Wait what? I’m actually relieved to hear this because I respect your opinion on what’s considered appropriate… and I just assumed you had super high standards of where that line is.
This is an interesting conversation because I’m actually conflicted and confused about modesty. I’m trying to figure it all out myself – not to push my views on anyone – but to really determine what’s respectful and then do that.
But it’s somewhat hard to dress attractively and modestly.
It’s bizarre to me too.
Thank you for that. I obviously am not some authority on the matter, though I likely am one of the relatively few sticklers on the matter at this point in time.
The outfit doesn’t strike me an especially revealing. It only shows a smidgen of midsection. It just doesn’t strike me as sexual or the sort of nuisance provided by a near-nude, genitalia-revealing outfit worn by some gym-going women.
I’m aware of how hot is Spain. When I got off the plane in Barcelona I was astounded by the heat.
By the way, when I speak of appropriateness I don’t expect some extreme in which women in the West are to wear bonnets, veils, suffocating dresses, skirts down to their ankles, and so on. That’s actually never what I allude to. The way most women dressed in the 80’s to early aughts seemed fine to me.
I think school uniforms are a good idea.
Men are well aware of the figures of modestly-dressed women, even in clothing that is not form fitting. It’s certainly not hard to tell.
I’m sure women can tell who is a well-built man even if he’s not wearing tight-fitting clothing. Also there’s tasteful form fitting versus overtly sexual. Perhaps elegant is the correct term.
I appreciate your thoughts on all of this!
Especially this.
That is awesome to hear and maybe women need that reminder. I did. It’s just challenging to find clothing that’s not sloppy but also not skanky. I’m always on the lookout for classy clothing that fits, but it’s tough.
I feel like things are improving here. As a dude who likes clothes and also someone who grew up around/lives with a lot of women, I’m fairly tuned in to fashion trends, haha. I remember when skinny jeans and leggings started really taking off, maybe around 2010, give or take a few years. Not that tight jeans had never been popular before that, of course, but they just became really popular then. Prior to that was a lot of baggy styles. I’m around high school/college-aged people a lot and feel like things are going to this in-between place where things are tight enough to be flattering, but also loose enough to not be skintight and completely revealing. And if one knows how to dress their body, they avoid the “sloppy” look.
I think earlier in the thread I mentioned my young sister. My mom is still picking out most of her clothes, and wants her to look nice/put-together but not be in skintight clothing 24/7, so this struggle to find a middle ground has been a part of my life, haha.
Fashion rant over.
I can’t speak for the ladies, but when I see a dude wearing the really tight clothing to emphasize his muscle, I kinda think the opposite of him being well built. Kinda like most men in platform shoes aren’t tall.
Perhaps this is a bias for me. Most of the men I see doing this don’t have a lot of muscle, so perhaps I think those things go hand in hand. The largest / most jacked guys at my gym seem to wear the most modest clothing (baggy), and the teens and early 20s guys wear the really form fitting stuff (underarmour tank tops as an example). They are skinny, but don’t have much actual muscle that they’ve built.
I went to a school with a couple of really light wrestlers (I don’t know weight classes) who pretty much only wore skintight Under Armor shirts. They had muscles (and were good athletes), but they weighed like 115 lbs. I think I was the same size when I was maybe 12 years old.
A different wrestler would only wear baggy XXL hoodies but you could see his traps, lats, and arms through like 2-3 layers.
I can confirm that as I got bigger and leaner, my tighter fitting clothes actually started to look worse.
Nothing quite says “I’m hyooge” like filling out a shirt that wasn’t custom tailored to make you look bigger.
That or seeing a quad bump on jeans that weren’t supposed to be tight.
That is what I’ve noticed myself. The smaller guys wear the tight stuff, the bigger guys the huge baggy stuff.
That is what I was getting at. The really big and jacked guys don’t seem to feel a need to wear tight stuff (I have yet to see one at the gym).
Now, I will say, I don’t like shirts that have what I call the Christmas tree cut. Short torso and flared out at the bottom (especially bad for my long torso). I just kinda wear normal stuff that has a good fit for me in XL size.
Just my opinion, I don’t claim to understand women, that most women are indirectly attracted to a muscular physique because it signals security / protection (similar to height), compared to directly because she likes the way the muscle looks or something (this exists too, but is more rare). This means that if you look big and fit in a baggy flannel, you’ve done enough.
In addition, the super tight clothing I would think would give an impression of vanity / insecurity (which I would think would be a negative).
Nothing wrong with wearing clothing that fits nice or looks good. I just think some guys go overboard, and I think most women pick up on that.
I think there was an article posted by @Chris_Shugart (?) about what women found attractive for men to wear in a gym.
I think hoodies had the highest chance of an encounter (comment, flirt, pick up line, etc. from the opposite sex), closely followed by a black tanktop.
