The devil wears a cellphone on his belt

Welcome to the second part of fashion from hell — where you’ve just realized that your entire wardrobe will have to be donated to the museum of man-made disasters.

After last week’s column, I received a barrage of texts from well-paid but irate fans informing me that they donated their last pairs of pleated pants to charitable institutions. Despite how well-intentioned they may be, that’s just plain mean. Just because they will no longer appear on the fashion police’s Most Wanted List, it doesn’t mean they should pass on their fashion victim-hood to the less fortunate. After all, there are better solutions than donating these pants to charity: Send those pleated pants to Jocjoc Bolante, I am sure it will help him survive his incarceration among hardened criminals who aren’t allowed conjugal visits. ("You look mighty fine in them pleats, Josie. I hear you like fertilizer…")

Although fashion sense is arguably subjective, it is often a subject that Pinoy men fail in more miserably than Safe Sex Education. So to save dateless men from a life addicted to Internet porn and from wearing see-through polo barongs, we have the Pab Payb editors from Girlfriend, Lifestyle Asia, Manual, Meg and Mega magazines to teach grown men how not to dress like peacocks. However, their advice on fashion faux pas comes at the risk of their personal safety: these editors now live in constant fear that men wearing color schemes inspired by Peter Pan, the Smurfs and Franciscan monks will raid their offices and impale them with their hair.

The future isn’t so bright, a.k.a. Tinted shades or sunglasses indoors. "What are you hiding behind those shades!?" an editor demanded. Apparently, she found wearing shades indoors about as creepy as the administration’s ploy to ramrod Charter change through our legislature (yes, it’s that creepy). And just as they can smell the cheap girlie bar perfume even after you have drowned yourself in enough cologne to knock out small rodents, women intuitively know why men wearing tinted shades indoors is so creepy. Human relations expert Allan Pease say that men could be trying to hide an "intimate gaze."

From a distance, men initially check out a woman twice. The first look they take is to check her face and then her lower body to establish that she has the right set of equipment. The second look is to determine their level of interest in the woman. Since a male has limited peripheral vision versus a woman’s, he will tend to gaze up and down a woman’s body in a more obvious fashion than the administration crackdown on opposition mayors. So ladies, the short answer is yes – he is using those shades to discreetly check out your child-bearing hips. Feel free to kick his equipment.

Note, though, that there are exceptions for those who are allowed to wear shades indoors: if you are Stevie Wonder, or Randy Santiago, or Cyclops from the X-Men, or if you have nipples for eyes.

Solution: "Girls want to be able to look into your eyes, being the windows of your soul and all," one of the Pab Payb cheesily waxed. "But, more importantly, we do not like it when men are checking us out like grocery items. Tell them to be brave enough to ogle us without shades. We will still castrate them if they do check us out, but at least we know that they were real men," she sighed romantically while shining her balisong. Ladies, remember this: although shades have evolved into a fashion item, ultimately they should still serve a utilitarian purpose. So if you see men who insist on wearing shades indoors, especially in bars and dimly lit venues, give the Pab Payb a call. They would be more than happy to claw their eyeballs out. However, if the Pab Payb are unavailable to partake in wide-scale violence and you see men pretending not to ogle you underneath a pair of shades from a distance, learn how to throw your stiletto heel with deadly accuracy.

Plagrhant pouhl, a.k.a. Wearing basketball sneakers as part of casual wear. I have sympathy for men who are as attached to their basketball sneakers as GMA is attached to the presidency. Prior to the invention of instant noodles with real beef bulalo, men used to hunt in packs with other men to catch dinner. However, with the advent of advanced farming techniques in the 18th century, men’s hunting skills were rendered obsolete. Since the remote control had yet to be invented, men instead invented ball sports to substitute for their hunting activities. And the idea that you can show off to other men your pair of high-tech, air-pump, microchip-controlled, SoftGel-enhanced, nuclear-powered basketball sneakers is almost like proclaiming that you are still part of a hunting pack. Unfortunately, them sneakers of yours are just too damn bulky to wear with jeans. Sigh, this is something that the Pab Payb will never fully grasp.

Solution: Unless you plan to go one-on-one with the security guard who frisks you before you enter the mall or you want to sneak past the bouncer who won’t let you into the club because of your clunky pair of basketball sneakers, the Pab Payb recommends that you wear a sporty but sleeker pair of sneakers like the ones they have in Adidas (Meg’s fashion editor highly recommends Yamamoto’s Y-3) and Pumas (check out their make-your-own Mongolian BBQ Shoe on www.puma.com). (Note to advertisers: That was free plugging, but you can send me a complimentary pair of sneakers via e-mail.)

