For today’s twenty or thirtysomething woman, a weekend in Las Vegas seems to provide a unique opportunity to reinvent oneself via contemporary fashion. A stroll through any strip hotel offers hundreds of examples of accountants, lawyers, taxidermists and toxic waste dump personnel who have, for two days and three nights, reimagined themselves as high-priced hookers.
Balancing precariously on four-inch CFM heels, their sparkly mini-dresses casting off all constraints of modesty and good taste, they are looking for attention, and getting it.
Conversely, the boyfriends/husbands of most of these women have taken this getaway as an occasion for sheer, unadulterated comfort. Clad in graphic t-shirts, board shorts (or, for even more commando breezeway action, baggy knee-length workout shorts) and flip flops – at 10:00 at night – they appear to be immigrant farm workers who have wandered into the casino by mistake and are only missing a bag of oranges.
Why these women have so little sway over their partners is a mystery to me, since my partner feels free to comment on every item of clothing I wear, but I think it bears consideration that a woman who can’t get her husband to put on long pants is doomed to a life of football widowdom and mysterious credit card charges at the Spearmint Rhino.