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I’m a sucker for the red carpet. Call me a metrosexual, go right ahead. My favorite personality these days is Ross Matthews, who will be covering the red carpet for E! and is as gay as a little boy who just tasted cotton candy for the first time (that means, happy, fellas). But I digress.
One of the most popular articles on The New York Times recently is “How to Wear a Tux“:
THIS Sunday, scores of men — some celebrated actors, others appendages to famous glamour-pusses — will expose themselves to the scrutiny of the world and, more alarmingly, Joan Rivers as they stride the red carpet at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. Most are likely to be clad in what is surely among the more foolproof dress uniforms ever devised: the tuxedo. Yet few will manage to get it right. Why is that?
The piece is one long man-bashing scream about how a monkey suit is the easiest damn thing in the world to wear properly but us knuckle draggers all seem to get it wrong.
Then there is my man Sacha Baron Cohen (last seen is a neon green banana suit) who is in a fight with the Academy over whether he can come dressed as a dictator.
Of course no one gives a rats ass what the guys wear, and I am steaming mad about it. The idea, the expectation, the outright mandate that we dress in this boring black and white jump suit invented by a bunch of guys sitting around in a hunting lodge (okay, I only know that because I was married in Tuxedo Park) is insulting, sexist, and cannot go on.
It’s about the dresses and I think us guys should have an equal right to wear color, to bring the bling, to get the spotlight. My friends would tell you I’m the first guy just dying to show up for a formal event in rare beef, diamonds galore, and precious little material covering my “tender parts,” as my 7 year-old son calls them. Bring on the see-through, the shaping of my backside, the scoop tops, and the People Magazine reviews.
It’s just not fair. Next time you are invited to a black tie affair, don’t go black. Go sheer purple with the bright yellow cover up.