There's one thing I've learned from years of internet shopping - online clothing stores have nothing but searing contempt for their male customers. All you have to do is log on to asos.com and peruse the utterly banal men's wear section to see why.
Once you've gotten past the onslaught of thick-necked male models gurning at you from behind a surfboard (gorillas in suits, I like to call them) , you can select from a wide range of options - shirts, t-shirts, jumpers, suits, cardigans, jeans, shoes. But don't let the seemingly endless choice of clothing mislead you. Pretty soon, all that choice is going to fizzle away and you'll be left feeling frumpy, mundane and totally useless.
With me, it's all too familiar. I race home on a Friday afternoon and frantically search the internet for something bold and eye-catching to wear out on the Saturday. I'm excited and anxious - is there going to be anything in my size, my shape, my colour? I gloss over the first page entirely - what with it's 'oversized granddad shirts' and it's several shades of beige - convinced that things are going to get better. They aren't.
When I've reached page 20 and my will to live is slowly slithering out of my arse, it suddenly hits me like a blow to the groin - this is as good as it gets. So far I'm faced with a choice of beige, beige and more beige. Perhaps, if I'm lucky and have managed to catch them at the beginning of spring, there'll be a few checked shirts knocking about. But still, nothing special and certainly nothing that I haven't seen before.
If you're ever so slightly younger and skinnier (and have at least £300 to spare) then you're at a distinct advantage. You can always buy something from the designer range. Though unless you want to look like a garish curtain set from the 70's I'd advise you to stay well away from
that.
So why the lack of options? If you take a look at the women's ranges in almost every clothing outlet and department store in the West you'll find a veritable sea of colour and variety. Women have it easy when it comes to fashion, even though they fiercely argue to the contrary. They have clothes available to them in all sizes, shapes and designs, and the ranges are often vast and affordable.
Men, on the other hand, are treated like gormless idiots. We're either stick-thin Indie kids who like to shop for pipe jeans and lens-less glasses, or we're hulking monstrosities who wear nothing but Henley and GioGoi t-shirts. There's no middle ground whatsoever.
The designs on men's shirts are often so simple and outdated, they make David Cameron look like a style icon. The jeans are so bland and similar in shape and appearance (not to mention overpriced!) that you'd probably make more of a statement walking out the house with only your boxers on. And then there's the t-shirts. Unless you like your slogans 'ironic', band-oriented and nonsensical, there's not much else besides the predictable 'Cover me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians' or 'I've got the body of a God, shame it's a Buddha'.
Fashion is also guilty of ignoring the plights of skinny men. In most stores, and most certainly online, the sizes for men's wear start at a S and work their way up to XL. If you're anything like me and your shoulders have yet to broaden, there's almost nothing you can find to wear. Unless you like to shop at Topman - the 'original' store where you can buy the same t-shirt in 50 colours - or River Island - where 80's fluorescent adolescent is, apparently, still 'in'.
Then, if you can manage to find something in XS (they're typically placed by the children's section. How very not patronizing), there's the greatest humiliation of all - taking it to the counter and watching the till assistant look at you as if you're either extremely underdeveloped or a Swedish paedophile who likes to uniform his victims.
Fortunately, online shopping cuts out that particular scenario, but the choices are still no better or no more varied than they are in the shops. Consequently, men are forced to either recycle old fashion trends or dig deep in the laundry basket for something else to put on.