MEN’S FASHION AND LOOKS

I was put off by the article on the “new look” for the Southern California man. I find it amazing that the cosmetology industry is trying to hook men into performing the same absurd tortures upon themselves that they have coerced women into doing for so many years. Tweezing and waxing may no longer be considered sissy, but it is still silly. Why would anyone, intelligent or not, consent to having their back and chest hair ripped out with wax much less pay 40 bucks to have it done? Have we become so insecure that we have to go to these lengths to look like someone we’re not?

Omar Albertto is quoted as saying, “Let’s get away from the surfer look. . . . (The Southland man is) black, he’s brown, he’s very ethnic.” Well, the Southland man is also Caucasian. The melting-pot concept has basis, but why should any of these Southland men need to mask their natural ethnicities? If you are a surfer, what’s wrong with looking like a surfer?

I think articles about fashion this far in left field belong not in the magazine but in another publication, possibly between the stories about the two-headed space aliens and the latest Elvis sighting.

JAMES E. LAPHAM

Hawthorne