#102： The Science of Style With Antonio Centeno
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, we discuss the military origins of much of the clothing that men wear today, why it's manly to care about your appearance, and the science of style.
Transcript
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brett mcgay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well today on the
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show we have antonio centeno he's the owner of real men real style and also he's the man who
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has written the vast majority of our style content on the art of manliness since 2008
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and today on the podcast tony and i are talking men's style we're discussing the military origins
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of much of the clothing that men wear today everything from suits to t-shirts to even shorts
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have their origins in the military then we also discuss the science of style tony's done a lot of
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research this past two years about what science says how dressing sharp can affect how you think
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about yourself and how others perceive you as well and how that can benefit not only your love life
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because i know it's a big reason why guys get into dressing sharp because they want to impress
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a romantic partner but also your career and also your friendships with other men it's a really
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fascinating discussion i think you're gonna like it so let's get on with the show
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antonio centeno welcome to the show thank you brett it is nice to meet you
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all right so for those of you don't know like tony and i go way back since like 2008
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when yeah the artist first i still remember that email you contacted me through a random blog over
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at my first website at tailored suit and you're like hey your articles are pretty good you want
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to come right over here because we're starting to write about style but you seem like you know what
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you're talking about and i had no idea what you were trying to do i think you still had the frugal
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law student at the time yeah and i'm just like i'd have to say it really came down to i liked your
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mission i like this guy's trying to help men be better men i can buy into that you know i i had
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as you know a young son at the time my daughter was on the way and i was like hey i can buy into this
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this is solid yeah and since then it's been off to the races i mean we've been going strong
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since then you're the style guy it's good and i'm expanding out you know we've got a number of
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different things that we've expanded into but i love communication i love the way that we're able
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to use visuals to send a message and that's uh kind of i think what we wanted maybe to talk about
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today and talk about why it's why it's manly why it's masculine to care about your appearance
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because a lot of what i talk about is grounded in science and it's grounded in history and when you
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talk to a guy about that he starts to realize that no it's not feminine to care about just care about
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your appearance it actually is something that's very masculine very manly and really doesn't make
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a difference and i think you were just talking about a study uh about testosterone yeah so i'm
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doing so before we're talking got on the show uh tony our talk i'm doing a research on effective
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testosterone on behavior and one study they found is that men with higher testosterone levels are
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actually more vain than men with lower testosterone levels right because like you care about your
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appearance if you have high testosterone because that's how you attract women that's how you
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intimidate uh potential enemies um and it's how you i guess showcase your allegiance to a group
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so you take a lot of care in how you present yourself but how that vanity manifests itself is going to vary
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from like tribe to tribe or culture to culture but there is going to be if you have higher testosterone
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you're going to care about how you look so for example a group you might not think would care about how
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they look biker gangs for example they actually care a lot about how they look because the way
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their jackets are presented the way they do their hair tattoos etc um manifests their allegiance to
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their gain and is sort of their identity and sort of like an intimidation factor right and if you're like
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lower testosterone you probably just like wear like sweatpants and a hoodie every day and not really
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care uh one way or the other how you looked and the same thing is seen in the military uh i remember
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when i was in the marines it was something that you measured the exact i mean to i mean to the
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centimeter you knew exactly where your ribbons were going to be how they were supposed to look on your
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chest uh where each of the patches each of the tabs everything went although we didn't use as many
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as the army does but it is something that when it comes to uniforms the marines were very very proud that
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we were the best looking service when it came to our uniforms and we we love that you know especially
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getting all dressed up for the marine corps ball you got you know a beautiful woman on your arm and
