Ask Alex - April 21, 2017

Alexandra F. Baldwin

Welcome back to "Ask Alex", where I answer all of your stupid questions with even dumber answers.  Have a question you need answered? Tweet it, email it or submit it here and I will get to it (maybe) next week.

--------------------------------

This week, Alex blows the lid off of both the soft bigotry of women’s clothing sizes and George Lucas’s terrible plot construction. Then she spends some time talking drones, military fashion and infomercials. Along the way, she will introduce you to introduce you to two guys who can share pants and she may or may not try to shame George RR Martin into writing faster.

A Note from Alex
First of all, I was corrected on my breakdown of Sith culture last week...apparently there isn’t an army of non-Lordy Siths being lorded over by two Sith Lords, there are only two of them, total, at any time. One master and one apprentice that is only the apprentice until he kills the master and then takes on his own apprentice.

OK, c’mon George Lucas, that is fucking inane. You’ve dreamed up the single most self-defeating succession-plan in the history of management theory. In this absurd world, the master is supposed to take on an apprentice who he knows is going to try and kill him someday? Why would he ever do that? This will do nothing but insure that the master picks an apprentice that he knows will be dumber and weaker than him. It’s like the Idiocracy of evil death cults...four generations in and your grand plan to take over the universe is stuck with Master Lenny teaching Apprentice Forrest Gump how to not pet the mice too hard.

And yet we are supposed to accept that this arrangement went on for like 1,000 years, somehow getting stronger and stronger all the time? This is why George RR Martin is so much better at this than other writers are...his people do things that make sense to actual humans.

Speaking of which, George, I crank out 3,000-5,000 words of absolute brilliance every week in the downtime between doing my real job. You’ve had seven fucking years...where the hell is this book already!?!?!?

Submitted by: Space Ghost Jimmy
I was forced to buy Walmart jeans once. SWA lost bag, midnight it was open. Toothbrush, jeans, boxers, shirt, etc. BUT ended up loving [the way the} Walmart jeans fit, were comfortable, and ended up durable. So everyone laughs because I love Walmart jeans. Here's the problem though: Walmart is RACIST against skinny people. I can find 44w30L jeans at Walmart all day long. But it's almost impossible to find 28w32L. I end up usually getting 30W32L and wear a belt. Why is Walmart racist against skinny people. Do petite chicks have this problem?

Continuing with his long string of “Is this a question or a story?” Jimmy hits us this week with some thoughts on clothing sizes. But before that, I’d like to take issue with several parts of this question and give you one great non-sequitur…

First, your implied disdain for WalMart is shamefully elitist of you. WalMart’s low prices help millions of Americans live a better life by decreasing the cost of basic needs like, for example, blue jeans, thereby making their stagnant wages go further. Sure, for the privileged elite like you, or the private jet flyers like @molratty, it is a quaint lifeline to the working class that can be mocked from one of @brunuscutis’s many spare party mansions.

For those of us who toil endlessly under your Scroogian yoke in hopes that our meager wages will allow us the rare dinner at Applebee’s or a new baseball mitt for our kids’ birthdays, though, WalMart is a rare beacon of financial hope that the leisure class can simply never appreciate. Oh, how nice it would be to socialize at @CDPayne79’s country club soirees and crack jokes at the expense of the “regulars” over cocktails and passed hors d'oeuvres...but alas, that’s an unapproachable dream for those of us held down by your 1% ilk. We will have to continue to hold our heads high in the face of your bourgeoisie sneers and take what little solace we can in the dignity that your ill-gotten gains could never buy!

And we're gonna look good doing it!!!

Second...what’s up with your weird body shape?!?! A 28 inch waist and 32 inch inseam...it’s like you were born with stilts attached to a tiny body! Throw in the 42 inch chest you mentioned after this came up, and I have a vision of you casting a massive-chested, tiny-legged silhouette that looks roughly like a cartoon super hero.

In fact, I am going back and change your name here to Space Ghost Jimmy…

Speaking of weird body types...this is a fascinating look into the increasing role of genetics in determining elite athletes. In sports where it helps to be smaller, like gymnastics, athletes are increasingly getting smaller. In sports where it helps to be bigger, they are getting bigger. This ends with an anecdote about Hicham el Guerrouj, the greatest middle-distance runner to ever live, and Michael Phelps, the greatest swimmer to ever live.

Swimming and running value almost exactly opposite body features: swimmers excel with long torsos that act like canoes, long arms and short legs featuring gigantic hands and feet while runners benefit from the longer strides of longer legs and the lighter weight that comes from a shorter torso.

