There are two reasons why men dress like slobs and they have nothing to do with apathy, or not wanting to look gay, or comfort, or any other reason they claim.

The first one is shame

"Shame?! I'm not ashamed."

Yes you are.

It may not be acute but that's because you've carried it for so long you're used to it.

Think about young boys who dress up as their favorite heroes with reckless abandon - who walk around naked without thinking twice about it - who couldn't care less about whether their pants match their shirts.

They are shameless.

It's Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden unaware of their nakedness.

It's the 4-year-old boy who wears the same batman cape for three months straight.

As you get older, you become aware of the fact that people have expectations of you - you learn to be embarrassed.

And worse, you allow other people to project their own shame onto you and make you feel it.

When it comes to clothing and appearance, most boys experience this for the first time in junior high school.

Maybe you were late to puberty and scrawny but convinced yourself that that size L t-shirt fit so you could hide your shame.

Maybe you were overweight and tried to hide it by wearing the XXL

Or were too poor to afford new clothes every year and shopped ironically at Good Will to prevent the hurt that came from popular kids when you showed up in Sketchers instead of Nikes

Maybe you weren't very sociable or athletic or smart so you dressed in a way that drew as little attention to you as possible

Maybe you finally got up the courage to talk to your crush and, because she didn't know how to react, she made fun of your shoes with an awkward laugh.

It's all shame

And you either embraced irony as a way to pre-empt the pain or mediocrity as a tactic to prevent it.

But maybe you were one of the lucky ones who found an identity, a tribe, and some confidence as a teenager.

Maybe you were the guy who was popular or edgy or funny in high school.

And then what.

You got out of your small pond and no one cared.

You went from the top of your world to a nobody.

And what did you experience?

Shame.

But it doesn't end there.

You're stuck in a lifeless job that you absolutely resent so you do your best to meet the bare minimum requirements of the company dress code.

Why?

Because it's a way to convince yourself that this lifeless corporate drone isn't who you really are, it's being forced on you.

Somehow it's less shameful to be forced into that position than it is to be there willingly.

So you put on the uniform of the resentful victim and make sure everyone knows you only do the least of what's expected of you.

You've put on 20 - 50 - 70 lbs over the last ten years and hate who you see in the mirror.

But if you put on your favorite shirt you had in college and suck in your gut (and the bathroom lighting is just right) you can convince yourself it's not as bad as you think.

Your wife hasn't had sex with you in weeks (or months (or years!)) and you know deep down it's because all the attraction is gone.

But instead you give in and think it's about communication or validating her more or doing more chores.

But what she really wants is a man who acts (and looks) like he knows what he wants out of life - who still puts more energy into the world than he drains out of it.

And you haven't been that man in more than a decade.

And the real kicker is you're not even allowed to acknowledge that shame.

With the broken masculinity that came out of WW2 you're told that feeling any emotion is weakness - you're supposed to be rational or stoic all the time.

And with the broken attitude we have toward masculinity now you get it from the other side too.

You deserve that shame because you're inherently an oppressor - an evil creature who can only be tamed by the benevolence of a virtuous woman.

The media, your church, and your mother will all tell you if you don't own that shame you're an arrogant misogynist who's turning out just like your bastard of a father.

So you dress like the good little boy your society wants you to be.

Or the caricature of the lone wolf that Hollywood propagandizes you with so you blend into the crowd of all the other lonely men who think acknowledging their desire for male friendship makes them weak or unworthy.

You dress poorly to hide your failures - physical, financial, spiritual, and emotional.

You tell yourself it's because it doesn't matter or it shouldn't.

But deep down you know it does.

You hold up rich dorks like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates as proof that you don't need to dress well to be successful but you secretly know the only thing you envy about those two is their money and nothing else about their lives looks better than yours.

You tell yourself it's too try-hard or you'd rather spend your money elsewhere or you don't care what anyone else thinks of you

But it's all just one massive cope for the fact that you don't believe you're worth paying attention to - that you're worth admiring or respecting

You can't handle the pressure that comes from dressing in a way that signals dignity or self-respect.

You're not ready for people to hate you because they project their shame onto you and think you believe you're better than them.

You're not ready for that promotion (and the responsibility that comes with it) or to date or marry the type of women you're actually attracted to.

So you dress in a way that signals you're safe, stale, and boring.

And then your shame compounds.

You don't have the vitality, swagger, and competence of the warrior who can wear the ears of his enemies or the scars of his battles.

Nor do you have the wisdom and insight of the shaman or prophet with his ritualistic and symbolic clothing.

You don't have the dignity of the chief or mayor who proudly runs his tribe or town and wears the headdress or the key to city hall around his neck as a way to remind himself of his responsibilities.

No

You are an automaton - a robot

Who looks like every other model that came off the factory line.

It's no wonder you're miserable.

Thankfully it's not hopeless.

Of all the things modern man needs to change, one of the easiest ways to reprogram your mind is to alter the way you dress.

You don't have to constantly reinforce your shame but can break free from it.

You don't have to carry the burden of weaker men who justify their own shame by passing it onto you.

You can rise above what they are and were. https://twitter.com/ryan_boothh/status/1298443864756248576?s=20

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