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you go out there and you have a great time and you start a fight and you know wake up in a ditch at
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some point but but the point was your uniform looked pretty darn good going in there i mean and
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that was something i think you also asked a question brett about it seems like a lot of things
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come out of the military when it comes to men's style and that that makes a lot of sense because if you
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think about it the best way to start a trend is to force a million men to dress in the same way or
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or to go down a certain path and wear something and they like it they get used to it and we're
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creatures of habit men when they find a brand when they find particular items that they like we stick
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with them we're not you know going through every season changing out we we've got a date a jacket that
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we like we're going to wear it again and again until it falls apart and that's one of the things i love
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about you know men's style is that it does have that strong base in history um if you focus on
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function of clothing a lot of our from our jackets it's not that and a lot of guys complain oh the
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jacket isn't comfortable well that's because it doesn't fit you properly but if the jacket fits
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you properly especially anyone that's ever worn a military a uniform or jacket i remember uh we you
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know it was something that you could act we would have pull-up contests after you had a couple beers
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and you're still in your dress blues you could still jump up on a pull-up bar and knock out 20
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pull-ups if you you know because of the height of the armhole on the jacket and the way it fits you
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so so well that it still gave you full function of movement that's something that i always focus on
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with with style is it's not i don't dress just for the color you know it's not about the clothing it's
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about how it sends that message and how if it fits you well it still gives you full you know full
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form of you know movement and it sends that message that you're strong that you're masculine
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getting back to your point about high levels of testosterone well let's think about let's go into
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the animal kingdom if a peacock if a lion if they are exposed and they're coming from a lineage of
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high testosterone of very being very desirable they're going to have a very strong it's a lion he's
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going to have a very strong and healthy mane if a if a lion has has disease or has certain issues
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wrong with them and they're getting older then actually the size of the mane drops uh their
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ability i mean they just don't look as healthy and that's one of the things that we're if you have a
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lot of testosterone you want to look healthy not just for the opposite sex also for your fellow males
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who in a sense there's a there's always kind of a pecking order and and that's one of the reasons we
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put off that image so for human males what would be the features that you would use style
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the way you dress to accentuate to show like hey i'm doing okay i'm i'm high status what are some
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of those features okay so let that's and that's one of the reasons i love the jacket so everyone
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always says antonio you always say that the ailment to anything is to throw on a sports jacket or throw
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on a suit jacket i'm like yeah you know for a lot of for a lot of guys nothing is going to beat what a
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jacket can do for your profile for your silhouette uh from a distance one of the things the jacket does
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is it builds up a man's shoulders so large shoulders the higher up the shoulders you can actually
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have a perception of being taller so by building up the shoulders it makes you look taller it makes
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you look a bit leaner but it's going to make you look stronger and that's something uh that you know
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if you look in human beings you know as a male you want if you as a child if you received a healthy
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dose of testosterone then you want to in a sense you you want to you want to look stronger you want to
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have that muscle buildup in the upper chest area and a jacket does help that in addition you want
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to have a bit be a bit trimmer around the waist area a larger gentleman if you've got a larger
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midsection you want to you can kind of hide it a bit but it's still one of those things that yeah
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it's going to be best to be in you know to be in good shape but if you've got you know 15 to 20 extra
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pounds around the midsection a jacket can help trim you up and that right there you know it also
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accentuates that you've got a big bit of curvature around the hips not as much as a woman but you
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still want to have strong hips uh you know when it comes to human sexuality that is attractive in a
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male another thing that the jacket does is it accentuates the size of the hands large hands
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are perceived as a very strong masculine trait if you look at a well-fitted jacket especially once it
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goes to the sleeve area then all of a sudden even if you've got smaller hands then a well-fitted jacket