Seemed relevant, maybe Chris can link it - if I got the author correct.
Here ya ago:
Thank you!
That look actually worked for some time in the late 90’s in the outer boroughs of NYC and Northern NJ. You should’ve seen the my gym back then. Sometimes the gym would smell like a combination of cologne, iron, and hair products. Many would wear those tight nightlife shirts (tighter than Under Armour) when out on the town. Vain as all hell. The look worked for many. 
It went like this:
Tweezed eyebrows
Heavily gelled hair
Fanny pack
Fake or real tan all year long
Perfetto or NPC Wear gym gear
Some still had the lifting-in-construction-boots thing going.
That was kinda in style at the time. I think that makes it a bit different than now. I remember around that time I would squeeze into small t shirts. They barely made it to the belt line. But basically everyone was doing that.
I have
And that’s the que
It’s a dramatization. You watch Euphoria and think ‘shit! This is what kids are getting up to nowadays?’
No… that’s what maybe 5% of kids are getting up to yet shows like Euphoria make it seem as if such a dynamic is the norm. It’s TV… when has TV mirrored reality? Euphoria isn’t a bad show if you can get past how dark and disturbing it is. There’s also media sensationalism, thus antisocial behaviour is more likely to be reported.
It’s highly dependent on the crowd you associate with, where you live etc. It should also be noted, those who make the most noise tend to show up on your radar more often than those who fly by un-noticed. A lot of the standard square archetypes go about their day without causing a ruckus, whereas the small group setting off fireworks through holes in the school fence are the ones garnering all the attention.
If you naturally gravitate towards those “exciting, thrilling” subtypes, chances are you’ll wind up hanging around troublemakers. Even if you hang around troublemakers… it doesn’t equate to troublemakers being the norm.
More kids are swearing off alcohol than ever before, but if you live on res at college, you’d never think this to be the case. Fewer kids are smoking, promiscuity has become less common, drug use is generally trending down with the exception of pot etc. It’s not all doom and gloom, it appears the current generation isn’t as self-destructive as the generations that grew up in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s.
Given how many have mental and/or emotional issues, I would say let’s wait and see.
Higher rates of suicide
But less drinking, drug abuse (alcohol abuss and drug abuse is one in the same), violence and criminality from an epidemiological perspective has dropped.
Caveat being a rise in methamphetamine and cocaine use in Australia.
However the rate of meth use, while higher than just about any other western country is still low amongst teenagers and young adults. lifetime prevalence of methamphetamine being around 5%, far lower for regular use.
30% or so for cocaine amongst teens and men in their 20s over here, 2-5% for teenagers
Opiate abuse has also dropped amongst American teens. Fewer teens are getting locked up nowadays even in areas with relatively tough on crime stances (like Aus).
In the late 1970s, an anonymous survey of high schoolers in NY found 50% had used cocaine in the past year.
More kids and young adults are swearing off alcohol.
I imagine we will see more suicide and mental illness. Geopolitical instability, omnipresent sense of alienation that has gotten worse for teenagers, woefully inefficient interventional modalities for identifying and treating mental illness
In Australia, the wait time to see a psychiatrist is 12-18 months if you go private. Through our public system that wait is potentially up to 8 years
Inpatient facilites are booked up months and months in advance… that and there’s such a shortage of staff, rooms and there aren’t many inpatient facilities in Aus. If you want inpatient treatment you MUST be suicidal… and to get in without at least a 3-6 month wait you need to be really bad i.e active ideation, repeated attempts
I agree in that rates of mental illness have shot up and in turn with will certainly lead to a spike in premature mortality rates within youth demographics.
However mental illness and substance abuse go hand in hand hence why I’m suprised per capita rates of drug and alcohol abuse amongst young adults and adolescents has been trending downwards.
I think education, realistic education… Not that D.A.R.E BS has strayed many away. Assault/fighting/violence has also dropped. Teens aren’t as promiscuous as they have historically been from the 60’s-2000’s.
I think we will see a mental health crisis amongst teenagers and young adults cone to fruition. It’ll become the next sensationalised topic in a similar manner to how opiate abuse has become a point of contention politicians focus on to garner votes
I think that’d be great as it would provide interventional measures before a young adult walks down a path they can never walk back from. The quality of treatment for mental illness would potentially improve and diagnosis could me made quickly as opposed to a bipolar individual having gone through 5 manic/depressive episodes before getting a diagnosis when they’ve already lost their house from gaming, lost relationsips etc.
Covid, esp in Australia as Aus totally lost the plot led to a rapid deterioration in self reported mental health status. Young people and elderly people were hit the hardest.
Another positive variable… regular exercise, going to the gym appears to be a regular staple within the lives of many adolescents and young adults.