It's 100% untrue. Men are beautiful. You are beautiful. Believe in yourself and remember that the most attractive thing in the world is a kind heart and that starts with being kind to yourself.

Don't let the world make you feel ugly, they're just trying to sell you shit.

  • deadbergeron [he/him,they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I think it'd be cool to have a fashion comm, or a hygeine(?) sub to talk about like skincare and haircare. For everyone of course, but I especially know as a man some of this stuff can seem impenetrable. It could help comrades feel better about themselves

    • RandyLahey [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah I agree

      For the longest time I "didn't care about what I wear" and just bought really shit clothes and acted like I was above such worldly consumerist concerns, but I've come to realise more recently that I had just internalised this idea that I was too ugly/too much of a loser to "deserve" to look good and that I would be mocked mercilessly for having the temerity to even try, so I just went with looking like shit as a defensive mechanism.

      I haven't gone full-on fashionista or anything by any stretch, but I've put work into learning how to dress better and selectively buy fewer good things that fit well and look decent and it's been really good for my self-esteem and mental health in general. I think something like this could really help other comrades as well, especially in a space that can take a critical eye to all the consumerist bullshit that surrounds clothes and appearance

      Also I have a whole album of Evo Morales looking cool as shit in these amazing indigenous-inspired jackets etc and I need a comm to post them in

      • deadbergeron [he/him,they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        yeah i had the exact same experience. I still sorta dress like shit lol, but I've been trying to dress better.

        I also think, at least for me, there was this recognition that the type of people around me who were into fashion were very bougie, and you needed money to be into fashion. So I decided to dress like shit as a reaction to this, since the only way I could see to interact with fashion was through a bourgeois perspective (of course I wasn't able to explain it in those words). Now that I've had more experience, and have embraced Marxism, I understand how to interact with fashion outside of this bourgeois perspective better.

        And then of course there's the idea that, as a man, you're not allowed to care about what you wear. Like if you do, you get mocked by your friends, and no older men around you can give you guidance since most of them had the same experience. So you just end up dressing like shit b/c you don't want to seem less of a man and get mocked by your friends for caring about fashion, and then there's really no one to help teach you how to dress. Socialized into dressing like shit

        • Whorish_Ooze [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          If you know how to sew, taking in clothing to better fit your form can seriously make a world of a difference you won't even believe, and it costs a grand total of about $0.47 cents. If you don't know how to sew, you can learn hwo to sew by hand in probably an hour, and its a great repetative monotonous meditative thing if you're into that sort of stuff. Sewing by machine is quite a bit harder, but 20x faster or so.

          • RandyLahey [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I re-sew my cuff buttons to fit my wrists better cos it's beyond easy, but with stuff like putting darts in I always feel like I would do it wrong. Having a tailor do it also gives that confidence that a second person (who knows what they're doing) thinks the proportions etc are right. But I 100% agree that getting stuff tailored was like magical witchcraft for making everything look a million times better, and even the cost of getting a professional to do it is pretty low compared to the cost of new clothes.

        • RandyLahey [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Yes absolutely!

          And we can mock r/malefashionadvice because it's faaaaaaar from perfect, but it's a space that's actually really helpful to clueless people exactly in our shoes (and it seems like there's a lot of us), who can really just benefit from the basic stuff and learn what the "standards" are so you can then figure out how/why/when you might want to deviate from those. And credit where it's due, the regulars are actually pretty trans-positive plus also supportive of people experimenting with more "feminine" clothing styles (and pretty good at banning all the blow-in transphobes).

          Something like that but without the r*ddit would be pretty cool I think, alongside threads for stuff like "I thought I looked good today, here's a non-doxxing pic"

          • deadbergeron [he/him,they/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            haha yes definitely frequented malefashionadvice a ton a couple years ago when I was trying to get a handle on how to dress well. Glad to know they're pretty solid over there. And they do have a ton of great resources

    • crime [she/her, any]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Hell yeah, I remember someone was growing their hair out for the first time and I got some good tips on cutting out shampoo. I'd be super into that comm

        • crime [she/her, any]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Same, I love having opinions and sharing tips that made my life better. There was that thread a few weeks ago about Korean sunscreen and that was really fun too

        • grilldaddy [she/her]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Yes! I stopped washing mine last year and it's never been healthier and it feels and smells great.

          • deadbergeron [he/him,they/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            ok wait so, do you do anything with your hair? Like wash it with just water? My hair tends to get really greasy really fast, and is very long

            • PapaEmeritusIII [any]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Just wanna add that while “training” greasy hair to go longer between washes works for some people, it doesn’t work for everyone. I wash my hair every 1-2 days and it looks great. Tried going longer between washes for a while; most uncomfortable two months of my life

              • bigbologna [she/her]
                ·
                4 years ago

                it doesn’t work for everyone

                I really wish I knew that before I spent a full year having horrible greasy hair every other day waiting for it to get better :agony:

                • PapaEmeritusIII [any]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  I spent two months cleaning it very lightly. So like, once a week I’d wash with sulfate-free shampoo, as the trend goes. It did not turn out well for me

            • Abraxiel
              ·
              4 years ago

              I stopped washing my hair like six or seven years ago. It was horrifically greasy for two or three weeks, but after that it totally mellowed out.

            • grilldaddy [she/her]
              ·
              edit-2
              4 years ago

              I try to be diligent about brushing my at least hair once a day (I use a boar's bristle brush because it moves grease from the roots down through the ends. Vegan comrades might be able to suggest an alternative that works the similarly but I don't know of one off-hand). I use hot water on my scalp when I get in the shower and kind of give yourself a scalp massage to help move some of the grease down your hair. I use a cup of water with a couple of teaspoons of apple cider vinegar as a shampoo replacement and leave that on for a little bit. I co-wash (so I use conditioner afterwards) mostly because it smells nice but I don't think this step is necessary. Rinsing with cold water is unpleasant but helps close the cuticles and makes your hair super shiny. My hair is thick as shit and required a lot of shampoo when I was using it and was still always dry. Not washing my hair with shampoo saves me a lot of money and my hair basically doesn't get greasy anymore. It doesn't work for everyone though and it's definitely uncomfortable and gross at first lol

              Edit -- just read over this and it looks kind of impenetrable lol. TLDR is brush your hair, use hot water when you massage your scalp in the shower.

          • Malikto [none/use name]
            ·
            4 years ago

            My scalp starts itching like crazy and my hair sticks together because of grease buildup. I don't know how you people do it.

        • crime [she/her, any]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Unrelated mostly I think, but it does make your hair healthier and for me there's less frizz and more volume. I've been doing it for about 2 months now and my hair is normal, it doesn't get oily quite as fast and I only wash it with water. You do need to kind of massage your scalp before your shower and during to help get the dirt and oil rinsed off but honestly giving myself a scalp massage is not at all a drawback lol