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is going to make your smaller hands look a little bit larger and larger hands uh especially you know
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if we get into you know don't want to go down this path too much but if we look in apes or any large
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hands are perceived as a very attractive uh trait because they enable you to grab onto things
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interesting yeah there was one anthropologist i've read talking about uh the shoulders on a male it's
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sort of like a sexual signaler but also a signaler to other males that you are strong he called uh
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male human shoulders uh man antlers and think about that you know so let's look at antlers on
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you know here in wisconsin people love deer they've got them you know they got them on the
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back of their trucks and like little stickers and during hunting season of course everyone's got them
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on the top of their trucks after they shoot one but everyone's going after that buck with you know
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what is it the 30 point buck or something the mythical 30 point buck that doesn't exist but when it comes
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to men it's going to be in our shoulders and the great thing about his jacket is it actually it
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actually accentuates the shoulders and when a man walks and if he knows he's being watched by a woman
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or he's around women or if he's around other men who he's looking to impress he will actually sway
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his shoulders a bit more women actually do that with their hips if they know that they're being watched
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they will instinctively sway their hips a little bit more so little things like that being able to add
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kind of like a like almost a little bit of a shiny tassel to the end of it just draws our attention
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to it even more and subconsciously sends the signal this is the kind of guy that if you're a woman that
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you perhaps would want to meet if you're a man that you would want to have have your back in case you're
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in a fight in a dark alley so let's go back to this so going linking up that science to the military
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we're talking about how a lot of men's clothing comes from the military i guess military uniforms uh were
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designed in a way to accentuate those masculine features the the white because like it seems like
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a lot of military jackets the shoulders are very wide oftentimes yes and oftentimes i mean there's
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two purposes with the military it was function you simply wanted something that i mean we go back to
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uh the blucher the uh one of the classic shoes it actually was developed uh it used to be if you were
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in if you were a foot soldier you weren't always i mean you weren't issued uniforms you pretty much had
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to show up with what you had you had a lot of times officers definitely had the money to buy their
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own stuff but foot soldiers i mean a lot of these guys were barefoot and that's horrible when you're
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having to march a lot a long distance barefoot so you know a lot of these shoes developed out of
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very simple ways a general realized okay if i got if if if my units if my army is well equipped
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they're actually going to perform better so there was a huge function in a lot of the clothing another
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thing is being able to send signals of you know of larger strength and intimidation uh you know
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when you're on a battlefield and you've got uh you know not whenever knights were charging on horses
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you look look at calvary uh so so the calvary whenever it was coming in part of it was a huge
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intimidation factor uh not that those ribbons that were hanging down from the horse they weren't
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necessarily going to protect the horse but what they would do is they made it look like you had a wall
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coming towards you and literally you would have opposing forces just drop and run and of course
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then get mowed over but so you're sending visual signals uh other things if you look at i mean we
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go back to the the tie it's probably if anyone's familiar with men's style they know it came out of
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the croatians uh the croats and they used it to actually it was it was it to be able to signal
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what units they were with but if you go even farther back and you look at the uh the terracotta
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soldiers uh in china they actually have scars as well so scarves and colors have been used to be
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able to designate military units for a long time and that's one of the uh the beautiful things about
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that and still to this day if you go to uh regimental neckties uh traditional english regimental
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neckties they still use those in those signal different units yeah we're going back to the
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regimental neckties isn't like the the way they angle like shows it's the real deal and the angle
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the other way than it's saying you're just this is a phony yeah you know there is it's and i don't
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know right i forgot i i forgot i'm having a brain fart here i don't remember which way it is but we'll
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let someone uh maybe correct uh correct us at some point maybe at the art of manliness uh community
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they can go ahead and write about this but yes uh one direction sign basic is a signal that is a true
