IMAGE OF A MAN
Your image is the way people perceive you. If no one ever even notices you, then you probably haven’t got an image at all. Don’t worry it’s good to start with a clean slate.
For the rest of you, take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself what image are you portraying. Are you, for example, the sort of sad, lonely, worrier who stares in the mirror at length wondering how they can improve their image? Or does your mirror swoon at the sight of you, forcing you to resuscitate it with a passionate embrace? Or can you see yourself objectively, spot aspects of your image that are attractive and those which might deter women from using you as a fun, convenient leisure facility?
Your image is made up of a number of attributes. Some are fixed and some are created according to your tastes, experience, and class. The fixed attributes are there to stay unless you want to indulge in surgical adjustments. But the variables will determine the types of women you meet, the types of women you’ll never meet, and the sort of pubs you’ll get into.
THE MAIN COMPONENT PARTS OF YOUR IMAGE
Trousers: Whether or not you wear any at all says a lot about you. Jeans are popular, but their style, condition, and fit can say completely opposite things about you. Streaky white stone-washed denim tells the world that you probably lost your sense of taste in a freak knitting accident. Levis 50 with a leather belt, on the other hand, will not deter women from your trouser area.
Hairstyle: Again, do you have any? If so, What message is it giving out? Hair is a surprisingly eloquent communicator, with the capability of saying anything from You’d better cross to the other side of the street before I start talking to you about my train set, to Single man, 23, loves sex, and is looking for any woman for romance. Must have good teeth.
Shoes: What do they say about you? If your white socks are visible beneath your sandals, you could be in urgent need of a fashion transplant. Only wear shoes that are appropriate for what you’re doing: turning shoes are only for sport, walking boots are only for stuffing in the back of your car in case you run out of fuel and have to walk to a garage, and kicker boots are for kicking.
Hats: Best to stick to just one hat at a time, if any, and make sure you’ve managed to put it on properly. Too many hat wearers these days do not own mirrors. This is a false economy: they put on a hat, have no idea how it looks, and spend all day wearing a baseball cap backward, looking like one of the less intellectual characters from Dumb and Dumber.
Mood: What sort of mood are you in? Are you happy with your wash? Look closer…etc. Being moody is generally cooler than being happy, but it’s not much fun.
Fingernails: Dirty or clean, short or long? And don’t forget to think about your fingernails, too.
Dance style: Do you go to those modern torture chambers disguised on the exterior as nightclubs and rave enthusiastically to the sound of machine gun fire and strangled cats, or do you waltz elegantly to your Sing-along-a-Strauss CD? People are attracted to different dance styles—usually, it will be the styles you have never mastered.
Jewelry: Gold watches, bracelets, rings, and tinted gold glasses say much more about your taste than words can ever do, which is useful if you have a speech impediment.
FACIAL HAIR
If you want to have a mustache or a beard, make sure you are capable of growing one before launching some wispy hairs upon the world. Sideburns, bits of beards, and designer stubble move in and out of the fashion spectrum like clouds in the sky. Whatever you have, so long as it’s not blatantly out of fashion, you are marginally more likely to succeed. Even if you look complete pratt, so long as some pop star in Melody Maker looks similarly afflicted that week, you should be OK.
SMELLS
Smells are used extensively in the animal world to attract the opposite sex, though not always successful. The odd skunk also slips through the net when men try to put on the right smells to attract a mate—splashing macho odors all over can be just as bad as natural odor if it makes it too clear that you’re desperate to score, but modest use of pleasant smelling aftershave may help. If you’ve spent all your spare cash on this book, just use water. It makes a good after-shave and comes out of a tap.
It is now possible to buy ‘female attracting’ scents in spray form, usually pheromone. These are the smells that tell the world that an animal is ready to fornicate, and it is claimed that they attract females to men who wear them.