Chinese men are accused of lowering the entire country's aesthetic standards. (Photo: GT/Li Hao)
Qiu Jie, 28, was so repulsed by her husband's choice of clothes when they first met two years ago that she immediately dismissed him as a prospective marriage partner.
"He was wearing suit pants with sneakers and a T-shirt," Qiu recalled. "He's only around 1.7 meters tall, and he was wearing a long overcoat. I could barely see his legs - he looked like a moving bucket!"
Qiu, who works in the construction industry in Beijing, said she was eventually won over by her husband's other, more attractive qualities.
But her criticism of his dress sense - and of that of other Chinese men - is far from uncommon.
Yu Lingyuan, the fashion director for the Chinese edition of FHM, a men's lifestyle magazine headquartered in the UK, said that it was obvious that Chinese men do not match up to their counterparts in other countries when it comes to dress sense.
In March, the magazine published an article that lambasted Chinese men for their poor taste in clothing and women, as well as criticizing them for a lack of manners and social etiquette.
"I think Chinese men have lowered the entire country's aesthetic standards," said Yu.
Yu lashed out at the tendency of Chinese men to wear clothing and accessories with bright, tawdry colors and the general obliviousness of Chinese men of dressing appropriately for an occasion.
"A lot of wealthy men will wear shorts and flip-flops to high-end shopping malls or restaurants, and shout loudly in public spaces," Yu said.
"It's so ungentlemanly, and shows little respect for the girls they are with and the formality of an occasion."
Why so poorly dressed?
Over the past few years, there has a chorus of criticism in the Chinese media and on the Internet regarding the personal appearance and comportment of men in the country.
Last April, the Nandu Daily published an article titled "Why are Chinese men so ugly?" In it, writer and senior editor Hou Hongbin portrayed the typical Chinese man as someone with an unsightly paunch, cloaked in a loose-fitting T-shirt and wearing leather shoes that look as if they have not been polished for years.
A rudimentary search on Sina Weibo returns hundreds of comments posted by Net users lamenting the slovenly appearance of Chinese men, covering aspects from dress to hairstyle to lack of personal grooming.
Asked why Chinese men fared so poorly when it came to matters of fashion and grooming, Yu attributed their unseemly appearance to China's recent history and a lack of disposable income that can be spent on nice clothes among large numbers of the population.
"Our country's economy is not as developed as many Western countries, so Chinese people don't have as much money to spend on their personal appearance," said Yu. According to China's Ministry of Commerce in 2012, the country's per capita income ranks 94th in the world, although China has the second largest economy in the world in terms of GDP.
