I am one of many that says its a package deal.....My $0.02:
I voted yes, but before anyone starts hating hear me out...
In my mind, being a gentleman is more than just how you treat other people (although that should be the primary part of it). Treating others with courtesy and respect, acting with honesty and integrity, and the like make you a decent human being. However, being a gentleman requires a certain well-roundedness that goes beyond these things. A gentleman should be educated (though this need not be formally or at least not much). A gentleman should hold convictions but be well-informed enough to know why he holds his convictions and understand why others hold the convictions they hold. He should demonstrate care for his appearance and personal habits to a reasonable degree. He should be able to converse with a wide range of people in a genuine fashion.
I'm not saying that being a gentleman requires being at least upper middle class (whatever that means) or making a certain income annually or owning a closet full of Italian suits, a drawer full of Swiss watches, or a garage full of German cars. I don't think it's about money at all, really. Some people spend a lot of money to look like thugs and gang bangers while others spend very modest amounts and look very sharp. I suppose there would be cases where someone has fallen upon very hard times and cannot afford decent clothes at all, but this surely is an exception that proves the rule. If a person is disheveled and unkempt because he is destitute that's one thing, but if he's disheveled and unkempt because he doesn't care, that's another.
I'm not saying that a plumber or a farmer or a biker is exempt from being a gentleman. If he is doing the best he can within his means and taking thought for how he presents himself then he can make the cut in my books. He doesn't need to look like the guy in Green Acres doing manual labour in a three-piece suit.
At the same time, I felt compelled to vote yes because I believe that being considered a gentleman is a "package deal" as someone has already put it. I believe appearance matters and that being a slob is not compatible with being a gentleman. By "slob" I mean not the person who legitimately cannot improve his appearance, but the person who could but doesn't bother to try.
I think we are right to criticize the 18th/19th century European aristocratic ideal of gentlemanliness that focused excessively on the externals like noble birth, owning land, having servants, dressing a certain way, etc. But I think we also need to be caution of proposing a lowest-common-denominator 20th/21st century North American democratic ideal that only requires you to be a nice person such that everyone gets to be a gentleman as long as he fulfills some very basic ideals.
If we are going to say that gentlemanliness has at its core a code of conduct, ought that not to work itself out in a broad (indeed every) area of life?