Sharp dressed men

I've been watching the kids on campus for the past eight months.  I generally see two types of guys getting lots of female attention: the guys that you can tell spend a lot of time working out, and wear pretty nice clothes that fit well, and then there are the guys that wear business casual (including blazer) to business dress--sometimes, complete with vest. 

One guy is really badly crippled--can't walk without a cane, and uses a walker to be able to walk with a load of books and laptop.  His legs seem to be the problem.  He gets a lot of the girls flirting with him, regardless, because he's smart (runs the communications tech help desk), wears well-fitting jeans, a button-down shirt, and a blazer.  Every day. 

Then, there are guys that are well-built, but who wear the baggy clothes, or ratty clothes get some looks, but not as many as the guys who dress as nice as they look, either in well-cut jeans and nice shirts or business clothes.

And then, you get the schlubs.  Scrawny or fat, pimply or pale, the one thing they have in common is that they aren't attractive, and don't seem to care.  They don't dress for their body types, and don't seem to care what they look like.  A lot of them really stare at the girls, mouths hanging open, kinda creepy, like nobody explained the rules of what's socially acceptable to them.  I'm pretty sure nobody ever has.  I've been friends with a lot of the type, and they're quite nice--but they're labeled creepy because they don't know how to behave in public.

And the girls don't seem to see them at all.  Unless it's to sneer, or get uncomfortable and report the young schlubs for sexual harassment for being creepers. 

I've heard some of the girls making fun of the schlubs not because of their behavior, but because of the way they're dressed--ill fitting pants (too short, and too big or too small around the waist), faded and ratty tee shirts that aren't the right size for the person wearing them, and sometimes, their clothes aren't clean. 

I know the type: they have other things on their minds.  They're usually already focused on their homework, or on the code they're writing, or on the RPG* coming up that night or that weekend.  They don't think about their clothes--despite the fact that they should be--because to them, almost everything else is more important.

Odysseus's everyday wear trends toward tan cargo pants, and an un-tucked tee shirt.  There's a career fair on campus, today, and since he's working towards his CPA, he's supposed to go in business dress.  He needed to pick up his suit from the tailor (the pants needed to be adjusted a bit), so he wore a pair of nice khakis, a white button-down, a nice tie, and a blazer, and took his suit jacket with him to change into after class.  He looked really good, and the kids thought so, too.  The imp almost didn't recognize him: "Oh, excuse me, sir.  Oh, Daddy!  Wow!  You look good!"

Odysseus understands the importance of dress.  Most of the time around home, he doesn't care so much--we're too busy kid wrangling, or dealing with the house or pets.  He has a hard time finding pants long enough to fit well, since he's very tall, so he ends up being one of those guys that the girls just don't notice because he's not one of the super-well-dressed, and also not a creeper. 

Today, though, he's going to be one of the guys the girls on campus really notice. 

And it's all in the way he's dressed. 

I really wish that somebody could take the schlubs under their wing, and help them put together a wardrobe for going out in public that takes minimal care, and teach them that their appearance is what makes the biggest difference in how they're treated.  I really wish that someone could explain the difference between gaming-appropriate clothes, and class and campus clothes. 

Because the schlubs?  Are often the really nice guys that will end up doing really well in later life.

*RPG in this context is a role play game, not a rocket propelled grenade.