God Is In The Details

I had always believed that the male gaze was sweeping, that it scanned the view—any view—by doing a quick once-over, that it came up with what photographers call a situationer, and then zoomed in on one particular element that caught its fancy. The female gaze on the other hand, had always struck me as something microscopic and razor sharp, as something that can pick up even the tiniest, most negligible of points in any given visual field.

I didn’t think men paid much attention to the nitty-gritty like women do. They seemed to me, more concerned with the big picture than the puny pixels that make up a whole. To be more concrete, let’s say a couple goes to a restaurant for dinner, I would expect the man to notice the number of customers, whether it is full or not; the aircon temperature, whether he is comfortable; the prices on the menu, whether he can afford it; or the ambience, whether it is to his liking. The woman, on the other hand, will notice every article of clothing on the man and whether he is well put together; or whether his shoes are scruffy and his fingernails, clipped. Like a radar, she will pick up the slightest of non-verbal signs if the man finds the place pricey by observing his reaction as he peruses the menu. She will notice if the glassware on the table has watermarks, if the perfume of the lady at the next table has floral or citrus undertones, and if the waiter mispronounces a word.

But just last week, a good friend of mine told me about what her husband had said as they were walking to a restaurant. She happened to be wearing her brand new pair of Jimmy Choo, t-strap, slip-ons with a kitten heel (to the men out there, that translates to an open-toed sandal with a one-inch heel that costs as much a set of mag wheels). She was walking a few paces ahead of him and, out of the blue, said, “Hey, those shoes are weird. Your pinky toes are sticking out of the sides and they’re actually scraping the ground. That’s pretty gross.” She was livid!

“But was it true?” I asked her.

“It was, but that’s not the point.”

“Oh, I think I know,” I added. “Your feelings were hurt either because he said you were gross or because the shoes cost so much and yet, they fell short of your expectations.”

“No to both,” she answered. “I got offended because you know him, he’s a man’s man. He doesn’t care how he looks; he thinks grooming is a bad word. He couldn’t care less if his shirt were inside-out or if Valentino had finally retired but he had the gall to call my attention to the way my toe scraped the ground!”

This got me thinking that there are men out there, who may appear oblivious to everything beyond the tip of their noses but are actually very well attuned to the minutiae of womanhood. I had long concluded that if a lady had a pleasing face or extended front and rear bumpers, her unshaven legs, chipped nails, unplucked eyebrows, or unflattering lipstick color would go unnoticed.

Heck, was I wrong! I did some research and found out how far off the mark I was. I asked an interior designer if indeed men noticed these small things and he replied, “Oh, you’d be surprised! We see everything. And a matter as seemingly small and inconsequential as a lopsided smile can really turn some men off.

“Are you serious?” I couldn’t believe what I heard. “I thought you guys were clueless about these little grooming slip-ups or those idiosyncrasies that we, women, sometimes have,” I added.

“Well, you thought wrong,” he answered. He then gave me this whole lecture about the proverb: God is in the details, which was initially attributed to Gustave Flaubert (1812-1880), one of the greatest French writers, who was often quoted as saying, “Le bon Die est dans le detail (God is in the details). It means that the most important things are in the details or that the essence of anything can be found in the details. But in the twentieth century it became generally attributed to the world-famous, German-born architect, Ludwig Mies van deer Rohe (1886-1969), who repeatedly used it to describe his work and his artistic process.

This interior designer friend went on to say that women should be extremely guarded with visual artists, be they painters, sculptors, architects, interior designers, or engineers. “These men have the gift of seeing what the rest of the male species are blind to,” he said. “We have the eye for detail, we can spot the tiniest flaw, but by the same token, we can find the smallest asset in an otherwise aesthetically unsound specimen, and let that attribute outshine everything else.”

He gave a pretty profound speech but I wasn’t quite sold on it so I asked my go-to men: my brothers. “Do you notice little things in women like their pinky toe?”

One brother’s answer was, “Hell, yeah! That’s why I used to take my dates to the beach because I needed an excuse to see if they had nice toes. Even if the face were rocking, if the toes were like ginger roots, it was a big no.”

“Yeah,” I said to him, “And you’re Brad Pitt, right?”

“No,” he scoffed, “But I have nice feet!”

I couldn’t argue with that. That really got his goat, I thought. I never thought a woman’s toes could make a man emotional. I asked my other brother the same thing and his answer was, “Not so much the toes; I’m not a foot man, but the hands and nails. You know, how some women have these yellowish fingernails—aaargh, just aaargh. That’s all.” I immediately got the picture.

And so since last week, I have been keeping one eye open for these things and was surprised at how widespread this phenomenon is. I was at a birthday party and two men on my table, total strangers, were talking about a girl at the buffet line-up. They were scoping her out. I made like I wasn’t interested but my right ear was glued fast to their conversation. One guy was telling the other how hot he thought the girl was. The other answered, “Hmmm, maybe…but her eyes…they’re kind of like too far apart and drooping down like this.” He put both his palms on the sides of his face and stretched them down, making himself look like a hound dog with droopy eyes.

I looked at the girl to see if he was right. It wasn’t that bad. Sure, her eyes were a little wide-set, kind of Jackie O-ish, but otherwise she was hot. But because that one guy had exaggerated, his friend got turned off. End of story.

Just yesterday, I was queuing up for the cashier at a bookstore and three men were discussing some girl. Two of them were all praises for this certain girl, an officemate, and were selling the idea of taking her out to the third man. The third man agreed to all the points they had raised: she had gorgeous, straight hair; tall, something like 5’6”; really long legs; and a face like Salma Hayek’s. The third man said, “Sure, she’s all that, but don’t you ever notice how she has this fine down on her lip, this sort of very thin moustache? It’s not very noticeable but I see it.” The other two said, “Yeah, that could be a problem.”

I couldn’t contain myself, so I tapped the third man on the back and asked him, “Sorry, But I just have to find out what you do for a living. I know, odd question, but I hope you don’t mind.”

“No problem,” he said. “I’m a graphic designer.”

Bingo!