Bum tarat-tarat

Gaudy male fashion is much like the campaign of cellar-dwelling senatorial candidates who spend a &*^%load on advertising — you may end up becoming popular but, hey, we still think you look like crap.

I thought I had exorcised my bondage to DOM (Dirty Old Man) fashion last week after writing about how this type of fashion had the ability to repel women within a five-meter radius. Writing that column even forced me to unload my closetful of ribbed nipple-hugging T-shirts.

However, the column inadvertently served to further the cause of DOM fashion. In fact, friends, relatives and convicted felons bombarded me with text messages, e-mails and letters scribbled out in their own blood revealing their DOM fashion "guilty pleasures." Corega handbags with matching bodyguard. Ankle-high zip-up boots with three-inch high takongs. Orange-burgundy dyed hair with white hair strands peeking out from the scalp. Crocodile skin cowboy boots (Note: Am unsure which police district they sourced the skin from) with matching belt. Kiwi shoe polish for shoes and scalp. And — Lord have mercy — 50-ish men with 40-inch waistlines wearing Speedo trunks. Speedo trunks. Do these men have no shame and no girdles!?

There was even talk that I would stage a DOM fashion show. I received inquiries from several individuals who wanted to know the schedule of the auditions so that they could squeeze it in between their campaign schedules. "What have I unleashed?" I thought. Had I brought this world one step closer towards The Book of Revelations? But the final straw really came the other day when I had lunch with my dad. Feeling the pinch of the summer heat, my dad took off his blousy polo barong to reveal that he was wearing one of my discarded ribbed nipple-hugging T-shirts underneath. The image in my head of my dad wearing a nipple-hugging shirt has now replaced the image in my head of accidentally walking into the banyo while my yaya was taking a shower.

Despite my insistence that he wear the barong over his head while gallivanting through the mall, he simply shrugged his shoulders. "I’m perfectly comfortable with this," he remarked. "So what if people don’t think I’m fashionable? It doesn’t bother me. Now stop wearing my barong over your head. You look like an idiot."

And for a fleeting moment, I actually understood his philosophy towards fashion. After all, grown men wearing folded, short-sleeve, floral-patterned shirts tucked into high-waisted pleated pants may cause epileptic seizures among onlookers, but nobody has ever said that wearing such an atrocity was a capital offense. At least, not yet. I slept uneasily that night, worried that I might wake up with a clutch bag growing underneath my armpit and a peluka symbiotically attached to my scalp.

The next morning, as I contemplated returning my nipple shirts to the closet, it dawned on me: DOM fashion is like a parasite that infects our blood. It just bides its time while waiting for our good fashion sense to start to ebb. And when our fashion sense is at its most vulnerable, then the parasite just ravages whatever aesthetic sense we have left until we end up dressing like a refugee from Master Showman. It takes a lot of willpower and prolonged exposure to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (or Kikay Eye for the Straight Guy, for the sake of shameless cross-plugging) to fight off the urges of the DOM fashion parasites. However, this eventually raises the question: If we cannot dress like DOMs, then how should we dress?

If Pinoy men were left to their own fashion devices, then we would fasten cigarettes to the sides of our ears, pull up our kamisetas to reveal our rippling pot bellies, show off our knee-long basketball shorts, and accentuate this whole getup with our Sunbeach tsinelas. After all, this ensemble is practically de rigueur in every eskinita and neighborhood sing-along across Metro Manila. And despite the fact that these beer-enriched, belly-exposing fashion mavens don’t appear to be fans of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, they still get their fair share of the womenfolk. So maybe, just maybe, this half-naked style of dressing which allows you to cunningly "expose your goods" may also get you halfway there with the ladies. It worked for these men. It worked for the Spartans.

And it worked for Donald Duck, too.

Recently, scientists at the University of Alaska reported in the journal Nature on a specimen of the Argentine Lake Duck that had a, ahem, member that was nearly half a meter long, the same length as its body. But nature wasn’t high enough yet to realize that she was going a wee bit overboard, so in addition she shaped the duck’s war machine like a spiny, overlong corkscrew. You would think that the female ducks would flee in terror from this duck’s weapon of mass destruction. Quite the contrary. This particular species is popular among the ladies and is often boisterous in its pursuit of sexual opportunity.

