Do You Love Your PJs that Much?

Sunday, February 05, 2012

There's a sinister fashion trend trying to gain traction in the United States: wearing pyjamas in public. Those now suddenly alarmed by it really have no one but themselves to blame. It was always going to come to this, wasn't it, once no one objected to the popularisation of loungewear in endroits - supermarkets, aeroplanes, even the movies, for example - that were not the gym? Why did no one ever go up to a young lady wearing sweatpants with the deliberately suggestive message 'Juicy' spread across her rear and insist that she go home and change? After all, a few years ago, when young urban guys decided to wear their pants below their butts, everybody made a big stink.

Now it's pyjamas that are threatening our way of life.

If you've trolled a 7Eleven at midnight recently, you'd likely have come across some pyjama-wearing spectacle (we're talking plaid flannel complete with bunny slippers here), in one of the aisles. And if you're an insomniac, like me, no doubt you would have come across late-night ads for the pyjama jeans. This increasingly loosey-goosey approach to the attire worn in public is perhaps spawned from a desire by many Americans for 24/7 comfort - I'm not sure why, since Americans have always struck me as already some of the most casual dressers; I'll never forget the culture shock I experienced the first time I visited an American church - but is it something that should be allowed to take root?

Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, the pyjama craze is making serious headway, especially among the teen set, with kids opting to wear loungewear all day. "Trend-conscious teens look as if they just rolled out of bed, wearing layers of loungewear to class at schools across the country. The trend goes way beyond 'Pyjama Day,' the once- or twice-a-year special event that many schools hold to raise funds or promote (school) spirit. Sales of 'activewear' to girls ages 13 to 17, including sweatpants and sweatshirts but not pyjama pants, rose 21% last year over the prior year — much faster than the 7.8% rise of apparel sales overall to that shopper segment, according to market-research firm NPD Group," reported Elizabeth Holmes in an article entitled 'Why Not Wear Pyjamas All Day?'

So serious is the threat of schools eventually looking like giant sleep centres, that some school districts have banned sleepwear at school, with the argument being that this mode of dress could be prohibitive to children learning. Michael Williams, a commissioner in Louisiana, took things one step further recently, making headlines when he called for a ban on pyjamas in public. Anybody caught wearing pyjamas outside, his proposed ordinance states, should be made to do community service. His thinking, though, is that pyjama wearing in the daytime reflects America's declining moral fibre. According to Williams, it's just a slippery slope until Americans begin walking around in their underwear.

That's perhaps too ludicrous a leap. I'm not sure questionable sartorial decisions ought to be tied to a person's character and moral content. Besides, what the good commissioner seems to have overlooked is that wearing pyjamas out in public is, in some instances, a cultural convention. So, too, for that matter, is wearing only one's underwear, or, as with certain tribes in New Guinea and the Amazon region of South America, no clothes at all. Is he suggesting these people are morally bankrupt?

In some parts of China, it's perfectly acceptable to wear pyjamas in public. Although authorities in Shanghai cracked down on the custom in 2010 before the World Expo, and people found wearing their jammies in the day were forced to go home and change. Reporting for the New York Times during the expo, Gao Yubing, a graduate of media studies at the University of Hong Kong, noted that "catchy red signs reading 'Pyjamas don't go out of the door; be a civilised resident for the Expo' were posted throughout the city". Volunteer 'pyjama policemen' patrolled the neighbourhoods, and celebrities and socialites appeared on Chinese TV to promote the idea that sleepwear in public was "backward" and "uncivilised".

This clamp-down was, likely, a response by the authorities to protect the Chinese people from seeming too provincial to the influx of foreigners expected for the expo. But there are some Chinese people who disagree with this characterisation. As well they should. It's kind of ironic, actually, because China had originally adopted western-style pyjamas in the late '70s, when Deng Xiaoping, then China's leader, sought to modernise the economy and society by opening up to the outside world. According to Gao, people in Shanghai starting wearing pyjamas to bed, keeping them on to walk around the neighbourhood, out of convenience since, at that time in Shanghai, people lived in cramped spaces, with the average person having less than 10 square metres of living area. Changing out of one's pyjamas, therefore, just to go across the road to the market, was simply "too troublesome and unnecessary".

Context, people. Context. Expediency over slovenly fashion trend.

Here in the west, conventional wisdom considers wearing loungewear outside as being, somehow, inappropriate. Unnecessary, too, if you ask me, considering our wide, open spaces.

Me, I don't go beyond my front door in sleepwear. Not even to take out the garbage. But this was probably because of the good work of my mother, a very dignified lady who would have been scandalised by the thought of her daughters, even in the garden, in sleep attire, without, at the very least, a dressing robe to cover up. Let alone traipsing through the streets of Kingston in their pyjamas.

I can't imagine requiring that much unflattering freedom anyway. If I did, there would be a sense of having surrendered — although, to what, I'm not quite sure.

To me, wearing pyjamas in public is plain sloppy. But then, so is, I think, wearing a thong beneath low-riding jeans. In both cases, the public ought to be spared the view.

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Do You Love Your PJs that Much?