Ask Hadley - Hadley Freeman can ease your fashion pain

Ask Hadley

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Wearing shorts


Hadley Freeman can ease your fashion pain

Monday April 14, 2008
The Guardian


The Krankies: why shorts are unacceptable

When is it acceptable to start wearing shorts?
Ben McAllister, London

What is this, 1940s New England? Is there some social protocol regarding the timing of shorts of which I have been ignorant, like the incomprehensible rule about not wearing white shoes after Labor Day, which people in certain well-monied areas of the US eastern seaboard believe in with almost evangelical devotion, suggesting that perhaps they need to find something else with which to fill their overly idle and well-fed days if the most they can think of is the colour of other people's trainers. Perhaps they could buy another sports car. Or some cocaine ...


Anyway, back to shorts. Well, my dear Mr McAllister, you should wear them when it is climactically favourable to one's outer limbs, which is a space-filling way of saying, "When it's flipping well warm enough to do so, like, duh."
But leaving aside the swiftly dealt with issue of when to wear shorts, let us move on to the more important issue of why to wear shorts or, still alliteratively, whether to wear shorts. And I think the answer here, dear sir, is no, not unless it is absolutely necessary.

I disapprove of shorts - on men that is. On women, of course, they are awesome. But that is because women have nicer legs. This is not sexism, this is a statement of biologically determined fact, and dammit, we deserve a bit of biological determinism in our favour for once in this misogynistic universe. (Periods, childbirth, osteoporosis - do you really want me to continue? No, I thought not.) Boys, let's see you go out there and develop shapely calf muscles by walking on your tip toes all day, an activity only occasionally leavened by lying back once a month and having some woman named Helga pour hot wax over your legs and then rip it off. Then we'll discuss whose legs deserve more to be on show.

But it is not only the leg issue but also a shorts one. There is something that happens to men when they buy a pair of shorts. Despite being so partial to them, they seem to be slightly ashamed of them, perhaps self-consciously aware that there is something camp in an oh-we-do-like-to-be-beside-the-seaside type way about them. So they testosterone them up in a way familiar to any politician who needs to gain some popularity and distract people from other obvious flaws - they send them to war. Not literally so, unfortunately, but by putting military motifs all over their shorts. Hence the popularity of combat pockets on men's summer-wardrobe separates - very useful if one is to engage in battle in the pub garden.

Moreover, I would like to refer you to the discussion regarding shorts on what is possibly the finest website of our time, stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com. I counsel you to read first the chapters on Whole Foods, dinner parties and "Wes Anderson movies" - because these are just genius - but its rumination on the subject of shorts is a thing of glory, too. To quote Homer Simpson (who is probably also featured - I had to stop after "farmers' markets" because I was disturbing other people in the office who write boring things like "the news"), it's funny because it's true.

How much should one spend on a pair of jeans?

Edward Morrison, Worcs

If you, in common with most of the human race in the western hemisphere, wear yours every day, then I'd say about £3,000. Isn't it worth spending more money on the things you wear most, and less on the things you wear least? Obvious, one would think. But still people fork out however many hundreds for a dress or a suit for "a special occasion" (note the singular), yet wince when they find jeans that exceed the crucial £40 mark.

I'm totally with you in the "fashion is too expensive, in my day we wore burlap sacks held together by my grandmother's frozen spit" argument, not least when it comes to smart suits, party dresses and anything your mum would describe as "a bit fancy".

But just as you presumably are willing to spend a little more to get a decent boiler as opposed to a half-arsed thing knocked together by your brother-in-law's mate, it seems sensible to make an effort when purchasing something that will be a near daily part of your life. Perhaps £3,000 is a bit excessive, and maybe you can find some decent jeans for £20, but in general, I'd say, go to the market for your party gear (everyone will be drunk at the party anyway) and stump it up for the jeans and jumpers too. Remember, Confucius say: the man who wear good jeans is the man who ladies will like. Let the hubba be with you.


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