As a result, 6’4” Michael Phelps and 5’9” Hicham el Guerrouj wear the exact same size pants…(and somehow no one has ever gotten them to pose for a picture together).

The answer to your question, though, is that finding clothes that fit is infinitely harder for women than men. Mens pants are sold in a remarkably sane sizing regime whereby a buyer can simply know his two relevant measures - waist size and inseam length - and then find a pair of pants that will almost certainly fit.

Your particular problem is that you are an unusual size, so clothing retailers usually don’t carry a lot of stuff that fits you (um, do you even Internet, bro?)...the problem that women run into is that EVERY ONE OF US is an unusual size by women’s clothing standards. Even while complaining about the difficulty in finding your odd size, at least you know what size you wear and what to look for. The same 5’5” 140 pound women could be anything from a size 2 up to about a size 12 depending on her particular body shape. A store may well carry every size of a particular garment, but none of them actually fit!

When men buy pants, they can start with their waist size and then pick from any one of probably 4 or 5 different lengths to match their height. That is going to cover the huge majority of men between about 5’5” and 6’6”. In other words, almost all of you. A woman gets to pick either the pair that fits her through the butt and hips, or the pair that is the right length...THERE ARE NO OTHER OPTIONS. There are certain special unicorns who can find pants that fit both their hips and their height, but they are exceedingly rare.

Also, the rest of us hate them on general principle.

If men’s pants were sold like women's clothing, then ALL pants with a 34 inch waist would have a 32 inch inseam and the 85% of you that wear a different size can fuck right off. If you wear a 40 inch waist, well, you are simply going to have to be 6’8”, cuff them all the time or get them hemmed. There are parts of a man’s wardrobe that flirt with this idea (the basic volume of a men’s shirt is related to the neck size, so guys with thick necks often end up with shirts that are too big) but overall, the sizing on your clothes is much more flexible along the points of reference that actually vary.

Women are constantly trying to find the size that best fits most of their body parts because women's clothing makers inexplicably only make things in different sizes of identical proportions. Have a thicker than average butt? Well, you are just going to have to either deal with painfully tight pants, or pants with legs that are too long, or you are going to have to get every pair of pants you ever own hemmed.

I’m sorry ladies, it’s only 2017, we can’t rush the technology required to make pants with different leg lengths on the same sized butt. And women with large chests that would like tops that are fitted through the stomach and arms but accommodate their boobs without making them look like overstuffed stripper sausages? Well, you’re just not even in the ballpark...I don’t even think that idea is on the fashion technology roadmap…

Would you like to know how bad it is? I checked Banana Republic’s website as an example. They sell men’s pants in 13 widths and 5 lengths. That is 65 different sizes. Women’s pants come in 10 sizes. TEN!!! Men are 650% more likely to find pants that fit them than women are.  Forget that garbage about the wealth gap, feminists, THIS is what male privilege looks like.

I also surveyed some of Twitter’s favorite women to give me a brief description of their experiences in buying jeans so you’d get some idea of the normal issues we run into. I never, ever find jeans that are short enough for me, and I’m lucky if they fit at all snugly through my hips and waist. But I am a bad example, because I am at least as much of a naturally weird size as Jimmy is...hence, the input from actual adult-sized women!!!

From the, um, “busty” category, Kayla notes “If I find a pair of jeans that fits over my hips, the waist is too baggy. Dresses are 100x worse. In order to fit over my chest, the rest of it often resembles a dumpy potato sack.” Similarly, Annabel says “I have to get EVERY pair of jeans hemmed. If they have a ‘curvy’ size, it's a much better fit on my butt, but then the waist is way too big.”

Kari took issue with the inability for sizes to mean much of anything even within a single store “Being plus-sized - A size 20 jean fits differently than another size 20 jean in the same store. Crap material and everything has fucking spandex in it, which stretches the second after you sit down and your jeans end up on the floor when you stand up. I try on 13 pairs of jeans to find 1. And then I feel like I need to take them home on a trial basis. I've also noted that if you look at a rack of jeans (regular length), the legs lengths are uneven. No pants are the same length.”

{Editor's note: ever look at a six pack of Corona? Every bottle is likely filled to a different level. Just think about that level of quality control next time you decide that it belongs in your liver.}

JR Holmsted isn’t quite the midget that I am, but she’s not that much bigger, so she has similar problems. “What Kayla said. Only the exact opposite. They are always way too big in the chest, and built in bras are a big ‘fuck no’. I have to shop juniors and sometimes the selections are...lacking. Do I want to go for trendy Alicia Silverstone circa '95 or slutty 30 something trying to look 20 something? Those are usually my dress options. Or the pre-teen look. Which is almost the same as the Silverstone look.”

