 The Under-21 Convention, Orlando, Florida, 2016, here we're going to learn about something that is super important. A lot of the guys have been talking about our external beliefs, our internal beliefs, but now we're going to learn about our expression through what we wear, how we present ourselves, but not just our clothes, but the philosophy of that, in particular men's style. So who we have today is a pretty amazing guest, I'm very excited and I know you guys are all going to dig this a lot, but we have Tanner Guzzi. Come on stage my man. Thanks. Cool, thanks guys. I am excited to be here and I've really enjoyed what I've heard from the other speakers thus far. This has been a phenomenal conference and I hope you guys, I would imagine, I mean it was fun to kind of walk through and weave my way through and see the notes that you guys have taken and I can see the value that you're getting from it. I know the value that I've gotten from it and I hope that I can contribute to that as well. So before I dive in, I feel like I want to tell you guys a little bit about me because that makes this a little bit easier for all of us. So Tanner Guzzi, I am from Salt Lake City, Utah and there are quite a few questions that immediately pop into your heads as soon as I say that. No it is not the mecca of menswear, nobody ever really thinks that anyway, right? Yes I'm Mormon, no I do not have multiple wives and yes I did serve one of those missions where you wear black suits and name tags and do all that so there's that aspect of it. I'll give you a little bit more. I am the oldest child of five, all of my siblings and I are now married. I actually have two kids and one on the way, she is due in August and I'll give you a little bit more info on that as I tell you a little bit more of our history. And I come from what a term that I learned today, I have two parent privilege and I am extremely grateful that I had two parent privilege and I am extremely grateful that my wife and I are providing two parent privilege for our kids as well. So that was probably one of the better things that I have already learned thus far today. So a little bit about who I am and I'll give you guys a little bit more as it's relevant to some of this style information. Okay, so one of the things that guys in my corner of the internet, whether that's mens influence or style in general, one of the questions that we often take for granted is, why does any of this stuff matter? But especially with the style guys, why does style matter? I mean, it's just clothing, it's just linen or animal hair or something else that's put on my body. And really originally it was just to protect me from the elements. So why does any of this matter? You guys ever thought about it? So one thing that it does do is it helps our brain shortcut and be able to make judgments based on patterns. Now the world will tell us that that's bad, that we shouldn't make those judgment based on those patterns. And to a certain extent I agree as long as you're willing to make them and then override them once you're given different information. But we can't always assess everything based on its own merit. We have to take those shortcuts, we have to use those patterns. And clothing is a huge way to do it. Now in the course of the day, I've already had three gentlemen come up and introduce themselves to me and say, I knew you were a speaker. Why do you think they knew that? Because of what I was wearing, right? One of them specifically told me, he said you don't roll into a conference looking like you do and not be a guy who's speaking and presenting, right? I haven't done anything else, we hadn't said anything, we hadn't communicated. Sure there's body language and there's presence. But even that is either exaggerated or downplayed by the clothing that I choose to wear. So style is a big one and it's one of those things that it helps us facilitate our interaction with the rest of the world. It helps us determine who's in tribe and who's out tribe. It helps us determine the value of what we have. It helps us signal our status, it helps us signal our fertility. It helps us signal all these other traits that we seek as virtuous in other people. And it applies just as well to men as it does to women. However, there's a big difference between the way that men and women should approach style. And this is one of the things that I see a lot. Because most men have kind of this either negative relationship with their appearance or they just have a neutral one. They assume that as long as I don't look bad, then I don't really care how I look. And I'll tell you that any guy who says that he doesn't care about his appearance, all you have to do to calm on his bluff is say all right, come to work tomorrow on a snuggie, a pink one, right? One of those big old blankets with sleeves. No guy's gonna show up to work in that because he's gonna be embarrassed by it and he's not gonna feel comfortable or confident in it. And so men we do care about our appearance but mostly we just care about it in this neutral context. As long as I don't look bad, then I'm fine. As long as I don't look ridiculous, then I'm fine. But we miss out on so many opportunities for what our clothing can do for us by not getting into the positive realm of having our appearance do good things for us as opposed to just not doing negative things. Now that jumps into this whole concept of visual appeal versus visual power. As I speak to guys at different conferences, as I meet men across the country and even throughout the world, one of the things that guys who are new to the world of aesthetics or style tell me is, yeah, my mom used to dress me or my girlfriend buys clothes for me or my wife dresses me. Nine times out of ten, I don't need them to tell me that because I can tell. Because when a woman dresses herself, her primary goal is visual appeal. She wants to accentuate the things that are appealing about her. We've learned that that's part of a sexual strategy. That's part of accentuating the things that biologically we as men are attracted to in women. The problem is is they take those same goals and when they apply them to you, you end up looking cute. And no man should ever look cute. It's not your goal. It doesn't help facilitate what your goals are. It doesn't help accomplish what you want to accomplish. No man should ever look cute. Instead, a man should be seeking visual power, all right? It's a subtle difference as far as what's actually accomplished aesthetically, but socially it's a huge difference. And that's why it's very easy to tell. For me, it was pretty easy to tell the difference between those who are speakers or those who run their own businesses, those who are kind of here to help with the conference, versus