"Maxi Dresses Are Sexy As Hell," Said NO Man Ever

I don’t even understand the feelings I feel when I see a woman wearing a maxi dress. It’s like a a reverse form of lust, some kind of weird horny energy being sucked back into my soul with industrial vacuum strength. I hate it. I hate it because I don’t want to be this guy who gives a damn about what a woman chooses to wear out in the world. I mean, who the hell am I to make any kind of fashion judgment on anyone? I dress like a drunk homeless guy who was locked in an Old Navy store overnight.

I’m part frat boy/part Duck Dynasty/part Matthew McConaughy’s fat friend at the beach. My style is fairly horrific, really, and so I know I have no right at all to feel such a deep and bitter grade of disappointment whenever I see a woman in a maxi dress. But I do and I need to share these feelings, because the maxi dress epidemic continues to spread throughout the United States with Ebola-style contagiousness, as if it were a massive joke that people took seriously.

Like religion.

Or fried Twinkies.

The epidemic was probably the fault of some tired/jaded/veteran/mass market designer struggling with a deadline at 8:39pm on a rainy Monday night in February in Jersey City, when she probably would've rather been hip-deep in the frigid Hudson gnawing on a dead eel. A person who decided, quite intentionally, to come up with an idea that would surely cause her to lose her job and free her from the chains of a horrid life dreaming up ugly, yet affordable, horsesh*t for the hopeless masses to wear on their bodies. There, in that room, on that night, semi-clingy sausage-skin sock dresses that hang way down over the ankle were clumsily spilled out of their steaming beaker and the infestation began.

A little context to my rant: I really dig ladies who dress street-stylish. I like women who like cool clothes (not expensive clothes), just stuff that seems like they give a sh*t. I think it's attractive when a woman can wear a casual item that highlights something hot about her, be it her eyes, her butt, her knees, whatever. And I like it when a girl wears said item because she knows it looks good on her. That's where the maxi dress collapses in on itself. What part of themselves do women think they're highlighting when they put that neck-to-toe horizontally-striped Victorian funeral dress on? It seems neurotic and uncommitted. It is the anti-highlighter, the deconstructor of even the most ancient conservative fashions in the world. It's as if someone somewhere said, 'Hey, let's take something like the wonderous, exotic sari and suck every ounce of edgy joy from the damn thing." 

And so I just don't get it.

Now, I know throngs of ladies are going to jump down my cyber throat and tell me they don't need to "dress sexy" all the time and that I should "go to hell" because maxi dresses are comfortable and comfort reigns supreme. I can't argue with that; I like comfort, too. Who doesn't dream of always feeling as relaxed and free in their duds as they do on Christmas morning, when they're a cinnamon roll-guzzling-couch potato in a leopard skin Snuggie?

Still. At the same time, comfort ought to have its visible limits, no?

I don't make an effort to advertise my own love of comfort by wearing an altar boy robe when I head down to the grocery store or to grab my kids at school. And I'm sure a long, flowing white ghost suit would feel incredibly liberating to my limbs and skin if I were to toot around town in it. But I resist those sartorial choices, mainly on the off-chance I might encounter another human being who actually looks at me.

What I'm trying to say to all of you ladies out there is that I totally understand that it's YOUR body and YOUR life and you can wear what you want to wear to get through your day. But c'mon! The gap between the ultra-sexy Hooter's waitress tops/Daisy Dukes (nice!) and the maxi dress (not-so-nice) is as wide as the Grand Canyon. There are still a hell of a lot of options to be considered before donning the one article of clothing that I can tell you (as a red-blooded American male) will avert every set of male (and probably even female) eyes you'll encounter.

It's pretty much the same as driving up to a supermarket and seeing a car parked there under a drooping, puddled tarp.

You stare at it, scratch your head, and wonder to yourself, "Hmmm, I wonder what's under there?"

And then you simply look away.