{Another Editor's note, we all vote for “slutty 30 something”}.

CC Hayes is, among those surveyed, seemingly the most in line with typical clothing-maker proportion ideas, it just seems that those ideas are still all over the place, “I am normally between a 2 & 6. I don't try and figure it out, it's basically magic to me, but having a butt complicates things.”

And Sarah managed to sum up this entire rambling four page diatribe in remarkably succinct fashion: “Nothing has ever fit me.”

So, yes, this is a pretty common affliction among the better half of the population. Probably best if you keep your complaining to yourself and just order your easily-sized pants off the Internet like normal people;-)

Submitted by: Timothy E. Miller
What ethical implications do you see in the conduct of war and military intervention in the present era?

Way to harsh on my buzz with a super serious question, man. I’m here to crack jokes, give out fashion advice, fix your personal financial plans and look super cute while doing it.  I don’t get paid to produce deep thoughts.

{Yet another editor's note: Alex is not getting paid at all. Don't tell her.}

But, you want a serious answer? I’m not going to tackle the breadth of the question, which would take a lot more space to address than I have here (ask CDP about the chances of ever being isolationist in a world with smartphones and Twitter). I will take on a very small slice, though, and note that drones and the way that we use them present myriad ethical problems that are somewhat new and have yet to be worked out. Never before has a decision to kill so precisely been so far removed from the actually execution of the deed. It has video-gamed the dropping of bombs and has the potential to drastically numb the bombers to the effects of the bombs.

More than that, though, is the way that they are used. Bombs have always been dropped to attack specific targets or strategically significant assets, but almost never to get just one specific person. Drones are (or can be) used to kill specific people without getting near the person, and that has a lot more uses (and dangers) than a traditional ordnance.

As one example, the CIA has never really been in the habit of dropping bombs on people themselves. They don’t have any planes and pilots, for one thing. They were, however, very quick to adopt the use of drones. The obvious problem being that the CIA doesn’t have a chain of command in the same sense that the military does, and orders are not issued by elected representatives and then executed through that chain of command in the same way.

Giving the CIA drones means giving the authority to kill to a civilian who is sitting, nearly anonymously, in a giant office building in Virginia with little accountability to your elected representatives and with almost no oversight or review of his or her activities. When the military uses a drone, it (usually) must announce so publicly after the fact, but the CIA has no such obligation. It is pretty easy to see where that can go very, very wrong. I think President Obama was right to largely stripp the CIA of its droning authority (requiring them to ask the military) and I think President Trump was wrong to give it back.

This extends to police using drones or robots as well, which led to a pretty serious Misfit tiff a while back. My kneejerk reaction is to be opposed to giving police the ability to kill people when nobody is in mortal danger. I am sympathetic to the argument that the bomb robots can keep the police from going into a situation that might be mortally dangerous, but to me that fundamentally changes the framework in which police can use lethal force. It changes from self-defense or immediate danger to others to “reasonable belief that a self-defense situation might occur.” That is an extraordinarily dangerous change, a super slippery slope, and almost guarantees that we will begin to diminish the skills of negotiation, mediation and other things that focus on making sure no one ends up dead.

I’ll tell you one more ethical problem with modern warfare. We don’t have the same kind of cool army clothes that we used to. I mean, I’m as susceptible to Navy Dress Whites as any women, but basically the military wears drab tan and olive green clothes 95% of the time. Have you ever seen how Germans dress for wars? Sure, they are 0-2 in global wars in the last century, but it is certainly not because they weren’t stylish enough. They had a bunch of guys sporting red pants in WWI, which is the reason that preppy pinkish pants were known as Verdun Reds until the swells on Nantucket paid off Big Fashion to change the name. And then, world’s worst monsters and all, but man-oh-man the Nazis could seriously dress the part...they were fighting the biggest war in the history of the world on three continent-long fronts, and yet they still found the resources for some really sharp leather trench coats and killer boots. Dress for the job you want, guys, even if that job is evil overlord.

And here, look at this completely random picture I found of a typical Soviet Army Infantry Captain fielding questions from a starstruck Western Press about the virtues of the working class and the glories of collective mass struggle. Is he a tool of imperialist capitalism? No, he's an enlightened laborer pursuing only the advancement of the proletariat and the glory of Mother Russia and her people. But he is looking damn good doing it! You’re telling me that guy’s not styling his way to the battlefield? We may have the most sophisticated and capable military in the history of the world, but we could really stand to improve the style of our fighting forces. Just because you can't shower for weeks at a time doesn't mean you don't want to look fabulous...right guys?

Submitted by: Dan
Garters for men. (This is in response to this article about shirt suspenders, which covers this Kickstarter.)

