Can David Beckham Renovate the Straight American Male's Fashion Sense?

David Beckham, how doth fame love thee? Let us count the ways:

1. Internationally renowned soccer star, now No. 23 for the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team.
2. Married to a Spice Girl (Posh Spice, also known as Victoria Beckham, who also happens to be a successful solo pop star).
3. European fashion icon.

He's all these things, and more. With a single glance, David Beckham can drive the media into a frenzy, as they did when he showed up at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) a few weeks ago. He makes and breaks fashion trends as easily as he can wear a tight, tailored Giorgio Armani suit one day and rhinestone-encrusted workout pants the next. The girls fall for him the way his hair fell when he shaved it off into a Mohawk after sporting tabloid-headlining dreadlocks. David Bekham started the "metrosexual" trend, and for all the world knows, it doesn't get any more metro than that.

As cutting-edge-fashionable as David Beckham may be, he's up against something he's never had to face before: In Europe, his trendiness was taken in stride by those flashy European men and their Prada jackets. When David shaved off half of his eyebrows, so did the rest of male Europe. When David grew a blond faux hawk, so did the rest of male Europe. (Hell, even some of female Europe)

In America, it's a whole different ballgame; and we're not talking about that whole "football" versus "soccer" terminology argument.

No, something much more. American men, as a whole, don't lug their designer suits around in Louis Vuitton manbags while sporting bleached faux hawks and Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses. No way, José. Instead, the audience at Beckham's next soccer game will be middle-class American men in white t-shirts and cheap Gap jeans, with the only "bling" being a spot or two of ketchup and mustard from those dastardly-delicious, albeit gut-expanding, stadium hot dogs. The idea of wearing $200 Capital E jeans like Beckham, each pair hand-stitched by 30 of Levi's finest denim tailors, would make these dirty Americans vomit all over their wieners.