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Like most moviegoers this past weekend, I saw the new Superman film, and there’s a lot I loved about James Gunn’s optimistic rendition of the most famous superhero story of all time. The disobedient but utterly lovable Krypto the Superdog, Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor (there’s something so refreshing about a villain who’s just an unapologetic #hater) and the undeniable on-screen chemistry between Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane and David Corenswet’s Clark Kent.
One of my favorite scenes of the entire film sets up the dynamic of our love interests’ relationship. One moment Kent is picking Lane up and kissing her on the kitchen counter (hot) and the next, Lane’s interviewing with Superman. This escalates into a passionate, argumentative back-and-forth and eventually ends with Kent storming out the door (also, kinda hot). The scene has been all over my social media feeds in recent days, with users swooning over Corenswet’s handsome looks, nerdy charm and deep voice inflection. And while I, too, was captivated by Corenswet, I was also quite taken with his crumpled white dress shirt.
Much hotter than Superman’s bright red trunks, Clark Kent’s dopey journalism uniform consists of a classic, office-appropriate white button-down underneath a no-frills dark grey suit (and those black, square-framed glasses, of course). But when we see Kent in Lane’s apartment after a day at the Daily Planet, the dress shirt is a bit worn-out, the top button undone and the cuffs rolled slightly up his forearm.
As someone who works in Midtown, a white dress shirt is as ubiquitous as it is uninteresting. I’m not typically gawking at the bright white sea of men strutting down 7th Avenue in their finance uniforms. Still, the corporate look is quite appealing to a lot of women. A few years ago, I wrote about the once-ridiculed finance bro attire making a comeback on TikTok. TLDR: New York City businessmen walking around Manhattan with their leather briefcases, tailored suits and Patagonia vests were being branded as “unspeakably hot” by TikTok users. The reason? Trends are cyclical. We might have exhausted the cool, hypebeast-type of dude and were nostalgic for a basic man in a suit. We could also be so desperate for any inkling of financial stability in the political and economic climate of the past five years that the idea of a man with a 401 (k) is a comforting thought. However, I like a man in a lazily crumpled dress shirt for a different reason.
To me, a post-work, well-worn button-down symbolizes effort. The more crinkled, sweatier and unbuttoned the shirt, the better. After a long, stressful day at the office — or fighting bad guys and saving small children — he’s still rushing downtown to meet me for drinks on time. He still wants to cook me breakfast for dinner, and I still, happily, want to unbutton that knackered dress shirt.
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