In yesterday’s roundup of sentential links, I linked a blog with the sentential title, “It’s Ok to Show Bum Crack”, adding that the title caught my eye because it hit on a particular phobia of mine, by which I mean, I am always paranoid about, well, whether my shirt is remaining tucked in the back, because I hate that well-known malady that is known to afflict members of the plumbing profession.
And in comments to that post, Lynn Sislo, ever the quick one, asks: “Oh! Is that why you wear overalls?”
Well, in terms of practicality, yes, it is! The plumber-thing is something I never have to worry about. (Of course, the plumber-thing seems to be a fashion statement of its own these days, at least for women.) And that’s really the only main “practical” reason I have for wearing overalls, since it’s pretty clear that I’m about as far from a farmer or construction worker as one is likely to get. I mean, it’s not like I actually have a need for protective clothing or large amounts of cargo space for carrying tools around or anything like that. And what of that, anyway? I see that cargo pants are showing up again, which is fine by me, as I like the baggier appearance than the skin-tight appearance, but does anyone really need all of those pockets? I see people wearing carpenter jeans all the time, and yet I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen anyone actually use the hammer loop for its intended purpose.
Ultimately it all boils down to comfort. I just don’t really have the time or the inclination to wear something that I find uncomfortable, if I don’t have to. This is why I never wear neckties, unless I happen to be attending some kind of function at which a degree of formality is required (and even then, I think that neckties are just plain dumb articles of clothing). I find the overalls more comfortable than regular blue jeans, given that they are looser and baggier. Now, I freely admit that my “comfort-above-all” paradigm might not work if I didn’t happen to be a suburban father who works in a grocery store and has aspirations of being a writer, but hey, it works for me. And that’s all I really have time for, these days, when it comes to clothing.
(BTW, NPR did a story on the history of overalls a while back; yes, they have a long pedigree. Here’s another article I found on the subject. Oh, and I may have mentioned my theory previously in this space that women invariably look better in men’s clothes than men do in the same clothes; overalls most definitely apply. I’ve never seen a woman who didn’t look adorable in them. I just look like, well, some guy. Oh well.)