Apollo nightclub school of fashion, a.k.a. Muscle shirts or wifebeater tees (tank tops) on non-muscled men. According to The Definitive Book of Body Language, women find themselves attracted to men with a well-defined upper body. (Preferably, the body is defined by gym work and not by happy hour). However, women dislike the overly "muscleman" bodybuilder look (why, what’s wrong with my body!?) because a woman feels that a man should be checking her curves out instead of his own. ("Hi, sweetcakes, can I borrow your compact mirror, I want to remove my shirt and see if I can move my pecs individually.")

There was a furious cat-fight among the editors over the question of whether men should be allowed to don muscle shirts at all, regardless of whether these men were cut like a rock or shaped like a boulder. "Muscle shirts are for muscled men," one of the editors warned. "So if you don’t have it, don’t flaunt your manly beer belly." Another editor chimed in, "Tank tops are for model types and thin, lean and lanky men. Otherwise you’ll end up looking like either a Chippendale or Homer Simpson." "A muscled shirt that is too small clings to you and ends above the waistband. Even the most ripped guys do not look good, a little too gigolo for my taste," another gigolo-frequenting editor added. But the last editor put it more discreetly: "Tight, tight shirts are callboy essentials." Given the visceral reaction of the Pab Payb, it begs the question, how do they know what Chippendales, gigolos and callboys dress like? (Note to self: I will never wear a muscled shirt among matronas again. I don’t care how much money they stuff way deep down into my pockets while I’m pole-dancing.)

Solution: Some of the Pab Payb feel that these shirts, much like hallucinogenic drugs, should be highly regulated based on the size of your waist, chest and biceps, while the others feel that these shirts should be banned outright and any man who tries to wear them should be electrocuted by their family jewels. To be sure, men who still own muscle shirts should just say that they were swept away during Milenyo, and the women should pray that both those calamities don’t return for the next decade or so. However, for the foolhardy who insist on wearing muscle shirts, they should be involuntarily shipped off to join Jocjoc with his pleated pants in prison ("Hey, Asian boy, I can see them nipples through that shirt. Have you met my girlfriend, Josie?")

Lek you, a.k.a. Cellphone on the belt. This fashion faux pas has led to collective fits of epilepsy among the editors. "This is just plain wrong," one of the editors, who is dating a man twice her age and three times her waistline, tearfully remarked, "It brings baduy to a whole new level." And the most seizure-inducing way to "wear" a cellphone is if you have a holster for it on your belt. The Pab Payb will be legally permitted to have you shot at from a distance if you are wearing a holster to prevent them and other females from breaking out into future epileptic fits. "The cellphone on his belt is the modern-day equivalent of a clutch bag – it is a screaming D.O.M. alert."

I was in disbelief over this remark since I have grown rather comfortable with being called a D.O.M. – even before I started wearing a cellphone the size of a container van on my belt. However, the Pab Payb may be on to something here if a report entertainingly called "Mobile Phones as Lekking Devices among Human Males" published by the Center for Economic Learning and Social Evolution is to be believed. Among animals, a lek is a communal mating area where males converge to swagger about in flamboyant courtship displays while females stroll by to check them out and hopefully pick out the fittest, the most resourceful and, most importantly, the most amusing of the lot. Dr. Geoffrey Miller, author of The Mating Mind, asserts that cellphones are a "clever positional good" – which means a device that marks one’s wealth and social position. In other words, a wantonly displayed cellphone means that a man wants to show you that he has enough credit limit in his card to be your sugar daddy. So for the ladies out there, remember this: if a man exposes his cellphone around you, tell him to do his lekking where he belongs – at the zoo. There are probably some elephants there who might find him good enough to sit on.

Solution: Even the Pab Payb were at a loss for a solution to the lekking dilemma because females can always have dainty looking handbags to hide their cellphones in. However, since men cannot put their cellphones in a clutch bag (because you can’t right a wrong with another wrong), I have been conducting my own research into bodily orifices where I can comfortably hide my phone yet still have the ability to walk straight. I will able to give you better tips on hiding cellphones inside body parts in a couple of months after we send Jocjoc those pleated pants.

Disclaimer: The columnist does not necessarily share the opinions of our Pab Payb when it comes to fashion f%^&-ups, especially since most of the clothes mentioned in this column comprise his wardrobe (thanks a lot, Mom).

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Next week: Part three of our Fashion Disaster series — "You are NOT Michael Jackson!" For comments, suggestions or if you would like to go lekking, please e-mail ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.com.