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regimental necktie the other angle is something that hey this is probably an american
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version of this i mean we've ran with it and it used to be that a man was limited to the clubs
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to the military units and to the organizations he was a part of as to what neckties he could actually
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wear but yeah they've expanded out since then all right so we have sort of basically the suit
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is a relic not a relic but like that came from military military uniforms exactly ties came from the
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military as well yes um what other men staples have come from the military
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let's go ahead and let's look at headwear uh a lot of guys you know if you if you look at hats and
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and the function of them a lot of guys are always asking me antonio how can i bring a hat how can i
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bring it into my wardrobe and if you look at the first function of a hat it's simply to protect you
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from the elements to protect you from the sun and i know my experience of wearing headwear pretty
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much was my five years in the marine corps i wore a hat or call it a cover pretty much every day and
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then you look at a number of hats uh from you know the classic fedora which a lot of guys you know they
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feel it you have to be a little bit more fashion forward to pull off unless you're really old school
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but if you get down to some of the functional hats like the panama i mean you're in a hot weather
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environment i mean pull it off no i was just an air show in oshkosh this last summer and that was a
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great place to be pulling off you know you can pull off a panama you can pull off a straw but the
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function of the hat right there is is solid we can also look at the the way that our clothing opens up
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so if you look at the button placement one way if a lot of people ask they find maybe a trench coat
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and they're like oh this looks like a great trench coat but it's actually a woman's trench coat because
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of the placement of the buttons usually on a man's jacket we're going to have the buttons on the right
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side and then it's going to flap over on a woman's jacket uh you're going to have usually the
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opposite and the reason for this was the placement of our weapons most people were right-handed and so
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you wanted to be able to reach over and slide your hand right in be able to grab your sword be able to
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grab your sidearm so that's one of the reasons that uh we've got the actual positioning the buttons
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on much of our clothing we can also get into uh other things uh you know i i'd say the length of a lot
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of our jackets jackets used to be a bit longer and it wasn't it was when men started to ride in
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vehicles such as tanks such as aircraft that we started to see uh like the bomber jacket uh the
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the field jacket all of these were actually made a bit shorter so a man could get in and out of a
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vehicle whether it be a tank whether it be a jeep whether it be an aircraft didn't eisenhower design
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like his own jacket supposedly i think he had a lot of you know he i i'm thinking he had his own tailor
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there and it was something that he was able to say hey i want to get this just it's just it's it's
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snagging on my jeep yeah and you know someone took that and ran with it and probably made it a
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bigger story i don't think he was staying up at night you know coming up clothing yeah he had other
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things to worry about yeah like uh d-day frank europe yeah free in europe yeah okay so yeah a lot of
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our formal wear uh suits like even do tuxedos have a military history they they do in the sense of
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the build of them but the idea with the tuxedo was okay a man's been on a horse all day he's been
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in the stables he's been out working so there needed to be a clear designation i mean when you
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look at a military uniforms when we're out in the field we're not wearing our dress uniforms we're
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wearing our camis or the thing that's designed for the field however whenever you make the transition
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we wanted there to be a clear distinction of when you're going to celebrate when you're showing up
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in garrison and you want you know everyone to kind of know who you are and you're making this
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announcement so the same thing was with black tie the idea of having something that you could wear
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in the evening to dinner that you clearly did not wear out in uh you know working out in the barn
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that's where black tie comes from gotcha all right so suit tie a lot of our casual wear comes to the
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military like t-shirts and chinos like our staple of a lot of these wardrobes but that has a military
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connection can you talk about that sure uh let's go ahead and get to you know the color khaki and
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supposedly out of the british military they showed up with certain colors which were getting stained a
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lot of white uh and it just simply it was easy to manufacture and so they took supposedly coffee or
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tea i don't remember which one and they were staining a lot of their clothing so that they
