It’s men’s job to create events and situations for women, where they can dress up. In the past, one thing that Men did, for their women, was to create dramatic staircases.
This staircase, at the Breakers in Newport, RI, was specially designed for women to walk down wearing fancy dresses and high heels. The step height is intentionally reduced. Apparently, due to its moderate slope, it also works well to slide down on cafeteria trays, which some of the Vanderbilt kids did when they were small.
Today, women are huffing and puffing a bit, because they want to go on fancy dates at nice restaurants, in part because they want a reason to make use of all the information they collect all day from beauty and fashion channels on YouTube. Men don’t really want to do this, first because they don’t know you that well, and also, because they figured out that the guys you like don’t actually do that. But, still, I think that this urge is valid, because women want a situation where they can dress up.
Women will dress like this, if you give them a reason to.
Wouldn’t that be fun?
Today, I sometimes see women dressed like this, in rather inappropriate circumstances, because I guess they just wanted to dress up. I saw a woman, by herself, dressed like this — actually, even more extravagantly, if you can believe that, and equally gorgeous — in Central Park in Manhattan at 10am in the morning. I hope she made it home OK.
I personally went to college with some women from some wealthy families. Actually, I had a girlfriend from such a family. She had a closet with $10,000 of dresses (in 1990s money, so more like $25,000 today). She had a separate insurance policy on her clothes. These were dresses like the one in the photograph above. I never saw her wear one once. She never had an opportunity to.
I didn’t give her an opportunity to.
We did a lot of nice mountain biking together though.
I remember how I was in college. The idea of dressing up was rather alien. But, it wasn’t always that way.
Here is a picture from Harvard in the 1950s:
This was not a dress up event, like a formal photograph. It is students walking to class, on just a normal day, wearing suits.
And, of course, this:
These were high school students, in the 1940s. Note the cola in bottles.
This sort of thing takes practice. So, start practicing. Also, I think that young people just need to start creating more get-together events. Who is going to do it, if not you? Your mom? The government?
Actually, for the high school age crowd, “your Mom” is the correct answer. Probably, someone’s Mom helped organize the event in the photo above. We really can’t expect teens to do this themselves. If you leave teens to do things themselves, they get together behind the Dairy Queen, by the dumpster. (It really was Dairy Queen, never McDonald’s or Taco Bell.) Anyway, that’s what they used to do. I’m Gen X, so I’m going to tell you how fantastic it was to get together by the dumpster at Dairy Queen, when we were too old to drink out of garden hoses. Ha ha, I’m joking, but you would actually take me seriously, because it really was better than today. I’m not sure what the equivalent of the Dairy Queen dumpster is these days. It seems to be: playing games online together. But, if you are out of the house, and maybe in college, your Mom can’t help you anymore.
If I was in college again, and I had a girlfriend with $10,000 of dresses again, I would set up some formal cocktail parties. Suits, dresses and heels required. Establish a formal rotation of bartending duties among your guy friends. Make proper drinks, in pretty glasses. Here is the menu from the Vanderpump Cocktail Garden, at Caesar’s Palace, in Las Vegas — which is a nice place to drink cocktails. This is what I mean by “proper drinks.”
I would make a formal menu, like this, although maybe not so long. Five proper cocktails. Practice making them. Start with three if you like.
You can buy very nice glasses for almost nothing. I like antique stores. Here are some at Goodwill for $10 for the whole set:
That’s about $0.60 per glass. NO PLASTIC CUPS, or dumb crap like Mason jars.
Do you know why glasses like these are available in the thousands in places like Goodwill for $0.60 each? It’s because people, who are dead now, bought them so they could invite people over to drink cocktails, when they were young. It was the people in the pictures above.
Invite about 30 people. It’s not very committal, so you can invite pretty girls that you don’t know very well, and they will come, because why not. It’s not a “date.” Start with ten people if you have to. Of course you want to also invite some guys, who pretty girls might be interested in. I suggest skewing the ratio a little toward more women than men. This is so easy.
Establish a formal schedule. Maybe once a month. Maybe choose the calendar dates in advance. Not “when I feel like it.” Make a sort of obligation. Get into the habit.
This is mostly Men’s job. Yes, women can do it too, but that is sort of like girls dancing together. Did women build their own staircases to walk up and down themselves? That never happened. Get up off your ass, Men, and buy some pretty glasses. You will be glad you did.
Cornerstone 