some of you guys who are brand new here to learn. I don't mean that as a value judgment, but it certainly is an observational judgment. It's pretty easy for me to tell, because some of you guys look like you just don't care or that at least you care not enough to look bad, or that you just at least want to look kind of good in the way that a girl would think you would look good, but you don't look powerful. And I'll tell you, one of the biggest secrets to dressing well is to not care at all what a woman thinks about the way you dress. Because if you think about it, so much of what your clothing communicates is what your social status is within your tribe. And we'll talk about tribe a little bit further down. But the value of men within the tribe is always, always, always, or at least almost always, but mostly always, determined by the other men within the tribe. It's not by the women. The women will reinforce that, but it's not determined by the women. And the problem that most men have, whether it comes to pick up and just trying to define their self-worth by how many women they can bed, or trying to dress in a way that's attractive to women, is that we're allowing our value to be determined rather than be reinforced by a relationship with women. When it should be something that's reinforced by the tribe. For me, that's my God, that's my country, that's my family, those are other variables, but it's your tribe, not just who's this hot person and what does she think of me and does she like what I'm wearing? Does that make sense? So I'm gonna show you some ways that we can actually see the difference here. What's your reaction to a photo like this? See a dude putting on makeup. Little bit kind of uncomfortable, maybe you shouldn't feel uncomfortable because we live in a progressive world and I don't know what to think about this, and blah, blah, blah. But viscerally, that just doesn't look right, right? Because he's accentuating things that are visually appealing, but making his eyes look bigger, he looks more innocent, he's got soft skin tones, it's not indicative of hard work, he doesn't look like he's willing to embrace any sort of physical risk, there's nothing there about a protector or provider. And you see a woman putting makeup on and it looks fine, it looks great. Okay, let's take it one step further and you see an older gentleman who's getting a little bit of makeup put on and you see this in the context of, okay, he's probably a broadcaster, maybe he's a politician who's going on national news, it's not that big of a deal, you can start to see a little bit of the context of it. This is kind of a neutral, right? It's neither good nor bad, it's just making sure that things are good. All right, what do you think about these guys? That's makeup, right? That's a whole ton of makeup, but that is a whole different story that they're telling. Is that appeal or is that power that they're communicating? That's power, right? You think you'd want to go into war against those guys? Why are there a bunch of pansies to wear in makeup? Right, no, that's a whole different story that they're telling because of what they're doing with the same objective content. That's the power of style. That's the power of understanding the difference between visual power and visual appeal. These guys are masculine, dominant, intimidating men as opposed to the guy before that was neutral, the one before that who is effeminate. So that's one of the big differences. All right, let's go a little bit further with this. What do you think? Power or appeal? Appeal, okay. I would say there are a few things in this that are indicative of appeal. You've got all the lacing, right? He's got the tights on, he's got the white gloves, he's got the powdered wig, the mole. This guy does not look like he has ever been anywhere near a day of hard labor, right? Not even close. And even then when this was culturally appropriate, you think of like the Scarlet Pimpernel as kind of the good balance between this refined dandy versus the rugged individualist who was actually going out and doing things. Even then, this was still kind of a weird way to communicate masculinity. But take this similar outfit to the next level. What do you think? Power or appeal? Yeah, but he's wearing lace. He's wearing skinny pants. He's got a powdered wig on. Why is it power instead of appeal? Colors, okay? Go ahead. Yeah, the environment. Part of it is that you know who he is and what he's done, right? Part of it is that you know the context of what this man has done and the environment in which he finds himself versus this gentleman over here. But that's the great thing about style is that it can either reinforce all of these other variables that help you communicate your masculinity to the rest of the world or it can provide a contrast to them and downplay it. What you wanna do, especially in a world that doesn't value traditional masculinity, especially in a world that tries to tell you there's only one way that you can actually aesthetically express that masculinity is you wanna figure out the best way that you can do it and then leverage it as much as you can because the contrast between you and the sissy, limp-rusted hipsters of the rest of the world is gonna be so much stronger and it's never been easier to dress better than it is now. So you can think the baby boomers for ruining the idea of masculine aesthetics, right? So huge difference between those two. How many of you guys have seen this image before? Right? Okay, a little bit. You ever thought about this? To me, this is the perfect summation of the difference between visual appeal and visual power because you think about it, a well-tailored suit doesn't really show a whole lot of skin, right? It's not showing anything that's actually gonna be turning a woman on from an appeal standpoint. You have no idea what kind of shape a guy is in. I mean, yeah, you have some general context but you don't know for sure. You have no idea about anything from an appeal standpoint but it tells a whole story about his power. It tells you about his financial situation. It tells you about his social status. It tells you about his social dominance. It tells you about his attention to detail and his level of discipline. And so it gives you an entire story and those are the things that women are primarily attracted to and so those are the kinds of things you can signal by dressing well. Does a well-tailored suit do that? Absolutely. Is it the only thing it does it? Absolutely not. Otherwise, a well-tailored suit objectively across all time and across all cultures would have been the pinnacle of men's style and it certainly hasn't been. That's something relatively new and relatively recent. So what does this mean for you guys?