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" A v-neck T-shirt is the manliest of all upper-body garments. The defining feature of the style is a plummeting neckline that we normally associate with women&amp;#039;s fashion, but when worn by a guy it basically says: &amp;quot;Here is a pie slice of chest hair that forms an arrow to my gut.&amp;quot; The deeper the &amp;quot;V,&amp;quot; the more masculine the shirt. Consequently, the green Versace dress that Jennifer Lopez wore to the Grammys in 2000 (you know the one) would make all-time, hall of fame dude apparel. Or at least that&amp;#039;s what I keep telling myself as I wander the streets, desperately trying to make &amp;quot;heavage&amp;quot; feel natural.  When I learned of the deep-v trend, I thought I&amp;#039;d be able to jump on board without hesitation. I switched over to v-necks for day-to-day wear a few years ago. Given that I often wear shorts with a T-shirt, baseball cap, and backpack most days, a crew-neck shirt gives me the appearance of an undercover cop on the way to a sting operation at a summer camp. (&amp;quot;Hey, any of you guys know where I can buy some sweet chronic? Do kids like us still say &amp;#039;chronic?&amp;#039;&amp;quot;) A v-neck feels slightly more adult, and, as an added bonus, v-necks pair great with cardigans for a look I like to call, &amp;quot;hipster semi-formal wear.&amp;quot; But as the collar of each successive shirt plummeted to incomprehensible depths, I began to lose confidence. My starting point was what I&amp;#039;d call a &amp;quot;lowercase v&amp;quot; from J.Crew. It revealed enough chest hair to let people know I&amp;#039;ve definitely gone through puberty but not so much that bystanders would ask: &amp;quot;Hey, where&amp;#039;s your gold chain and Camaro and can of domestic beer?&amp;quot; When I first adopted the v-neck as my summer shirt of choice, even this modest, borderline Amish &amp;quot;v&amp;quot; caused me anxiety. Am I showing too much skin? Am I the kind of guy who can pull this off? A truth that I&amp;#039;m trying to come to terms with is that &amp;quot;pulling off&amp;quot; an item of clothing is mostly about feeling comfortable in it. It&amp;#039;s silly to ask: &amp;quot;What will people think of me in this (let&amp;#039;s say) paisley dress shirt?&amp;quot; Just own it. Do you love cowboy hats? Wear a cowboy hat. Yes, it may look dumb. But we&amp;#039;re just carbon blobs covered in varying natural and synthetic fibers. Everything, on an atomic level, looks dumb. This shirt was less a &amp;quot;v&amp;quot; and more a &amp;quot;child&amp;#039;s one-line drawing of a bird on the horizon.&amp;quot; And it was navy blue, which is great for the kind of person whose lower back sweats like it&amp;#039;s on trial, NOT THAT I AM SUCH A PERSON. It immediately went into heavy rotation.  Related: Road Testing the Men&amp;#039;s Short Shorts Trend The next shirt came from American Apparel and its neckline darted downwards in a shocking stalactite. Picture what Hester Prynne would wear in a modern, Baz Luhrmann reboot of The Scarlet Letter. That&amp;#039;s pretty much this shirt. I mean, I wore it out to have coffee with a friend, but I felt almost walk-of-shame-y about it. Like it was slightly too scandalous to wear in daylight, and I&amp;#039;d worn it out not expecting to see anyone I knew. Everything I did became sexier, but not in a good way. It was sexy in the way most rap songs talk about sex: too overt and explicit to be sensual. Eating an ice cream cone became grotesquely carnal. Tying my shoes, a showcase for my body. I am surprised Jay Z never showed up in a yacht to douse me in Champagne, especially given the rumors of his marital troubles.  The shirt clung a little more tightly to my frame than I&amp;#039;m used to. The &amp;quot;v&amp;quot; itself seemed to have been based on a narrow, severe font. It revealed an uncomfortable amount of my chest, making me unusually self-conscious about the uneven distribution of hair. Some men are smooth. Some are coarse. I look\u2026choppy, like pavement under construction. The pattern of my chest hair is a fuzzy, unpredictable Jackson Pollock painting. It&amp;#039;s almost as if I lay on my back while someone got a haircut above me and just glued the clippings down as they fell. I felt wrong to wear it running errands and checking e-mail. I should have been salsa dancing or playing a smoldering saxophone solo on a fire escape.  Finally I moved on to the most intense v-neck I could find. It was stretchy, sleek, and almost sheer, as if someone had scissored off the bottom of a cocktail dress. For days, I resisted even putting it on. Not only because I didn&amp;#039;t know whether it would flatter my body, but also because it had flaps of fabric swaddled around the sides of it like sexy buttresses, and I wasn&amp;#039;t sure exactly where to make my point of entry. As I went about my morning, I imagined what people were thinking of me. Mostly I worried that I looked like someone dipping his toes into drag without being able to fully commit. I know it&amp;#039;s 2014, but I definitely had the thought: &amp;quot;This is a woman&amp;#039;s blouse that I acquired by accident.&amp;quot; It was too much! The shirt/blouse seemed designed to promote firm, smooth androgyny. I felt like I was dressed for the one step before everyone in the future moves to unisex Star Trek bodysuits. While the v-necks in my dresser (or, probably, strewn across my desk) give a sneak peek at the body below, this number pirated the full version, burned it to DVD, and tried to sell bootleg copies at the local bodega. Maybe this makes me a prude, but I feel like for a style to be a &amp;quot;trend&amp;quot; you at least have to &amp;quot;see someone wearing something remotely like it.&amp;quot; And as of this point, I am the only guy I&amp;#039;ve ever seen with a &amp;quot;v&amp;quot; that intense. (And it was, like, &amp;quot;first three weeks of college relationship&amp;quot; intense.) So I don&amp;#039;t feel too bad rejecting it like a transfusion of the wrong blood type.  Related: Very Funny: Tig Notaro I do like the feeling of a v-neck, and I&amp;#039;m happy I explored the various depths, steepnesses, and sexinesses that the shirt had to offer. I&amp;#039;m ready to move beyond the smallish v. The lowercase, Times New Roman, 12 point font. But I&amp;#039;m certainly not ready for the shirts that have come into style this summer. So for now I&amp;#039;ll remain a fashion loner, roaming the city, searching for the perfect &amp;quot;v.&amp;quot; Related: Amy Schumer on Telling a Good Rape Joke and Dressing Like a &amp;#039;Newly Homeless Runaway&amp;#039; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/personal-style/a12876/the-deep-v-tee/>