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wouldn't have to spend time uh actually trying to get stains out of that uh we also see that with
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the terminology of blue collar uh this doesn't so much have a military origin but i think it's an
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interesting you know look at denim and you look at blue collar the word in general but it goes back
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to blue work shirts which were dyed blue because indigo was cheap and it did a great job of covering
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up stains so again that's why you know what i get excited about with clothing is you look at the
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history and look at the function of it and then you see how we can bring it in um what was the other
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one you mentioned t-shirts exactly so yeah t-shirts were developed supposedly in the united states navy
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and they started becoming but they were initially in underwear the idea was that you could have
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something that was very inexpensive that fit close to the body that would get dirty so you didn't have
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to spend a lot of time washing your outer clothing and that's so it was designed as the undershirt a lot
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of guys when they're up one of the privileges of being on a boat is that you get to swap the deck
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i'm just kidding that's not a privilege and it but it's a lot of work and you do it uh often they say
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the commanders you know or the captain he'll say it's because of maintenance but as everyone knows
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it's simply a form of torture being up there and you're oftentimes in the hot sun you've got this
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especially like if you're you know you're the gulf of aden or you're over in the persian gulf i mean
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it's just incredibly hot i remember we were off the coast of jibouti and yeah i felt like that was
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i've never been to yeah i i if there is a hell i felt that this would definitely be what it was like
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in any case you're up on the deck and guys are out there swabbing the deck and they're going to
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take off their clothing and so guys came out used to wearing their t-shirts what we saw in the 1950s
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you look at go back to classic movies like uh i think it's the wild one uh with marlon brando and
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i mean that's when guys started wearing t-shirts in fact when he wore that t-shirt only a t-shirt on
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screen that was a big deal in the 1980s we saw the t-shirt come around as a fashion piece
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and now it's become a de facto piece in fact most younger people they realize well haven't we
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always worn t-shirts no we actually used to wear work shirts when you actually showed up and i still
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to this day advocate that a man wear a work shirt if he owns like a blue collar let's say you own a
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plumbing or electrical company actually get a series of work shirts made with that send trust
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and also protect your workers from you know from scalding pipes or anything if they're underneath
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working at a person's house awesome so we've talked about the the military connection to men's
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clothing um but let's talk a little more about the science um so we talked a little bit about how
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uh typically on the studies research shows that if you have higher testosterone levels you're gonna
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be a little more vain or a little more concerned about how you present yourself but you've done a lot
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of research on what happens when you do start taking care of yourself how other people perceive you
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and how that can affect your professional life or your romantic life what's some of the the
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research you've come across that sort of uh very convincing that you know maybe you should care
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about how you present yourself and how you dress well one of the things i i like to throw out and
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challenge people we've got probably a lot of people listening that think of themselves as rational
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people we like to think we're rational smart human beings that we're not influenced by these visuals
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and every study i see out there i mean we are just incredibly irrational even you know maybe if
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you're spock maybe spock was the only person out there but he was only half human uh so understanding
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that you are not rational then you start to look at these things that have had an effect and this one
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actually did come out of the military what they did is they studied in the 1920s why certain officers
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were always getting ranked higher than others and they they call it the halo defect nowadays it's
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called the halo effect but the idea is that more attractive basically people that we perceive
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to be something we will attribute other positive things to them so they saw this with military
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officers a military officer that looked like the ideal military officer was consistently ranked
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higher than those that didn't i saw this in the marine corps and to this day if you can in a sense
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send that positive message you can have an effect on others because if you imagine what a successful
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person looks like and you i mean you we think of people like maybe you know larry ellison over at
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oracle uh maybe you know we think of warren buffett maybe someone thinks of bill gates or steve jobs
