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How Sweat Clothes and Yoga Pants Ruined America
For years I’ve maintained that we Americans dress too casually. We look sloppy. We look like we don’t care about ourselves or others.
Wearing workout gear as street clothes was popularized in the 1980s (along with other self-inflicted cultural wounds such as stonewashed jeans and glam bands). That started a downward spiral that has left us with the public wearing of yoga pants, or, as I call them, the last temptation of Satan.
When I was a lad in the ‘60s and 70’s, we dressed better than today. We even had a “Sunday suit” we wore to church every week, a phrase unknown to today’s youth. Considering the shorts, sweat socks, and t-shirts I’m surrounded by in the pew every Sunday, wearing your “Sunday best” has been forgotten by adults, too.
In my hometown of yesteryear (Asbury Park, NJ) women who worked at the local department store, Steinbach’s, were required to wear dresses or skirts. Men had to be in a suit.
This formalized work attire spilled over into the streets. People wanted to look nice in front of their neighbors. Appearances mattered. Cleanliness was next to godliness. Clean, pressed clothing signaled a clean and pressed home-life. You didn’t put your business in the street, you didn’t hang out your dirty laundry, and you certainly didn’t wear unsightly or ill-fitting clothes while walking the boulevard. We were a better society for it. There’s less inclination to act the fool in public if you aren’t dressed like one.
Before my time, in the immediate post World War II years, people even wore nice clothes on the boardwalk. It was looked down upon to leave your home in worn attire that didn’t fit. 
The first I noticed this change to wearing gym clothes everyday was when Italians who weren’t smart enough to be in the mafia wore velour track suits that somehow signaled they were in the mob. Why they wanted this affiliation still baffles me today, but there it was: A man in a crushed velvet sweat suit and a gold chain with a pepper hanging off it supposedly meant he was something he wasn’t.
The Italians were followed by rap stars, who, in their quest to co-opt everything Italian “gangster,” started wearing track suits too, complete with gold jewelry — except bigger chains and more of them, from Flavor-Flav’s giant clock all the way to Mr. T’s huge collection. At the street level, each chain represented another month of unpaid rent. 
When black kids are doing it in America, white kids are sure to follow, whether it is sweat clothes as street clothes or today’s gravity-defying pants with underwear sticking out of the top. I’m stunned by that look. When I was a kid, the worst thing that could happen to you in grammar school was if a girl saw your underwear. Good grief, you might have to move out of town if a girl saw your underwear. I’m tempted when I see today’s ridiculously low-worn pants to check if there is a safety pin holding them up. Once below the hip bone, I don’t get how they don’t fall down.
Follow that with a trendsetter named Michal Jordan, who in the 80’s decided to ditch the NBA’s traditional gym shorts for a baggy pair that didn’t fit. His shorts became so long they were pants again. 
True to the “white following black” phenomenon, Jordan’s shorts then influenced the skateboard and surfer crowd into wearing clothes that didn’t fit.
Thus the destruction of America was fully underway. Now, in all places public — on the street, at work, or in church — we suffer through our neighbors leaving the house in gym clothes that don’t fit; attire that is either too baggy or too tight.
What of pride? What of humility or modesty? When it comes to men in bikini bathing suits, what of courtesy? I don’t want to see that. There are plenty of European beaches where you and your banana hammock can feel at home. You give me the willies.
By the way, I don’t like transvestites and cross-dressers’ clothing. I can confidently say that without being labeled a bigot, because those people have nothing to do with gays or the silly concern for gender that has us unsure of what public bathroom to use these days.
Transvestites and cross-dressers are simply people with bad fashion taste, who choose to dress that way. They aren’t born clothed. If Joan Rivers can make fun of people’s clothes and be a cultural icon, then so can I. If you have a “y” chromosome then dress like a man. If you don’t have a “y” chromosome, then dress like a woman. I don’t give a potato who you sleep with because I can’t see it, but you wear your clothes in front of me. Community standards matter and you’re violating them. Stop it.
The final horseman of the America’s couture apocalypse is women wearing yoga pants everywhere they go (I don’t know if men are wearing yoga pants — and don’t tell me because I don’t want to know).
Yoga pants are literally a catastrophe of biblical proportion. Recently a blogger named Veronica Partridge did a post revealing that she has given up wearing yoga pants (in other news, there are still such things as blogs).
Veronica’s reasoning for her rejection of Satan’s leggings is temptation. She spoke to her husband, and he admitted that it’s hard not to break the 9th Commandment when in a room full of ladies dressed as yoga pant-wearing strumpets.
The 9th Commandant is “Thou shall not covet thy neighbors wife,” so you heathens don’t have to stop reading to look it up. “Covet,” for you illiterates, means “want.” Never mind the 6th Commandment to not commit adultery; the 9th says you can’t even want another woman, even for a second!
Christianity is a hard hustle. You see, humans are part of the animal kingdom with inbred instincts. One of those instincts is survival of the species, so when a man sees a woman there can be an innate reaction inside him toward perpetuating the species, which, of course, is done through sex. When a man commits to a woman, these innate parts of his being don’t shut off. If married, he ignores or suppresses them to the point where they don’t matter to him, except for his wife.
Now, the more the temptation, the harder it can be on a guy to ignore or suppress that desire to propagate. If he’s in an old-folks home, he may experience little desire to propagate the species. When he enters a go-go bar, he may be suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to propagate some dancer’s brains out.
So being a good Christian man is hard enough. Since desire can rise and fall with temptation, all Veronica Partridge wants to do is not be Satan’s tool. Good for her — and for us men, too.
Of course, not everyone is Christian, but I’m sure men of other religions and even atheists want to be faithful in thought to their wives. Ms. Partridge’s refusal to wear skin-tight sportswear in public will help those guys, too.
Now, before you radical feminists say anything, shut up. Don’t start bringing up “rape culture” and blaming rape victims for the way they are dressed. I’m not talking about touching a woman. This is about fashion. I know you people have “slut walks” and such, so feel free to be one. I imagine heaven is a crowded place, so by all means go to hell. But if you make a show of yourself, don’t complain if people judge the show. 
As for you people who are going to compare Ms. Partridge’s sentiments to Islamic culture that forces women into a head to toe burka, you can shut up too. She made clear in a disclaimer at the top of her post that everyone can continue to wear what they want, which includes her, in case you missed that point.
We all have our own fashion sense and fashion is one area that gets judged, like it or not. We all take it on the chin. I prefer cardigan sweaters around the office, prompting some of the younger guys to start humming the theme song to Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood when I walk by. When some muscular lunkhead is walking around in a sleeveless shirt while the temperature is 10 degrees outside, I’ll tell the showoff he’s not dressed weather-appropriately.
Just because we have freedom in America to wear what we want doesn’t mean we should. We are civilized. We shouldn’t dispense with decency. Propriety in fashion separates us from the animals. And the Middle East.
Yet our community standard for what is acceptable fashion has been obliterated over the last generation. These yoga pants make it exceedingly easy for men to picture women naked, prompting the question: how close to naked will we accept? What’s next after skin-tight, see-through yoga pants?
Jimmy Kimmel has the unfortunate answer:
Published in General
If you’ve seen The Natural, all the men were wearing suits to the ball games. Or at least sports coats and ties.
Sigh.
I read this article about Hippiedilly in 1969.
The bums of 50 years ago were better dressed than most respectable people today.
Seawriter
Yes, cause Hollywood is a paragon of accuracy.
And Hollywood movies would never lie to us.
Aesthetics can, and will, always be worse:
Source: http://www.boredpanda.com/crochet-shorts-schuyler-ellers-lord-von-schmitt/
*Looks around. Pulls blanket over crocheted bike shorts. Whistles tunelessly.*
Some things, once seen, cannot be unseen.
Seawriter
Not before lunch!
No. Just no.
Not even after lunch.
And all I was worried about was yoga pants:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/chicago-seeks-to-dismiss-lawsuit-over-topless-rights/ar-AA8seZ7
Just by way of historical comparison –
In England during the late 1700’s and early 1800s (known as the Georgian period after the regnant monarch) women’s fashion dictated not only that women wear incredibly sheer dresses without undergarments, but that in order to maximize transparency and clinginess women should at all times be sopping wet. Literally nothing was left to the imagination. The Georgian period was such a cultural debauch that their children became the famously prudish Victorians, with their umpteen bazillion petticoats and such. I think we can all calm down about showing some skin – after all, the Georgians and Victorians ruled the biggest and most prosperous empire in the history of the world. Doesn’t seem like their kulturkampf messed them up too badly.
You have much much more to worry about regarding fashion.
Click here only if you have a barf bucket handy. NSFW, not safe for anywhere really. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Come on, Tommy. Do you have any idea how much this ‘ill-fitting,’ ‘stonewashed,’ clothing costs? At my work, most people wear t-shirts and jeans to work, but they’re nice t-shirts and jeans, often name-brand. No one wears the $5 tees they bought at Wal-Mart.
Myself, I’ve always felt less dressed in formal attire, a side effect of growing up in Northern California.
I. . .I’ve never felt someone should be executed over bad fashion before. And I agree, not before lunch.
As recently as the 1960’s farmers wore suits and ties to do their chores.
When you see old WPA photots of guys standing in bread lines, back in the Thirties, they are invariably better dressed than most wedding guests today.
You have much much more to worry about regarding fashion.
Click here only if you have a barf bucket handy. NSFW, not safe for anywhere really. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Okay, skip, you win.
Misthios, those are hilarious!
I would love to see guys walking around like that simply for the humor value. They are too [expletive] funny to be offensive!
Rude,
The visible P ain’t visible. What did you try to do to that link?!
Erase it from memory? It was Skip’s link. It should not be propagated.
Winning at the pithiest comment contest?
Most laconic.
Agreed. If you are really curious go to Skip’s post and hover your cursor over the link. (Don’t click – it promises to require eye-bleach.) Depending upon your broswer the name of the link will appear in some corner of your brower window (in Chrome it is on the bottom at the left side). Just looking at the name of the link convinced me not to click.
Seawriter
Late to the party, but a heartfelt “Thank You”, Tommy!
One of the unspoken reasons you and most of us men feel uncomfortable is the flaunting aspect. ‘I can make you want to rape me,’ and the consequent wussification of us men, who, after all, are decent human being villified daily in the mainstream culture.
As an aside, I must confess I occasionally succumb to stupification wondering just what’s holding it up. Janet Jackson of the ‘wardrobe malfunction’ has conditioned the male Pavlovian reflex in wait of the seemingly inevitable ‘show.’ I think women who dress like this have a fantasy that they are strippers and lusted by all the men (and half the women) around them. This is probably something we want to discourage, for sure.
But seriously, while putting everything out there seems to imply everything is about sex, in actuality, America is returning to its roots as a basically prudish nation. We only give on the airs of keeping up with the Europeans. Still in this country, we got a lot of religious minded people in this country, and we’re basically modest. But our fashion sense has the odor of gym socks.