Ahh...this is more like it! See, Timothy, this is how it’s done!!!

Garters for men are a great idea that will solve SO many problems. Problems like “I have extra money, and I really hate it. What is the best way to waste it?” and “I’m getting laid entirely too often. How can I get the message across subtly and tactfully that I’m just not interested in having so much sex with so many ladies?” or “the guys at the club are getting a little clingy, and their hero worship is super awkward. How can I get them to see me as just a regular guy that they can make fun of incessantly?”

My favorite part of all infomercials is the “before” segment, the dramatized struggle where the flustered housewife or the overwhelmed homeowner is so incredibly frazzled by some routine task that you never even knew was actually insanely difficult that he or she is literally begging the universe to deliver a simple, perfect solution.

“Buttoning my coat is SO DIFFICULT!!! I can just never get the buttons to fit in the holes, and how am I supposed to know which hole is for which button? The buttons on men’s and women’s coats are on entirely different lapels...this is insanity!”

(Man: Folks, how often have you opened the morning paper only to have the rubber band fly off and hit you right in the eye?
Marge Simpson: Never. But it's my number one concern!)

(Confession time: I own a RonCo Showtime Rotisserie BBQ, and it’s awesome. I am also dreaming up excuses to buy FlexSeal, cuz that shit looks amazing. I mean...a boat made of window screen? Shut the fuck up and take my money, NotBilly Mays!!!)

This seems to fit right into the imaginary problem infomercial space. Am I supposed to believe that there is an international epidemic of shirts becoming untucked as buttoned-down office workers reach overhead regularly throughout the day for papers they have inexplicably stored on some non-existent 12 foot shelf in their office? I wear dress shirts almost every day with either pants or a skirt, and somehow in my 12 years of working, my shirt has never once come untucked. Well, not accidentally at least…;-)

Let’s also stop to note that there is an entire company devoted to manufacturing shirts that are meant to be worn untucked. Make up your mind, boys, is the problem that shirts won’t stay tucked, or do you not want them tucked? Spoiler alert: the great technological advancement is that the shirts are shorter. That sort of innovation is what we in the biz like to call “barriers to entry”. 11/10. Would invest.

I just did an experiment, reaching as far over my head as I could, and discovered that my shirt, while it is out of place, still remains firmly tucked into my skirt. And I managed to do this without your man-garters, cheap gadget infomercial guys! Also, without shoes on, I can reach a spot on the wall that is probably about six feet off the ground #MidgetProblems.

Never fear, though, because the makers of S-Holder (get it? The S is for “shirt”. And presumably not “self-respect”) have also decided to make this in three colors: Gentleman Black, Classy Beige and Navy Blue. I’m not sure that the hilarity of this train of thought is as obvious as it should be. So, let’s break it down.

It starts out fine...Gentleman Black makes plenty of sense, it fits with the image they are trying to go with of the refined, elegant man, nattily dressed and always put together. It then gets immediately off the rails with Classy Beige. Classy Beige?!?!? Beige is just about the least classy color in the standard Crayola box, ahead of maybe just Neon Orange and Aqua. If I am ranking colors by “classiness”, I’m going to put things like Black, Silver, Gold (Trump Division) and a whole host of rich, dark colors on the list well before I start to work through the browns.

And it isn’t even a classy brown! Things like taupe, chestnut and camel sound kinda classy. Russet, burnt umber, smoky topaz. Beige sounds like the color that the Politburo sets the country’s one paint factory to produce when every building in Kaliningrad needs to be redone. It’s about as classy as a wedding with a money dance and a cash bar.

That’s not even the best part, though. When they decided to make different colors, they decided that having different colors matters because, they presume, men will want to be seen in these sexy garters. Women, of course, often own garters in several colors, and they do so very explicitly because they intend to be seen in them. If we didn’t intend to show them to someone, we’d just wear pantyhose.

I don’t wear garters often, because frankly they are a pain, they aren’t that comfortable and they show through some skirts and dresses. But I do wear them on occasion, and I can tell you that I have never once worn them for any reason other than the visual they present after my clothes have come off. If I put them on, I am doing so exclusively for the fun of having them taken off later.

I’m not sure that I need to state the obvious here, but garters holding a woman’s stockings up are incredibly sexy. Garters holding a man’s shirt down are...um...not. To use of of Kayla’s favorite phrases, it would be a total Lady Boner Killer. To put it in a language that you men can probably understand better: you’re ruining sexy time. I can’t promise that she is going to rethink her attraction to you and go home, but you should probably be aware that she has a really early yoga class that she forgot about until just now.

For men, then, this is pretty easy to sum up in one simple mathematical equation: garter ≠ sex

---