Thursday, February 3, 2011

Play Clothes

 "Go change your clothes." was often the second phrase heard from parents when a child returned home from school.
(How was school?" or "What did you do in school?", being the first. But this was back when parents were not afraid to be parents and back when most parents weren't concerned with being their child's best friend.)
We used to have clothes which were worn only on Sundays or to Weddings and clothes we wore to school and then a bunch of old, often torn or too small clothes, in which to play.
These days I have adults coming in looking for a job wearing clothes which resemble what our mothers expected us to change into after school.

Why do kids wear sagging pants in public?
Because most were not taught that certain clothes should only be worn at certain times.
Most kids were never taught that play clothes are for play and clothes for going out in public should be presentable to the public.
In our age of Political Correctness and diversity - many have abandoned tradition in favor of making sure that everyone feels as though he is of equal value even if he is not.

3 comments:

RunningMom said...

Ahh.. I always tell my son he can wear whatever he wants when he is in the house, but when he goes out of the house not only does he represent himself, he represents me. And we don't go out looking like a crumpled up dirty sock that you found under the couch all stinky and dusty. Get it together.

Used to be everyone bought their clothes at Hudsons or Macys or even JC Penny. Clothes that lasted generations. Now we have Target. Instead of having some good clothes that last a long time and play clothes now everyone has a ton of mediocre clothes that last maybe a season and fall apart.

DF said...

PC is the reason for a lot of this lax and malaise in the world. Everyone is a winner stops growth because there isn't a goal.

It's funny because we had Tough Skins and Gas shoes because we could tear them up. Damn I even had special tennis shoes that were for when I wasn't going to play in the dirt. I had a polo shirt outfit with slacks when my mother and I would go to the supermarket.

There is no direction that's why anyone can look any old way.

uglyblackjohn said...

@ RunningMom - "...he represents me...".
Exactly.
Sloppy parenting will lead to sloppy kids.

@ FreeMan - Ah, ha, ha... "Toughskins"?
Man I rmember those. They had a little extra white patch on the inside of the knee so they'd last longer. I think they were sold at Sears.

But look at old photos of poor people.
Most days they looked poor - on special days they got dressed.
I recently had an old woman tell me a story about how they would walk most of the way to church with no shoes and only put them on as they got close to the church in an effort to make her shoes last.