m an old guy, when I was a young guy in the late 50’s young men and women dressed up to go out on dates. When you showed up at a young ladies door to take her to the movies or a dance her parents looked you over casually but very carefully and if you didn’t pass muster forget about that second date. When my buddies and I went cruising we had to look sharp, you might meet “the girl” and you better make a good first impression. The young ladies always looked sharp as well and I’ll say that we looked the best of any generation before or since. Then came the mid-sixties and young peoples clothes and grooming went to Hell. I pretty much quit paying attention to the way people dressed for a long time because most of them looked like hell anyway.

Now there appears to be a new style, I first noticed it when my wife and I attended a New Years Eve dinner dance at a famous destination resort in Northern California. The evening was very expensive and was billed as Black Tie Optional so I dusted off my tux, my wife bought a really nice sparkly evening dress and off we went. Imagine my surprise when the couple seated next to us showed up in scruffy grey cords and an old polo shirt and a mu-mu. The dinner was however spectacular and upon finishing the band had started playing so we went to dance. Crossing the dining room it was painfully obvious that Black Tie Optional had become, for the men, code for whatever was on top of the drawer when they got dressed. I saw everything from baseball caps worn fetchingly with rockstar tee shirts and torn jeans to wrinkled Dockers and shirts that had never seen the hot side of an iron. On the other hand the young ladies looked fabulous, almost all were dressed very well and a lovely lot they were. My wife and I expressed our disappointment to the staff (The general manager had fortuitously taken the night off) we were given a substantial discount but the entire evening with the exception of all the well dressed young ladies had left a bad taste and we won’t be returning any time soon.

Now this could be a fluke and I certainly don’t want to seem judgmental about my fellow human beings but….we’ve spent over a month in Italy and a pattern is emerging. If ever a country’s blessed with a surplus of beautiful people it is Italy, men and women, boys and girls, Italy has a wonderfully high percentage of real showstoppers. People will say I’m prejudiced because 44 years ago I married a beautiful Italian-American girl, but, so be it. We’ve been traveling with friends, visiting places few Americans go and I see and have great trouble understanding beautiful young ladies in the company of guys who look like they made a pass through the Salvation Army rag bin and wore whatever they found.

From a Ferragosto celebration at the very tip of the heel to an upscale bar in a suburb of Milan to several evenings wandering around backstreet Florence the pattern repeats itself. Great looking lady, scroungy guy. We’re headed back South soon, Rome, then Capri, If the pattern doesn’t change in Capri or during our 2 weeks in Paris I’m going to consider it kind of a done deal.

If I had showed up at my brides’ door 45 years ago dressed like some of the guys I’ve seen she’d have slammed the door in my face. And been right to do so. It’s hard for me to believe that guys get away with looking so scruffy and harder to believe that so many knockouts will go out with them. Can anyone enlighten me? Money? Nice car? Fill me in here.

Follow Up

　

Capri may well be the exception that proves the rule. After the day trippers go home it is populated by (mostly older) couples who are obviously prosperous and casually but very well dressed. I only saw one young couple in a very upscale restaurant who held the line I described above.

Follow Up Two Years Later

We’re in France now and last night I was standing in front of my friends house in the Paris suburbs. A couple walked by, they were Middle Eastern, or maybe Moroccan, The young lady was a killer, olive skin, jet black hair, wonderful smile, big eyes, lovely figure and dressed in one of those above the knee sheath dresses the young ladies wore in the early sixties. Beige silk. Scoop neck, sleeveless. Probably the sexiest clothes girls have worn in all of history. I was smitten. Boy Friend/Husband/Whatever was handsome but  you guessed it, jeans, scruffy sweatshirt, tennies. Bleagh.