Gonna’ Make You Sweat (Or Not)
Brace yourself for a controversial statement: I dislike sweatpants.
I initially wrote ‘hate,’ but as parents of young children recognize, that is a bad word, so I toned it down. Let’s just say that I very strongly object to sweatpants. Almost always.
Don't get me wrong, I am okay with the idea of sweatpants: Loose, soft pants that you throw on over workout gear, on the way to exercise or in transit on the way to a post-workout shower. In my mind, they are purely transitional, not actual clothing. Not workplace attire.
COVID casual?
My disgust at this fashion choice has roots in childhood. We moved to Florida when I was 10, and one of the first things I noticed was the extremely casual dress code. I’ve written about my attempts to fit in with my peers by making some questionable clothing choices as a fourth-grader. Public notices in the grocery store featuring reminders of the necessity of both ‘shoes and shirts’ were confusing and disconcerting. In my earliest memories, flip-flops and tank-tops were in high rotation.
In sharp contrast to the Florida-casual aesthetic, my dad was always a sharp dresser. As a salesman, he traveled extensively, and for years he always wore a suit and tie. His shoes were perfectly polished. As business-casual came into fashion, he relaxed his dress code a bit. Still, he rarely went on a sales call without anything less formal than a jacket and button-down shirt.
He worked from his home office when he wasn’t on the road, but long before the days of video calls, he always wore a clean golf shirt and slacks.
According to the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, by the mid-1990s, almost three-quarters of companies had instituted a casual dress day. In response to a tight labor market, firms began to relax more and more to recruit younger workers. This was about the time I entered the workforce, and I remember casual Fridays as quite a perk.
Just a few years later, we were dressing up for presentations and client meetings. Still, things had swung far into the land of leisure, especially for companies cultivating a creative vibe like the agencies where I worked.
I remember gently reminding teams to ‘kick it up a notch’ when clients were in our offices, and that meant preferably no man-sandals (mandals?) or tattered shorts. My advice was not always heeded.
I have also worked from home off-and-on for years. I’ve always found that getting up and dressed (‘with intention’ as I like to put it) has helped me to compartmentalize my day into Work Time and Personal Time. I’ve seen offices downgrade from business casual to casual to barely appropriate, and I know that’s another sign that I'm old now.
But I have always subscribed to the adage: "Dress for the job you want, not the job you have." And I am slightly disgusted by any pants with words across the ass. Even the cutest derriere does not benefit from narrative, seriously.
Right now, our responsibility is to stay home, stay well, stay away from each other if we can. The current shelter in place/work from home/homeschool situation is clearly blurring the lines between Work Time and Personal Time and Day Drinking Time. Still, I think avoiding the slippery slope of sloppy casual can help us all avoid a Groundhog Day in Hell mindset.
Washington Post staff writer and fashion critic Robin Givhan agrees. In a recent piece titled, “Our clothes tell our story. What happens when the narrative is just pajamas and sweats?” she writes: “[W]ork clothes remind us we are part of something. That uniform, that badge dangling from a lanyard, that congressional pin: They are all reminders of connectivity.”
Further, she reminds us that “[G]oing through an entire day in loungewear, it is easy to lose yourself and your sense of purpose and focus.”
Humans are unique in that we clothe ourselves for individuality and personal expression, if not to simply shield ourselves from the elements. I can only hope that once our necessary, if challenging, quarantine is over, we will have gotten the PJs-all-day mindset out of our systems. If not for good, perhaps for a while.
After all, the job we all want is to live life together, not to lounge in isolation. Stay safe, my friends.