Magnanimous as I am, I will start by conceding the obvious: there is such a thing as being aggressively anti-social, or provocatively slobby, almost as if daring you to have a problem with it — letting one’s pants sag halfway down one’s hamstrings, showing off one’s boxers and buttcrack, for example. Less aggressive, but still wince-inducing: pajama pants, tattered t-shirts, and slippers/flip-flops. Even dedicated athleisurists like me have standards.
Still, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg if people want to model homeless chic in public. As an orangutan in spirit, I’m more concerned with urging all the busybody chimpanzees to go fuck themselves and each other and leave me alone. These shallow complaints aren’t about taste; they’re about legibility. They pine for uniforms that sort people at a glance — age, class, occupation — so the scold doesn’t have to think. In the nostalgic fantasy, suits and cocktail hours are the default adult costume, and anything outside that script is arrested development. But most adults don’t spend time in boardrooms. They wear company-issued shirts with nametags, drive forklifts, stock pallets, juggle gig-work, chauffeur kids, lift weights after work, and relax at home. They dress for the life they actually have.
What you see at Walmart is downstream of bigger forces: the work-life blur; car-errand culture; fabrics that wash and stretch; the decline of dry cleaning; post-pandemic norm collapse; orthopedic reality; climate-controlled interiors; and a retail loop that sells what people actually buy.
We’ve done worse for status. Before A/C (praise Willis Carrier), people literally cooked in their clothes because etiquette demanded it — wool and flannel undergarments in July, corsets and multiple petticoats for women, dark frock coats and gloves for men; even “summer furs.” Doctors warned against drinking water or removing layers. I prefer the supercilious scorn of some jerkoff stranger to the wrath of Sol Vindictus in a southern summer.
Standards still matter, but the adult rule is simple: the 3 C’s — Clean, Coordinated, Context-aware. Clean: no stains, no holes. Coordinated: neutrals, one or two colors, clothes that fit — not painted-on, not sagging. Context-aware: sweatpants to the grocery store, fine; an “I Got Crabs at Lucy’s” t-shirt at a funeral, no. That’s just maturity. Presentation without artifice. If you want castes, say so. Otherwise, judge people by how they look after their clothes and how they behave.