Note: My wife Nina has been insanely busy for the past couple of months, and a very big part of her workload has been handling the legal aspects of Pajamas Media. As such, she's retired her own Weblog, but will be posting a few items here from time to time--Ed

Ladies! Have You No Respect For Yourselves?

There, that feels better. But excuse me. If a woman spends 30 to 60 (or more) minutes getting ready to go out, trying to look her best for the event and her partner, and he spends 1.78 seconds putting sandals on over the socks he’s worn for three days (along with the rest of his clothes), then something is seriously out of balance with the respect they are showing each other.

Oh, you say, he didn’t sleep in those clothes for three days, that’s a very expensive and intentional look. Nina, you just don't understand contemporary men's fashion.

Then excuse me again. But that’s worse. So it’s not that he’s just careless, sloppy and was playing video games till she had been standing at the door for ten minutes. It’s actually that he spent money trying to look like he doesn’t care about wherever they are going together. So he is working hard to dress in a way that says "this is an important event for her, but neither she, nor the event is important enough for me to give a damn." Yes, that’s worse than just being a slob.

When a man says once "I love you in short skirts" the woman, even liberated, professional, assertive women, go out and have all of their skirts shortened (ok, I know not all women, but a lot). When a woman says "wow, you look gorgeous in that suit" the one time in five years he gets dressed up, does he look for more places to wear a suit. Nope.

A male friend of mine actually once said "there was this guy in college, he always got dressed up.... and he always got, you know, lucky."

Well duh.

There's no doubt women go for the rough and tumple, Lady Chatterly's tilling the soil gardner type. But slovenliness and rough physicality do not need to go hand in hand. It is possible to do both--urbane sophistication and brute physicality. That is if you care for your partner and wish to show her some respect. And that is, if you have enough respect for yourself that you believe you can do both. I think many guys just don't have enough self-confidence to pull it off.

And for those of you who don't know - my husband dresses, as Manolo would say "Super Fantastic."

Well, at least he tries to.--Ed