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in any case we've got an image of what that person looks like and even in the case of steve jobs he
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actually had a bit of a uniform that he wore but most of those people are going to be dressed
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relatively nice especially if we start getting into more conservative industries like law or banking
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or consulting and the the point is is that the ideal of success and what that person looks like in our head
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very rarely does he ever look like a slob and so knowing that if you can meet that ideal visually
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then people are going to attribute positive things to you despite you not having earned them and that
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is the halo effect and that has been shown again and again that's why you know when we meet an
00:23:21.940
attractive person with a great smile nice white teeth they they look good we just assume that they're
00:23:28.860
going to work out at the company and we give them the benefit of the doubt and when they make a mistake
00:23:34.500
we don't like to think we're wrong we want to say well it must be an anomaly versus if somebody shows
00:23:40.740
up and they just got that bad first impression perhaps we see a tattoo that we almost we're like
00:23:46.460
is that like a gang tattoo or he's got tattoos all over his hands or perhaps going down his neck or
00:23:51.860
he's got like an eye uh i mean this may be a great person but if he's got a teardrop underneath his eye
00:23:56.980
you know that's not we we many people have a negative association with that type of tattoo
00:24:01.740
and despite his best efforts he's having to to go that uphill battle so well here's a question
00:24:08.940
sure so like you're a business owner right how do you how do you not let the halo effect affect your
00:24:16.200
hiring decisions right i try to because maybe because maybe you know because yeah there's that idea of
00:24:21.200
if he looks presentable he looks successful then uh if i need like a coder but he is not a very good
00:24:27.360
coder i'm still going to hire him because i think he's a good coder because he looks competent right
00:24:32.080
because the way he presents himself that could backfire on you as a business owner uh so what
00:24:37.140
do you do if i'm sure there's a lot of managers and hiring managers who are listening how do you
00:24:41.340
overcome the halo effect if you want if results are what matter to you in the end you know the first
00:24:46.660
two levels of and i run people through a number of hoops before i hire them but the first parts i
00:24:52.280
don't even see them in fact i don't even see their resumes i don't want them to send me a resume i
00:24:56.820
don't want them to send me a picture of themselves i simply said this is a these are a number of things
00:25:02.040
i want to see you answer and you based off of something that is kept the same for everyone
00:25:08.740
and they're able to show me what they're able to do in a non-scripted way uh because i if i see that
00:25:15.060
they went to harvard i'm gonna have a positive bias and that's you know i but when it comes down
00:25:20.940
to it i don't want to have that i want to look because when it comes down to is most business
00:25:24.840
owners know it really comes down to what can that person do to help my company succeed and it doesn't
00:25:31.100
matter what school they went to i don't care if they didn't go to school what i care about is can
00:25:35.920
you do the job and so my first couple hurdles of getting into my company i don't even want to see
00:25:41.520
any of that and then and then we have the skype interview then we have the phone interview and i
00:25:47.700
will take note of okay does this person have you know can they present themselves well uh then the
00:25:53.580
skype i i definitely do oftentimes see them um but i i've probably got it better than most because most
00:25:59.120
of the people i work with i work with remotely so we don't see each other very often and i'm often
00:26:04.980
surprised by how people look when i meet them because we do get a different image in in our head of
00:26:11.180
what that person is going to look like yeah i've had that happen to me a couple times so uh there
00:26:15.200
was a person i worked with over email that was named mugs and i just assumed okay it's a dude and
00:26:22.280
uh finally i i met them in person and uh it was it was a this nice lady and i was like oh so i had to
00:26:30.760
ask about the nickname mugs and apparently it's a it's a nickname for that's short for margaret
00:26:35.480
um which i didn't know um but now i do so there's an example of creating a an image in your head
00:26:42.900
without really having any details but here's a question i had you brought up skype interviews
00:26:47.420
what should someone wear for skype interview because that's becoming more and more common
00:26:52.640
instead of companies flying you out uh to do the interview they're just doing it over skype
00:26:58.600
so i mean should you dress up for a skype interview like i mean it'd be kind of weird i mean i think that
00:27:03.900
sounds kind of weird right you're in your your kitchen and then you put on a suit i mean should
00:27:07.900
you do that if you're doing a skype interview i think you should it depends on the job i mean if
00:27:13.100
you are applying to work with a bank it's a remote position and everyone at the bank wears a suit
00:27:19.640
then yeah i mean to me it immediately sends the signal that you didn't just roll out of bed
00:27:25.220
without saying a word you quickly say i took the time to be prepared every time i've and i meet with
00:27:31.980
a lot of people on skype oftentimes people just want to talk with me i'm always blown away at how
00:27:36.740
i guess they think i'm going to judge them on how they dress but it's always it makes me smile when
00:27:42.360
i see someone looking sharp oftentimes they're dressed sharper than i am i'm wearing a sweater
00:27:46.600
or something and i see this person wearing a full suit and looking sharp and i always compliment them
00:27:51.860
makes them feel great so i would say yes it's important but here's something that focus on the audio
00:27:58.900
uh that's something on a skype interview a lot of people drop down i would say you should if you're
00:28:04.280
going to be doing a number of skype interviews invest in a solid microphone in a good camera
00:28:10.240
and make sure you've got a decent internet connection i just had a presentation uh the other day that was
00:28:16.700
shown to me and there was a dog in the background barking and as much as i wanted to pay attention to
00:28:22.180
the presentation we're just all kind of laughing because there's this dog back there and it did detract
00:28:27.200
from the presentation um and try to control what you can that's what to me when when you dress sharp
00:28:34.220
for an interview you realize that maybe she couldn't have control that that wasn't her yard
00:28:39.440
you know it was the neighbor's dog she she but she did everything else right she had great slides
00:28:45.080
and i understand that but if you don't if you don't take control of what you can then that sends
