In the future, we will all wear one-piece jumpsuits. Why is the future taking so long?
I wrote before about belts and suspenders. Our clothing styles are woefully obsolete and impractical. Today we wear in public what would be considered underwear in olden days - t-shirts, shorts, socks and sneakers. Going to gym class or a board meeting? Same outfit!
The problem with this new uniform (which itself is an indicia of increased global temperatures as well as the move to "sunbelt" states) is that it is really uncomfotable. The modern t-shirt is left untucked and as a result, you either have a nice breeze blowing around your middle section (particularly in the winter) or when a gust of wind comes up, it blows up, showing off your hairy belly to the public. Gross.
Then there are the shorts - or blue jeans, or as Grandma called them, "dungarees" - which are both cut "low" to ride on the waist and then cinched tight with a belt, effectively causing an intestinal blockage or cramping your bladder. Built-in organ compression! What's not to like?
Of course, "back in the day" we tucked in our shirts to keep them from flapping around. If you walked around with your shirt-tails out, you were deemed a buffoon or mentally challenged. My Grandpa used to recite this little poem if he saw my shirt-tail out:
Dicky, dicky, dout!
Your shirt-tail's out!
Dicky, dick, din!
Better tuck it in!
Grandpa was great with things like that, calling me and my brother (both hyperactive) "Dyn-a-Mo!" and "Dyn-a-Mite!" long before J.J. coined the terms. But I digress.
The problem with "tucking" as a means of securing clothing is, well, it sucks. Doing it is hard, particularly reaching behind your back, especially as you get older and your rotator cuff checks out early. It never tucks in evenly all around, leaving folds in your shirt and looking like crap even after you spend minutes adjusting it. Worse yet, as Grandpa's poem illustrates, the damn things are always coming un-tucked as you sit, stand, walk, or run. In terms of a means of "fastening" clothing together, the "tuck" sucks.
And again, it relies on the cinched-up belt to maintain the tuck. So you end up clamping your clothes to your body instead of wearing them. No wonder tucking fell out of fashion.
But the un-tucked look has its problems too. Un-tucked shirt-tails poking out from jackets and coats or sweaters just look, well, trashy and odd. So it you put on a coat, it looks better to be tucked-in. Plus, if you are going out in cold weather, tucked-in is warmer. Then you remove your coat and look like a dweeb for having your shirt-tails tucked in, so you un-tuck them to "look cool" to your peers.
But now, the shirt-tails are all wrinkly and weird so you lose again.
Mr. See showed me one way to keep your shirt tucked-in, particularly an undershirt. He tucks it under his underwear which keeps it from riding up. If you have a long-enough undershirt, you can even tuck it in under the "junk" which holds in it place. To me, this reeks of a stop-gap measure to fix a system that is perpetually broken.
(Oddly enough, our ancestors had a form of underwear known as the "union suit" which came in both short and long-sleeved (and legged) versions. T-shirt and underwear, in one piece!).
Of course, the whole tucking thing took a lurch to the ridiculous when it became a "fad" for inner-city folks (and their suburban wanna-bes) to walk around with their pants half-down. You don't see it so much today, but for a long while, it was a thing.
The funny thing is, in many parts of the world, the "Western" style of clothing is not used, or if used, is an affectation of Western habits. Long flowing robes are the norm in many parts of the world - no belts, no "tucking." Still others in the West use suspenders to hold their pants up - negating the need for the cinching belt and its issues (constantly riding down).
Then there is the jumpsuit. Elvis wore one. Every science-fiction movie ever made assumes that "futuristic" people would wear them. In the RV world, they used to sell them for motorhome drivers - advertising "comfortable jumpsuits" in the back of Good Sam magazine. They are often used as uniforms in factories or for heavy industry. You don't want metal belt-buckles scratching up car bodies as they go down the assembly line. And the effort used hiking up sagging pants wastes valuable Therbligs.
The military uses them, particularly for aviation applications. You see them in space travel - the ubiquitous orange "flight suit" worn by astronauts. In short, wherever shit gets serious, you see jumpsuits. No time to be stylin' with shirt-tails and belts!
Clothing fashions have always been a bit ridiculous and uncomfortable. Maybe a clothing feature started out as a practical matter, but evolved into "fashion" over time. The button-up collar kept in body heat, but evolved into bizarre "Elizabethan" collars and later on, the high-starched collar and the cellulose detachable collar. Scarfs became bow ties and neck ties - again, cinching the neck as the belt cinches the waist. Comfortable? Of course not. That's one reason why so few people wear neck ties anymore.
Suit jackets were a practical thing to keep warm, but evolved into ornamental things with padded shoulders and lapels that made no sense (and were for appearances only). Suit pockets were even sewn shut or just fake to begin with. By the way, what was the point of "tails" on a jacket? I guess it looked "formal" but it is hard to imagine it being based on some function in the past.
The move to the new universal uniform of t-shirt-and-shorts was based in part on comfort and our generation winning. The "business suit" of 1960 has been replaced by the designer t-shirt, which again, would be considered underwear by our ancestors.
But the belt-and-tucking remain part of our wardrobe, even today - the last remnant of a non-functional clothing style.
Maybe it is time to embrace the future! Jumpsuit, anyone?
UPDATE: Some readers might point out that the problem with the one-piece jumpsuit or "onesey" is that when you use the toilet, you have to remove the whole thing or at least fold over the upper half. Perhaps in Space they don't poop. I dunno.
It also reminds me of Elementary school in the country where some kids would wear one-piece snowmobile suits to school - as clothing. They would unzip the upper part and let it fall back and walk around indoors with the snowsuit flopping about. I am not sure what that was all about, but by sixth grade, the fad had died out.
