Men Style

I taught myself how to be “cool” as a junior high student many years ago. It was an intuitive process for me at the time, though filled with social experiments and trial and error – and lots of beating up on myself to get it just right.

I’ve spent years trying to figure out a good way to teach all the aspects of being cool. A way to boil it all down to something simple, streamlined, and easily remembered and used by anyone who aspires to “cool”: who wants to be that person that everybody else just looks at and says, “Man, that guy is cool.”

How do you transform someone who “doesn’t get it” – whom others laugh at, make fun of, disrespect, or ignore – into someone they look up to, gravitate toward, and esteem?

To do this, of course, you need good tactics – you need to be able to give them the “what to do”; but more than this, you need the underlying principles: what is it about cool people that just makes them so damn cool?

Well, after years of non-starters on an article about this, I will say that I have successfully boiled “cool” down to four (4) core elements that are eminently doable and absolutely teachable.

Get all four of these right, and you will be – without question – unstoppably, unspeakably, almost unbearably cool.

And the best news is, all any of them takes is a little practice and, yes... a little discipline.

A while back I wrote a post on connecting with people. There, I touched on why vulnerability works to connect people from a psychological standpoint and laid the foundation for why it works on women.

But I wanted to expand on why exactly vulnerability makes you more attractive to women.

You see, vulnerability must be used correctly. It isn’t a prescription or excuse to start spilling your guts. So today I’m going to talk about how to use vulnerability effectively and what frames you must maintain in order to maximize your attractiveness to the fairer sex.

The guys that eventually start to “get” women all have one thing in common: they ALL realize that being consistent with women is just not as simple as they thought it was going to be... and they step up to the challenge.

In this article, I’m going to tell you why the white knight attitude has to go, and I’m going to give you some clues as to what you should do instead.

First off, what is a white knight and why does it have anything to do with not stepping up to the challenge with women?

A white knight is the name given to a certain type of blind optimism, and it is a mindset that is very common amongst guys who are yet to take the demands of being good with women seriously.

White knight behaviours include things like:

• Putting women on pedestals

• Making the girl your only focus

• Speaking overly intelligently (faking)

• Taking everything at face value

• Rushing to judgement in order to peripherally impress women or “hold your ground”

• Pretending you are asexual (no sexual motives)

• Posturing, or running an “impress the damsel” routine

• Putting up strong barriers in an attempt to appear like you have good traits like honesty, faithfulness, infatuation, cleanliness, agreeableness, etc.

• Roping girls into romantic relationships because they gave you some signals

Have you ever congratulated yourself for something you thought you did really well, only to later discover you actually overlooked huge details and what you were doing wasn’t even half as good as you imagined it was?

White knighting is a result of the same phenomenon. We think we are clever, until the penny drops later that we are actually messing up very important details that are crucial to long-term viability of our behaviour.

I was sitting in a cafeteria having a quick bite to eat the other day when I saw an elegantly dressed young woman in a long but casual summer dress stroll in at the far side of the cafeteria, turn about slowly and elegantly as she assessed her surroundings – perhaps looking for someone, or perhaps just deciding if there was anywhere here she wanted something to eat from – before at last turning and walking back out the door she’d come through again, still with great elegance.

I’ve been thinking about elegance lately, and its cousin, sexiness. It occurs to me that taken together, these two qualities can largely describe every attractive person out there: he or she is either elegant, or sexy, or some mix of both.

It also occurs to me that almost no one out there really is all that elegant or sexy at all... neither the men nor the women, and it doesn’t matter where in the world you go to or what country you visit.

There are lessons here, for what you look for in a mate, what you allow yourself to feel entitled to enjoy, and how you construct yourself, and I think they’re all worth peeling back.

We’ve all asked the question “How can I make the most of my looks?”, and today I’m going to tell you a bit about how you can do that without adjusting your fashion sense or wardrobe.

I’m going to tell you how your appearance is impacted by what you do and who you appear to be.