00:28:53.360
the signal to me that well how do i expect this person to work for me gotcha all right so uh dressing
00:28:59.200
well you take advantage of the halo effect uh what are some of the other uh what else has research
00:29:04.140
research says that if you take uh some care into your appearance that what are the benefits well we've
00:29:10.420
talked about how it affects other people but it also affects you and there's a whole body of science
00:29:14.920
called enclosed cognition and they've done a lot of research over at northwestern and a few other
00:29:20.440
universities in which they show when people wear things it has an effect on them an extreme example
00:29:26.600
would be you know if a football player you know let's say the university of oklahoma you know football
00:29:31.740
team goes out on the field everyone's you know excited you know we're you know norm and everyone's
00:29:36.620
going crazy but then they realize wait a minute those guys are wearing you know ballerina tutus it's
00:29:42.780
going to have an effect not only on on the the crowd but it's going to have an effect on the
00:29:47.260
players they're going to be a little bit embarrassed they're going to wonder why are we i mean doesn't
00:29:51.100
they they're just not going to be able to play that well they're probably going to lose to the
00:29:54.700
university of texas you know but uh you know who won this year did oh you win this year yeah that's
00:30:01.220
true that's okay there we go yeah yeah i'm if anyone doesn't know like brett went to went to uh
00:30:06.540
oklahoma university and i went to ut so yeah i got that there's a lot of ut people in my life for some
00:30:12.380
reason yeah i don't know how that i don't know that happens yeah okay so the body of enclosed
00:30:17.400
cognition amazing so the study that they did that blew everyone away was they took two populations
00:30:23.180
they give they give them the same white jacket and they told one group hey these are doctor jackets
00:30:28.820
the other group they said these are painter smocks and they did these number series of exams and what
00:30:34.720
they found people that wore the doctor jackets performed statistically higher on every category
00:30:41.340
than the guys wearing painter jackets the reason being when they were wearing those doctor jackets
00:30:45.580
they felt a little bit smarter they felt like they had to pay more attention and do and and if you
00:30:52.580
think about that women have known this for a long time i remember when i was getting my mba at texas
00:30:57.760
a friend of mine she looked really good one day and normally she dressed down and i i asked her
00:31:01.980
like are you feeling okay today are you a little bit sick and she said yeah how'd you know and i'm like well
00:31:06.880
it's a trick that you know i know my sisters talk about which is when they feel sick they dress sharp
00:31:12.020
and they dress sharp because they know they're going to get compliments all day and it makes them
00:31:15.500
feel better and that that has an effect on us because it's from people giving us compliments
00:31:21.580
to us feeling like we are in control somewhat control of the situation and i know you've done a
00:31:28.100
lot of research you've got number of people talk about you know when you're in a situation in which
00:31:32.160
you can't control it like you're strapped to a rocket going into space well focus on something
00:31:36.500
you can't control like you're breathing and all of a sudden you feel more confident you feel you
00:31:42.720
don't panic and that's one of the powers of incognition and focusing on on your image because
00:31:49.940
you can't maybe you can't control what are going to be those test exams or what's going to be those
00:31:55.000
test questions but you can control how you prepared and that you got this got sleep that you
00:32:02.040
you know your shoes are shined that you look good you've received five compliments on the way to your
00:32:06.240
exam and i've heard i've had a number of students reach out to me and say antonio i did exactly what
00:32:10.800
you said i dressed up for my exam and i performed higher than i thought i would it sounds very familiar
00:32:16.220
it's very similar to the um that stanford experiment uh where they done in the 70s they had to shut it down
00:32:23.700
because it was just horrible what's happening so they got they took a group of students and they
00:32:27.720
made one group prison guards and the other group prisoners and uh they put uniforms on the prison
00:32:35.140
guards and they put like prison clothes on the prisoners and just right away uh the prison guards
00:32:41.940
just started treating the the prisoners like crap and they finally had to shut it down because there's
00:32:47.420
just like psychological torture going on um but it's very simply yes just putting on the uniform
00:32:52.420
can change the way not only others uh treat you but how you think of yourself and what you're
00:32:58.060
willing to do yeah the fbi did a study in which they again they took they took guys they put them
00:33:03.800
in two different rooms they give them the same problem and they said what are you going to do in
00:33:07.520
this hostage situation and one group said we're going to go down and kick down the door and we're
00:33:11.740
going to you know shoot the hostages in the head the other group said no we're going to negotiate
00:33:15.660
now the only difference between those two populations was what they were wearing one
00:33:20.780
group was dressed in camis and of course you when you're dressed in camis you're thinking action
00:33:25.560
i'm going to go kick down the door the problem with that is you almost always have you lose some
00:33:30.520
of the hostages versus the other group which is the preferred negotiations is you know they're
00:33:35.720
wearing suits and that's one of the reasons if you think about you know in civilian leadership you
00:33:40.300
you want i mean having been you know around military guys we think like military guys we
00:33:45.780
we feed off each other and we're all about action yeah and one thing we've talked a lot about the
00:33:51.980
site uh and i get questions about this all this time is like brett you know like i'm 25 getting on
00:33:56.460
to you know or 30 like i don't feel like a grown man what can i do and like one of the easiest
00:34:01.360
things i tell them to do is like we'll start dressing like a grown man you know kind of upgrade
00:34:05.360
make simple upgrades in your wardrobe like you know don't move from a t-shirt to a polo shirt
00:34:09.380
um stop wearing cargo shorts all the time and invest in a pair of just nice khaki shorts or
00:34:14.780
a pair of chinos and you'll be surprised how that'll affect how you perceive yourself
00:34:20.220
completely agree man this is uh you're preaching to the choir i i love preaching to the choir
00:34:28.140
yeah and so okay so anything else any other research well how about facial hair you you've
00:34:34.420
written about facial hair and how that affects how people perceive you you know and it goes from
00:34:40.280
culture to culture but in general having a bit of stubble is shown to actually be attractive it
00:34:47.160
shows that you've got a healthy dose of testosterone usually smoother faces uh especially you know when
00:34:53.200