After dealing with their own issues of inadequacy, the scientists suggested that this duck’s memorable appendage was the result of "runaway sexual selection." Through a purely arbitrary female preference for longer wee-wees, nature coerced these drakes to evolve unreasonably long lethal weapons. But since there is still justice in this world, the duck’s genetic quirk comes with a caveat: although his next-generation weapon has mate-attracting qualities, it also has a built-in handicap to survival. Just look at the problems it has caused for poor Donald. He just can’t seem to find any underwear that fits.

The Argentine Lake Duck’s over-the-top bottle opener raises many questions. How come nature did not select me to run away with? How much of the actual duck corkscrew does any uncorking? When can we watch the ducks getting busy with the ladies on Animal Planet? And, most importantly, how do we translate the attractiveness of the overlong corkscrew into male fashion without endangering the local balut industry?

According to The Definitive Book of Body Language, male fashion is really an attempt at sexual advertising. Men need to dress in a manner that flaunts their most sexually attractive attributes without being arrested. So if you want to make a fashionable impression among women, you need to know which of your body parts triggers women. Not triggers them to random acts of violence, mind you. But triggers them to become visually attracted to your physical assets.

Here’s a clue: when it comes to a woman’s favorite male body part, the answer is universally split into three groups — chest and arms, legs and pwet — with the pwet taking in 40 percent of the vote to win first prize. Unfortunately, double chins, beer bellies and sagging man-breasts as physical features were not even runners-up. They did not even make it past the talent competition.

Now stand stark naked in front of a full-length mirror with your chest puffed up, your arms akimbo, your butt muscles clenched (although I’m not sure how you can see this in the mirror) and your legs spread apart. After suppressing your own laughter, examine the three aforementioned body parts and try to figure out which among them is the most appealing. The body part that disappoints you the least is probably the body part that you can accentuate through your choice of clothes. But if you have difficulty figuring which body part that is, my yaya is ready to assist you.

For those of you who are not physically gifted, you are welcome to join me in forming a hit squad to take down Marc Nelson, have him torn apart from limb to limb, and use his body parts to replace your own. If you are interested, please let me know which body part of his you want because I already have first dibs on his six-pack.

Broad shoulders, chest and muscular arms. Women find these physical features appealing because they retain the genetic memory of how important these attributes were to our male hunting ancestors. These ancient men had powerful upper torsos that allowed them to lug heavy weapons over long distances and carry home their kills. Although we do most our hunting in fast-food joints nowadays, there is still a use for large torsos aside from joining Mr. Universe contests. I can safely say that I have developed my physique to the point where I can lug my fiancée’s 200-pound sunflower-pattern handbag for over five hours while she shops in the mall and, at the same time, beat anybody to death with my bare hands if they make fun of me while carrying the handbag.

Muscular legs. Men’s legs are attractive to the ladies only insofar as they are symbols of masculine power and endurance. This is because powerful legs and narrow hips allowed our ancestors to run swiftly across long distances and chase after prey. Although well-defined legs may have caused involuntary salivation among our female ancestors, I question how appealing our legs can be to the women of today. When I used to frequent the gym, I wore those short running shorts, which are more popularly named after a female body part, hoping to generate some involuntary salivation as well. However, these shorts did not endear me to the female gym members who needed to be hospitalized for nausea. And I was often warned by the locker attendant to watch my back while in the shower. But my leg does seem to hold some appeal for my dog Tofu.

Small, tight pwet. Tighter than the budget of the Kapatiran senatorial slate, the compact pwet is the hands-down favorite of women everywhere. I can tell. Even when I just wear a picture of Marc Nelson’s pwet over my face, women seem to be attracted to me like barangay captains to Raul Gonzalez. But even 21st-century women still do not comprehend the inexplicable appeal of the male pwet. Before I explain why, I would like to remind my mom and my parish priest who are reading this column that I did not make this up, and that I read it in that book about body language. Really. Disclaimer: The secret behind the pwet’s magnetic attraction causes women to hunt down the authors of the book, burn their houses to the ground, drink excessively and contemplate voluntary celibacy.

The secret for the attraction is that a tight, muscular rear helps with strong forward thrusting motions during intercourse to ensure a better chance at conception. In contrast, men with flabby derrieres (a.k.a. salbabid-ass) have great difficulty with this type of forward thrusting motion which, in turn, may lower the chances at conception. For men like these, you may be better off just photocopying my picture of Marc Nelson’s pwet.

But remember, even if your ass is tight enough to pop open champagne bottles, it doesn’t give you license to act like one. Unless you’re as gifted as Donald Duck.

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For comments, suggestions or you want to help me seek the endorsement of the DOM party list, please e-mail ledesma.rj@gmail.com.