Looks are not as cut and dry as model versus normal guy. They DO change according to your mood, what you are doing, and the chemistry you have with different people.

You should never just immediately assume the worst, and that you aren’t attractive, because things are much more flexible than we typically think they are.

The good news is, people will always find attractive things about you if you are being personally magnetic, so it is actually impossible for people to not find good things about you if you are engaging. The way to be engaging, summed up in a word, is to be self-positive, because the more positive you are to yourself the more positive your disposition to the world. That is something that cannot be faked, and therefore is an honest indicator that shows women the presence of the strong traits that they actually LOOK FOR in men.

This also works the other way, because objective looks nosedive when a person is in a bad mood. So don’t feel too bad for yourself; other people get a rough deal at times too, and you can get a good deal for yourself if you are diligent in your self-improvement and outlook.

Selfishness has never been a glorified trait among humanity. Caring chiefly about one’s own needs is frequently named as one of the greatest threats to society and causes of degeneration and degradation within it.

After all, a selfish man is supposed to be a guy who offers nothing to society. He’s nothing but some leech that cares about himself, and he’ll go to great lengths just to put down others so he can stay on top.

…Right?

Au contraire. Used in the wrong capacity, sure, selfishness could certainly hurt others. However, being selfish, in of itself, is not bad. Thinking about it as a negative trait, however, may certainly be introducing a daily dose of cognitive dissonance to your life.

Such dissonance comes to the fore as you finally realize the inevitable fact that everyone has selfish tendencies.

We all aim to promote ourselves first, followed by others. Throw a big steak in front of you while you’re starving, and have the option to leave it there for someone else or die, and you’re eating that steak.

Survival is coded into our biology.

However, society promotes the idea that leaving the steak would be more admirable. Promoting ourselves over others is bad, and we should instead seek to help others over ourselves.

The conflict between society’s vaunted ideal of selflessness versus your biological desire to tend to your own needs mounts and builds, and eventually people are left attempting to help each other become better, but never helping themselves become better, even though they are the only ones who can do so.

And that, my friends, leads us in a perfect circle of solving nothing.

Note from Chase: this is a guest post from Darius B. over on Sexy Style for Joe. Darius has really overdelivered here putting together a comprehensive and classy post on getting your summer style tightened up exceedingly well to make you look stylish, attractive, and put-together. This our second post devoted exclusively to men’s fashion, after our 2013 piece, “Fashion for Men: The Primer on Looking Amazing.” If you’re ready to get suited up for summer and get yourself looking crisp and sexy, this article from Darius will leave you in excellent shape. Here’s Darius.

Can you feel it? Summer is getting closer and the weather is getting warmer every day. Well, even if you can’t feel it yet, I’m sure you’ve noticed how sexy women look on those beautiful days when they drop layers upon layers of unnecessary clothing and swap their sweaters and jeans for light, almost see-through sundresses. Ah… just writing about it makes my imagination go wild.

But what about us, men? The signature tight dress shirt and blazer or coat with a scarf to accessorize that used to get the job done in making us look sexy as hell is not exactly a comfortable option on warmer days, as we’d be sweating like a shy teenager on his first date.

We also don’t really have a clothing equivalent to what sundresses and cut off shorts are to women. The best the fashion industry has managed to come up with are shorts that either look very unflattering on most physiques or that are straight up lame and make even male models look asexual.

And so, is it possible for us to dress on the hot summer days in a way that make women go “Wow, who’s that guy?”?

Yes. Though summer brings a set of challenges to dressing sexy as a man, it also enables us to go for a bit more of a raw, sexual look, without appearing try-hard.

This article in turn is about giving you some ideas on great styles of clothing for summer and helping you build outfits that will not only look very sexy on you, but will also feel comfortable. We’ll start off with some core concepts, followed by some tips on picking (or not picking) specific items, then sum it all up with some practical examples you could model.