When clothing catalogs arrive in the mail, I try to throw them out before Bethany sees them. It’s not that she buys very many clothes — she just loves to look at pictures of them. On a recent road trip, she stared at a J. Jill catalog for six straight hours. It would have been a much shorter car ride if she had been looking at the map instead.

My own approach to clothing is pragmatic. Because I work at home, I don’t need many clothes. On days when I mow the lawn, I’ll shower afterwards and change into a new shirt and pants. This outfit will do just fine until the next time I mow the lawn. Lucky for my wife, the grass grows quickly in summer.

When someone points out a gaping hole in the knee of my pants, I make a point to swing through the clothing aisle on my next trip to Wal-Mart. If it’s earth-toned, loose-fitting, and under $20, I buy it.

Guys just don’t care much about clothes. Which brings me to . . .

Bizarre Fact #1: Guys dress up to impress women. Women dress up to impress other women.

In college, when the yearly big band dance rolled around, my friends and I knew how to dress up. Dusting off our suits, we did our best to look like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and the gang. The idea, of course, was that if we looked like the Rat Pack, we would attract beautiful women the way the Rat Pack did. Each year we wore the same suits, but we never quite achieved the desired result.

When women prepared for the yearly dance, it was something else entirely. First, they consulted magazines with names like Style, Pizzazz, and Elegance to see what was in fashion. Second, they would take out an extension on their student loans to buy a $1000 dress that roughly consisted of two yards of fabric and 300 sequins. The dress was worn for a total of four hours, then placed in a hermetically sealed bag and stored in the back of the closet, never to be seen again.

This always baffled me. Why go through such a hassle over a silly dress? Guys are suckers for a simple black dress, and they don’t care how many times it’s been worn. We don’t read fashion magazines, and we have no idea what the “New Spring Styles” are.

Only after getting married did I learn the secret: Women don’t really give a hoot what guys think about their dresses. It’s all about impressing each other. (“Well, we do give a small hoot,” my wife tries to assure me, pausing from her search for a new dress on eBay.)

Bizarre Fact #2: Magazines targeted at men show scantily-clad women on the cover. Magazines targeted at women also show scantily-clad women on the cover.

My mother-in-law subscribes to a woman’s health magazine, which, compared to other magazines in the genre, is quite modest. But a recent cover showed a woman exercising in a tight sweatshirt and what appeared to be yellow underwear.

The first thought that entered my head was: Would any woman I know go jogging down the street in glowing yellow panties?

My second thought was: Would I ever be inclined to purchase a magazine that showed a man wearing a little piece of spandex on the cover? Not unless it’s a comic book and the man happens to be a super hero — but even then, he’d be wearing a decent pair of red tights underneath.

Bizarre Fact #3: Guys wear loose-fitting clothes and don’t care about their weight. Women wear tight clothes and are obsessed with weight.

I would say that I’m out of shape, except that I never had a shape in the first place. In junior high, I was the only boy in gym class who couldn’t do a single pull-up. In high school, I was still the only boy who couldn’t do a pull-up. I will most likely go to my grave having never been able to lift my chin up over a suspended metal bar. I only hope that there is no President’s Physical Fitness Exam in heaven.

Loose clothes put me at ease. Tight clothes make me straighten my shoulders and suck in my stomach, which I can only manage for about three minutes. A few months ago, I was in need of new t-shirts. Bethany picked up a package at Wal-Mart, but they were a size smaller than what I’m used to. From a woman’s perspective, they fit fine — t-shirts are supposed to be form-fitting, my wife thought. When I tried one on, I looked somewhere in-between a boy-band member and a young Homer Simpson. If I was ever forced to leave the house wearing a shirt that tight, I’d find the nearest phone booth and desperately call the 1-800 number from the “Ab Cruncher” info-mercial.

That’s why I have a hard time understanding why most women wear tight clothes. Thankfully, my wife shares my basic point of view. She says that a few years ago, she realized that when she wore tight dresses she couldn’t enjoy herself. Now, she has a test: if she knows she’ll be tugging down the bottom of a dress or pulling up the neckline, she wears something more comfortable.

I’m not a big stickler for modesty, at least not in the “women should only wear floor-length denim jumpers” sort of way. But why not relax, wear a dress that doesn’t cling to your body, and treat yourself to another Oreo?

Bizarre Fact #4: Women tend to be more self-conscious about their bodies than guys, but wear more revealing swimsuits.

When I go shopping for a swimsuit (you guessed it — at Wal-Mart), I look for three things: (1) bagginess, (2) ample thigh coverage, (3) a muted color that won’t draw attention to my pale skin. On a beach, my goal is to blend in with the sand as much as possible.

When the average woman goes shopping for a swimsuit, she looks for the exact opposite: (1) the tightest fit, (2) the least skin coverage, and (3) the loudest color. (“Does that rubber band come in neon?”)

Bucking the trend, my wife wears a classy, black one-piece suit and swimming shorts on top of that. If I were a woman, I’d probably go even further and wear a sensible swim dress from 1910.

* * *

Before I dig myself into an even deeper hole, I’ll leave you to ponder these strange but true phenomena. Admittedly, my list of bizarre facts is hardly exhaustive. To broach the topic of women and shoes, for example, would require at least another article. (Why do I have two pair while my wife has seven?) It’s best not to continue.

Instead, it’s about time I mowed the lawn again.

Photo Copyright © 2003 Pixel Dance, Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved.