One of the most defining things about my elementary school experience was a dark brown zip-up sweater that I picked out from The Gap. We didn’t change in elementary school, and I was too shy to walk to my locker and put my sweater away when I overheated. Instead, I unzipped my sweater and tied it around my waist. If I became cold again (which I always did—I was finicky), I would simply untie my sweater and put it back on.
And nobody thought twice about it. It was the best way for me to regulate my temperature and my comfort without causing a scene. It gave me hands-free sweater storage and made a fashion statement. I was doing it, other kids were doing it, the people on TV were doing it, and so it was fine.
Then I did it in middle school. It was a subconscious habit—a natural urge, and apparently it caused a scene. Much to my surprise, my D.I.Y. sweater shirt was greeted with a round of laughter from my friends. They said that it was “outdated.” Just a few years earlier, it was socially fine to tie a sweatshirt around your waist. But suddenly, regulating the temperature of your body had apparently gone out of style.
It was okay when animal prints died out. The same goes for low-rise jeans. Those were just aesthetic trends. The sweaters are where I draw the line. I draw the line when fashion choices that are objectively more functional are suddenly deemed outdated. Fanny packs (though now they’ve made a comeback) underwent a similar cycle—one minute, you had a hands-free bag, and the next, you were a laughingstock.
Rapidly changing fashion trends were already difficult to keep up with, but the concept of convenient and functional options falling out of style adds a new layer of frustration to the issue. This is a plea for functional fashion choices to be considered permanent inventions rather than trends. My temperature will always fluctuate. I will always need a sweater to regulate it. I will not always have a place to store said sweater. If my problems aren’t going to become outdated, then why should my solutions?
