How To Handle The Man Shorts Issue
In an apparent effort to spark as many questions about my sexuality as possible, I joined a football league this spring. At our game last week, the other team’s quarter back was wearing baggy shorts that literally extended halfway down his calves. Even if he hadn’t been an obvious and total douche for other reasons, his shorts would have made him impossible to like.
Despite being a decades-old summer staple, man shorts remain an area of consistent fashion offense. Whether they’re too long, too short, too tight or big enough for two more people, they rarely look good. If, however, you’re prepared to do a little sampling, you may end up looking like a classy dude this summer. Instead of an asshole drowning in cargo pockets and synthetic fibers.
- You’re wearing shorts because it’s hot out and you want sweet, sweet air washing over your bare skin/occasionally gusting up towards your junk. Shorts that are really just male capri pants, therefore, make no sense. And you look retarded in them. So stop.
- On the other side of that particular spectrum are hot shorts and anything that could be vaguely related to hot shorts. I don’t or want to see half of your pasty thigh, kid.
- Jorts? You’re joking.
- You’re not one of the Village People or a male stripper, so you don’t need to be wearing cut offs.
- You’re not in the army, so those cargo shorts with the huge pockets are more or less forbidden. (This is not to say that a well-executed cargo pocket is inpermissable.) If you have enough crap with you at any given time that standard pockets don’t get the job done, seriously reconsider your entire life. Or suck it up and buy a man purse.
Avoid these issues and you’re halfway to looking less like a moron this summer, boys. In terms of what to seek out, look for:
- A short that hits slightly above the knee.
- A tailored — but not tight — fit. Like so.
- Pockets that lay flush and don’t make a spectacle of themselves.
- Solids or prints that don’t make the average person dizzy and/or nauseous. Countless embroidered miniature whales, ponies or other wild/sea life, for the record, fall under the nausea-causing category.
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Per the tall slim metro-sexual lookin’ Asian guy in the photo: Tuck the shirt in, leave it out, or strive to do both? Wear shorts with belt loops but omit the belt?
If your shirt doesn’t extend more than a couple inches past the top of you shirts, you can go either way. If you’re that “tall, slim metro-sexual lookin’ Asian guy,” do exactly what you’re doing. And call me. Let’s date.
As for the belt, it’s summer, don’t obsess about it. Mix it up a little. Or create a strict belt vs. no belt schedule.
In response to another comment. See in context »Lily,
This weekend in NY was the first weekend I broke into the shorts supply. These tips are helpful but there are certain occasions where I want to wear crappy shorts, shorts that are worn down a bit and have a few well placed tears from age. I like lounging around in the park in these shorts. With new shorts, fashionable shorts, I think I would be too concerned for their well-being at all times. I do have some nice shorts, though. How about the guys I went to college with in Vermont who wore cargo shorts in the dead of winter, 20 below?
a) On hobo days, all rules are more or less off. We all have them and they call for spandex, fraying, all that crap.
In response to another comment. See in context »b) The guys you went to college with should have been strangled. I’ll assume they’ve either changed their ways or died in beer pong accidents since then.
I have a friend whose shorts all look like fancy dress pants that someone cut off at the knee. IS that acceptable? It seems weird to me.
Funny piece tho…
Brian – does your “friend” match his shorts to his man purse?
This is clearly a cry for help. All hands on deck for a Donovan Intervention.
In response to another comment. See in context »I actually don’t hate that. My little brother, a well-dressed metrosexual if ever there was one, wears those. Although maybe not as “fancy” as your friends. All I know is the little thing looks pretty good in them.
In response to another comment. See in context »“gusting up towards your junk”
I, uh, … yes, that is … hmmm.
This was a very helpful and that line might stay with me forever.
Simpler rules: When playing sports, swimming, or surfing, wear the task-specific shorts (to just above the knee, as Lily Q says). In non-sport situations, wear linen pants and forget about it.
I knew if I lived long enough there would come along an agreeable fashion article.
As someone who grew up on the east coast during the fifties and had to endure men wearing plaid shorts with black shoes and white socks and whiter legs I grew to hate shorts. Coming to California as a teenager everyone wore them, cut-offs, no shoes. I still resisted until I moved to the beach. Putting pants on after a swim, especially Levi’s…no good. So for me shorts are like a practical uniform, used in places where you get your calves wet or need some freedom of movement…like on a track. Never wear them with hard shoes or flip flops (another fashion horror) just some sneakers.
Otherwise I cover up my knobby knees…
Ms. Q,
I am completely unqualified to discuss your blog not because I have any penchant for man shorts but because I habitually wear a fannypack to the horror of both my wife and daughter (my sons could not care less, as do I). I am clearly a fashion zombie, not only oblivious to the interests of the fashion world of the living but actually hazardous to it.
I would thus not waste your or my time here except that you might be able to assist me in a different type of fashion question. You describe a man-short wearing fellow you played football with as a “douche”. In your profile you sort of describe yourself using the same noun, albeit in a more qualified manner (pertaining to speaking of yourself in the third person). As a pejorative noun Jon Stewart simply adores it.
How the use of douche as a disparaging slang become so fashionable. It seems to me that douches are of the greatest social importance. Their proper use of great benefit to both (all?) genders, albeit in different ways. It seems to me that this completely unwarranted denigration of douches might lead to people, mainly women, avoiding them to society’s detriment. They may, I fear, become unfashionable.
So what is it that I am missing? Is there some bit of history I slept through? Or is this maligning of a completely valuable tool utterly uncalled for? Should someone do some to say “Save the Douche”? Perhaps it too and the douche needs a fashion make-over, a rebranding as it were.
What do you think?