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Vail Daily column: What do men and women lie about?

Robert Valko
Dear Darwin
Vail, CO Colorado

Men and women lie about very different things. For example, the most common female-to-female fib is that of telling another woman how cute her outfit is when it’s clearly a recycled NASA spacesuit. And when a female coworker walks into the workplace dressed like a banana, other women are likely to tell her how sleek her peels are – how they really make her glow.

And if a coworker happens to parade around in a 1980s pantsuit with sewn-in shoulder pads, comments may range from how “commanding she looks” when she moves the squeezy stress-ball down the centerline of the cubicle floor at the office to: “Chelsea’s really been working on her upper body.”

On that note, Prince is in the process of replacing all of his shoulder-paded zoot suits with Speedos.



The Rotary Club of Vail will be starting up a support group for women who have strayed the wrong-way down Fashion Avenue. They will be handing out fashion starter kits that will consist of Bon Jovi, white-leather-fringe rocker jackets. They will be offered to women who believe that the gray-and-white house-dress they nabbed off the clearance rack at the Gap really looks good.

Men are more sensitive to each others’ needs than woman and only direct their lies at the opposite sex. A man is more likely to boast about how he tamed wicked cornices and chutes on his ski vacation in Vail (which is code for the two-foot drop-off in the trees near Swingsville or the way the magic carpet “shoots” you forward when mounting it). Embellishments like these have been overheard at water-cooler talks around the country, especially when tall brunettes are present. And the taller the woman, the taller the tale.

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Men have lots of tricks up their sleeves for compensating for their shortcomings, for getting noticed. One guy invented the clapper; another guy conquered half of Europe because he was only 5-foot-2-inches, and another tiptoed through the tulips and sang with his ukulele.

Why the discrepancy among the sexes when fibbing? It’s easy too see why men lie: so they can impress the babes. Women lie for different reasons, which have yet to be determined; maybe to snuff out the competition. An anthropologist once noted how, when two women meet for the first time, it’s reminiscent of two boxers squaring off before a match.

So then, might the inclination to tell a coworker that the coconut bra on the outside of her Santa sweater is “really cute” be an attempt to get her to dress like that more often? Thus, taking her out of the running for office studs and the guys that vacation in Colorado and huck off Chair 12 cornices?

New Year’s resolution: Stop the lies and fashion faux pas so that we can become a species with a clear conscience and free of hot-pink shoulder pads.

Robert Valko is a graduate of Northwestern University. E-mail him with column ideas at vailko@yahoo.com.


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