Paul Kengor: A nation of slobs

“I always know when I’ve landed in America,” observes a German friend, “because the people in the airport look like slobs.”

It isn’t just airports. Americans look like slobs everywhere. When they go out to dinner, attend an event, and basically go out and about in public. My friend Jeanne complains that many people look like they’ve rolled out of bed and are still in their pajamas.

My Italian friends say the same. An Italian blogger recently posted the most frequent complaint from Italians regarding American tourists. Predictably, it was their excessively casual, highly unattractive dress.

Picture an older guy in his 60s with a firmly rounded gut bursting under a goofy T-shirt. The fella would look much better if he simply put on a nice shirt, even with the beer belly.

Guys are certainly worse than girls. A female college student recently complained to a colleague about how the girls spend a lot of time making themselves look good, whereas many guys on campus don’t care to even comb their hair and put on something other than baggy shorts and sweats.

It’s very revealing that the influential Jordan Peterson, who has a special impact on young men, often barks at them: “Don’t dress like a slob! You look like a bum!” This is one of Peterson’s recommendations on how young men can improve themselves.

And though men are far worse, it’s clear that women have declined in this respect as well, drilling and dying and stamping their bodies and dressing down in ways that women never did before.

Most young people can’t relate to what I’m saying because they’ve grown up in a culture with little care for basic etiquette. (See my June 6, 2024 column, “Our cursing culture.”) I would tell them to peruse old family photos. My grandfather and his brothers were uneducated farmers, but every Sunday at Mass, they donned a jacket and tie. Everyone did.

Look at pictures from public gatherings 50 to 100 years ago. Check out a crowd photo from a Pirates game at Forbes Field in 1960: mid-July, 90 degrees, and men wearing slacks and buttoned-down white shirts. Women were dressed in a classy manner.

For the record, let me confess that I can’t imagine wearing anything but shorts and a short-sleeved shirt at a Pirates game in mid-July. I’m always hot and tend to sweat. I would collapse from heat exhaustion. Still, many fans take rather excessive liberties with the heat to dress inappropriately, or even downright ugly.

I must also admit that being an ’80s kid, who liked rock and punk and had a skateboard and lived a wild life, that I’m not the best dresser. I can be caught wearing a ballcap turned backwards — yes, even at age 58. In public, I often wear black T-shirts with religious statements. If you see a guy pumping gas at Breezewood with a T-shirt with a giant crucifix on the back and sacred heart of Jesus and Latin scribbled on the front, that’s me (say hello).

I’m lecturing myself here as well.

So, what’s my advice? Well, here it is.

The Italians have a sage phrase that can be very helpful: fare bella figura. It means “make a good impression.” That doesn’t mean you wear a suit to PNC Park in July. It does mean that you present yourself with a sense of style and care. You aim to be well-groomed and present yourself with a measure of dignity. Wear a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, but make them nice.

In short, present yourself like you give a damn. Stop dressing like a slob. It will make you and America look a lot better.