Skip to main content

Mystery of the mardy male models

Image
By
Kill me now...

Modelling – it must be a whirlwind of glamorous locations, fabulous parties and constant adoration.

Maybe at the high end of glamour it is, but for those who are barely even reaching for the bottom rung of the ladder of success, it would appear to be slightly less scintillating and exhilarating. True, I’m not exactly basing this on in-depth research, but I did once work with a guy who dated a girl who became a very successful model (after they split up) and we were introduced briefly at an office Christmas party. That’s puts me in the “expert” category, right?

This week, I had cause to look into corporate clothing. You know the sort of thing; reasonably priced clobber with your organisation’s logo on. Practical. Smart. Washable at 30C.

Whilst the ladies throwing some shapes to show off their branded gear were broadly cheery in the photos, some of their male colleagues clearly weren’t too chuffed at being photographed in a £4.99 nylon-mix polo shirt (with contrast stitching) which is easy to iron.

Presumably, they had imagined that by now they would be sipping cocktails by a pool, rather than being asked to try and make a budget fleece look sexy. Maybe they misunderstood the photographer’s instructions. After all, it is notoriously easy to confuse “smile” with “look an alarming mixture of angry, sad and enormously aggressive at the same time.”

If you were thinking your fashion career would by now have naturally led to you appearing in a baffling perfume add with Keira Knightley, rather than changing into the 19th different shirt in a draughty store room in Slough, then I suppose that is the facial expression you’d wind up with.

Or maybe it was intentional? Perhaps the idea is to make you feel that wearing your logo-ed top is a deeply moving, manly experience. Something to make you feel hugely powerful and butch, a Norse God in a 3-for-£10 T-shirt. Hear me roar!

Had a bad week? Feeling like you career is stagnating, or you’re simply capable of so much more? I recommend simply tracking down one of these catalogues, flicking through the acres of brightly-coloured, man-made fibre, garments and basking in the joy that is the deeply mardy male model within.

Look at his sad eyes. Feel his pain as he glares defiantly at you whilst wearing a showerproof jacket (available in 6 colours). There. Life isn’t so bad now, is it?

This post first appeared as my "A wry look at the week" column, in The Mail, on Friday, 15th June, 2018, where it was retitled as "Models of bad behaviour".

 I honestly spent an hour trying to think of a good angle on the Trump/Kim summit last week, before eventually conceding that far funnier stuff had been written than I was coming up with, and went with my instincts - write about something that amused me during the week. 

 I couldn't find the specific pic that triggered it, but the one above should give you some idea. Shattered dreams - in nylon mix.

(CD A-Z: The very peculiar "Liverpool Sound Collage" from 2000... including dub Beatles. Yeah - I know.)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A fisful of change at the shops

By
A recent day out reminded me how much the retail experience has altered during my lifetime – and it’s not all good. I could stop typing this, and buy a fridge, in a matter of seconds. The shops are shut and it’s 9pm, but I could still place the order and arrange delivery. I haven’t got to wander round a white-goods retail emporium trying to work out which slightly different version of something that keeps my cider cold is better. It’ll be cheaper, too. But in amongst the convenience, endless choice and bargains, we’ve lost some of the personal, human, touches that used to make a trip to the shops something more than just a daily chore. Last weekend, we visited a local coastal town. Amongst the shops selling over-priced imported home accessories (who doesn’t need another roughly-hewn wooden heart, poorly painted and a bargain at £10?) was one that looked different. It’s window allowed you to see in, rather than being plastered with stick-on graphics and special offers calling ...
2 comments
Read more

Making an exhibition of yourself

By
Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Shouting in the social media mirror

By
It was always tricky to fit everything you wanted into the intentionally short character count of Twitter, especially when, like me, you tend to write ridiculously long sentences that keep going on and on, with no discernible end in sight, until you start wondering what the point was in the first place. The maximum length of a text message originally limited a tweet to 140 characters, due to it being a common way to post your ramblings in Twitter’s early days. Ten years later, we’ve largely consigned texting to the tech dustbin, and after a lot of angst, the social media platform’s bigwigs have finally opted to double your ranting capacity to 280. Responses ranged from “You’ve ruined it! Closing my account!” to the far more common “Meh” of modern disinterest. As someone rightly pointed out, just because you have twice as much capacity doesn’t mean you actually have to use it. It is, of course, and excellent opportunity to use the English language correctly and include punctuat...
Post a Comment
Read more