it comes down to it i don't think it's as powerful as actually being in shape a lot of the stuff i talk
00:34:57.740
about when it comes to style it can be negated if you're really in poor shape if you've got a heavy
00:35:03.880
chin but the great thing is if you've got a double chin you know growing a little bit of facial hair
00:35:08.160
does a great job of elongating the face and hiding that double chin so that's where it can become very
00:35:14.300
powerful and it sends that signal that you're a good provider but i would say when it comes to beards
00:35:19.660
there's a lot of mixed research out there uh i'd say it comes down to more confidence and and you know
00:35:25.460
wear it with confidence you've been seeing them have a big comeback as of late i think that's a
00:35:29.800
good thing but it's something that you know just make sure that you own look um another thing and
00:35:36.600
when it comes down to aggression they do show that if you want to scare people definitely grow a beard
00:35:42.960
and you know you know leonitis just wouldn't look like leonitis if he wasn't screaming with that beard
00:35:48.240
you know so shave him down give him that clean cut face he's not going to nearly be as intimidating to
00:35:53.180
the persians no way what about mustaches mustaches ah you know they've gotten a bad rap and i know
00:35:58.980
you get a lot does anyone ever say anything about your mustache brett man i get compliments all the
00:36:04.320
time when i'm out and about like hey awesome mustache and that's the only thing i get um and it's like
00:36:09.560
it's become sort of like that's how people identify me uh now it's like the art of manliness is the
00:36:15.620
must my mustache i'll be out like at the grocery store like quick trip and like hey mustache art of
00:36:22.240
manliness guy i'm like yeah so i think if i shaved my mustache off i would become completely
00:36:26.220
unrecognizable uh i think you would too and i think that's the power of the mustache you have
00:36:32.620
to realize that if you're gonna if you're gonna own it you or if you're gonna wear it you have to
00:36:36.500
own it because you will be the only guy most likely in the room with a mustache uh that's not
00:36:42.900
especially if you're under the age of 50 it's going to be one of those things that you just need
00:36:47.520
to wear with confidence there are you know some negative uh you know charlie chaplin you know he
00:36:52.600
definitely didn't have the most you know he had a great career but then he had some negative things
00:36:57.300
that popped up but then hitler just ruined the mustache he did he ruined that it was called the
00:37:02.940
little tramp for a while but then hitler destroyed that one so don't ever go you know that's not when
00:37:06.940
you want to go down and there also is i hear a lot of people will make comments people that you
00:37:11.420
know remain anonymous on the web but they say it reminds them like of a child molester or something
00:37:15.420
like that yeah you know i'm like you know okay you know i can see some people saying that but i think
00:37:21.100
if you smile it it definitely sends a signal that you've got a healthy dose of testosterone and that's
00:37:26.680
what it comes down to is that when it comes to signaling strength and that you are either a great
00:37:32.260
mate or you're a great person to have your back and to be a business partner with that you know i i think
00:37:39.120
it's a good thing grow a mustache grow a mustache why not why not become memorable become memorable yeah
00:37:43.940
well no yeah on youtube uh a lot of the discussion on my videos always revolves around my mustache
00:37:49.540
and whether i should shave it or not and you're gonna let youtube you might as well have like a
00:37:55.600
big voting i should i should let youtube decide the anonymous commenters on youtube what i should
00:38:00.560
do like they tell yeah like how i should dress i had someone say i dress like a dad yeah can you
00:38:06.460
believe that like well well i'm a dad good you are good thing i dress like a dad because i'm a dad
00:38:13.060
anyways yeah so we might okay um so let's talk about this you got something coming up uh some
00:38:19.180
pretty exciting it's called style con can you talk a little bit about that and what's going on there
00:38:23.600
yeah it's going to be may 1st through 3rd in atlanta georgia and if anyone goes to the website
00:38:28.620
mensstylecon.com and you know it's definitely something that we're excited about you are going
00:38:34.900
to be there so i'm excited to have you there brett we're also going to have my partner is aaron
00:38:39.200
reno over at uh i am alpha m and if you find my style advice boring or a little bit uptight go
00:38:45.080
check out aaron he has it's just amazing and he's funny he's entertaining and he covers style in a way
00:38:52.220
that uh let's just say i probably wouldn't go down the path that he does sometimes but i love him
00:38:56.640
he is an amazing person we've also got ryan masters from uh spartan strength coming in and
00:39:01.820
rafael schneider over gentleman's gazette just i'm bringing the who's who of when it comes down to
00:39:08.240
i think men's uh men's lifestyle to one location i haven't seen anyone do anything like this and i'm
00:39:15.000
excited about it because i want to bring in i i would say people that want to meet us in person
00:39:19.780
and just shake hands realize that hey we're regular people just like you and i think that's important
00:39:26.480
so that men realize especially young men that they are capable of anything and that we are here to
00:39:33.480
support them and really want to see them take that net that jump because the world needs more better
00:39:39.500
men awesome so what's that site again they can people find out mensstylecon.com awesome well tony
00:39:47.800
as always it's been a pleasure speaking to you hopefully can have you on again and get some more
00:39:53.220
insights about about men's style sounds good brett all right thanks tony yep bye-bye bye our guest
00:39:59.620
today was antonio centeno he's the owner of real men real style you can visit his site at real men
00:40:04.180
real style.com and get access to just lots of great free content on improving your style also make sure
00:40:09.420
to check out tony's style content on our website artofmanliness.com category style and grooming or
00:40:15.980
dressing grooming excuse me and also if you are interested in attending style con you can find out
00:40:20.860
more information about that at mensstylecon.com well that wraps up another edition of the art of
00:40:27.740
manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website
00:40:32.340
at artofmanliness.com and also please i'd really appreciate if you check out our store store.artofmanliness.com
00:40:38.260
we have a great looking coffee mug there that's huge beastly thing we have a ben franklin inspired
00:40:46.040
journal it's inspired by ben franklin's virtue journal that he made for himself when he was a young man
00:40:51.120
kind of track his moral progress we also have our books there posters a lot of great stuff go check it
00:40:56.920
out your purchases there will support the podcast and the site so i'd really appreciate it that's
00:41:00.900
shop.artofmanliness.com and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly