When straight men talk fashion UPDATED, TWICE!

Often, so very often, gay men stand accused of ruining things for women through their imagined machinations in the fashion industry. 'They want to see boys, not women!', accusers claim, as if that explains the absence of breasts and hips from the runway, and the requirement that the female models be heights that would count as tall even for men. Which is ridiculous - gay men, in the fashion industry, in the auto industry, whatever - are attracted to men, not preadolescent Estonian girls. But there is a certain sense in which the fashion industry ignores that which straight men traditionally find appealing - aka a body for which a bra is necessary for looking dressed in the conventional sense. Without getting all sinister and conspiracy-theory on the topic, it's fair to say that fashion is not about the hetero male gaze.

Which is why it's amusing when a straight guy claims authority on the topic. Slate has reposted an article from the Financial Times, in which Geoff Dyer, a straight man - or at any rate, a man who refers to being married to a woman, and who's given us no reason to think he's not straight - muses on "the perfect summer dress." (Accompanied, alas, by an ad for American Apparel, another case of straight men in fashion.)

The essay - written in that lighthearted way that just dares you to take it seriously, only to laugh at you for having done so - encapsulates how straight men (who are not employed in the fashion industry, or what was for a time referred to as "metrosexual") understand women's self-presentation, and, as such, is worth a read, even if one does not come away from the article with ideas of what to wear as the season turns.

-The "natural" look. No makeup, no heels. Optimally no shoes. No artifice for Dyer's summer-dressed lass. Nothing frilly or fashiony, please.

-The emphasis on health. The essay fixates on the idea that a woman in a summer dress must look not merely good, but well. This, combined with the "natural" notion, is because men who are attracted to women are judging such things as whether she'll look similar at 50 and whether she'll produce "fit" offspring. The theoretical summer-dress-wearing woman is being judged semi-holistically, one might say, and not necessarily for better.

-The ignorance of cut, design. "It does not require special treatment. It can be crammed into a duffel bag. It doesn't even have to fit perfectly. Price is irrelevant. You can pay a lot but, equally, it can be the kind of thing you can pick up for next to nothing." Now, this does happen to be my own personal philosophy of dress-buying, especially for warm weather, which is how so many Gap nightgowns/tunics end up getting worn outside. However! The cut of an item does matter, and, to a degree, the fit may be better if you pay more. Again, this is coming from someone for whom long tank-top+5'2"=dress. But a straight man might well notice a woman whose dress fits a particular way, whom he would not notice if her dress were cut wrong. Cut can make a woman look much thinner or wider, bustier or straight-up-and-down. Again, again, I'm not saying women should make decisions based on this, but it is what it is.

-The ignorance of the fact that women typically wear underwear. The summer dress is "the last layer separating the naked fact of a woman from the world." Just as straight (and, I suppose, gay) men see makeup-less when a woman's spent an hour getting mascara and 20 other products just right, straight men can easily suspend disbelief and think a woman is almost naked, even if that's not so much the case.

-The air of having 'discovered' that which women already know. Wait a moment - the summer dress must be sleeveless, yet not too short? Dyer expresses this notion as if it were a new one, but the rule about wearing something revealing only on the top or the bottom, not both at once, is high up in fashion's Constitution - that sweet spot between hooker and Hasid. Same with the thing about not wearing tights - tights can be used to make a summer dress fall-and-spring-friendly, but are obviously not worn with casual attire when it's 85 degrees out. This is not "fashion," but common sense. As in, a summer dress should not be made out of heavy wool or quilted down. And not because of the ethereal essence of what a summer dress symbolizes.

Dyer gets one key point right - one of warm weather's great perks for women (not working in corporate law offices, PG) is that we can get away with wearing what is essentially a long t-shirt, but designed in such a way as to make the woman appear to have made an effort/dressed up, while men have no comparable alternative. The summer dress is a thing, but only insofar as women can all of a sudden switch to a low-maintenance uniform and still look put-together, as men continue to face the suit-jeans dichotomy. But overall, one gets the sense that this is an essay about Woman, not Fashion.

UPDATE 1

The commenters there have arrived, and the verdict is in - dude's male privilege is, it seems, showing. He's even directed to a male-privilege checklist. Argh. I mean, perhaps so, but that's not what's interesting. What is is that here's a straight man entering a conversation that the likes of him typically don't, and that it plays out precisely as we might have imagined it would: dude's utterly ignorant about fashion, proudly ignorant, and thinks artifice is yuck because, well, he doesn't even quite get what artifice is, or how much of it women he thinks have on just a spot of lip gloss have going. He may ooze with privilege in all other arenas, but in this one, not really. Yes, the male gaze exists, but the business of telling women specifically what to wear is one straight men don't generally delve into.

UPDATE 2

Compare and contrast: a "fashion" take on the summer dress. A slideshow with commentary, not a going-for-witty-essay format, but an argument of sorts. And evidence of the far opposite side of the spectrum: different new dresses for barbecues, music festivals, day weddings, formal weddings, beach, and brunch? Brunch? We are now buying special clothing for this? So I'll take this opportunity to argue for a middle ground between $685 silk dresses for outdoor rock concerts and the one magic shmatta that looks just as good at a party as on a camping trip. (Which, actually, as I type this, reminds me of why the whole dress-for-hikes-and-cocktail-parties angle is so amusing. It's totally the dating cliché of 'I'm just as happy going out as staying in.')