I can’t speak for others, but I know my response to this is, “What peril?” What danger is waiting for me at the grocery store or the coin laundry place if I don’t dress the “right” way? The worse that can happen is some petty bitch rolls her eyes at me. Ooh, scary! :rolleyes:
A person who wears sweats to work, job interview, or funeral is clueless and/or insane, and they deserve whatever bad impressions they leave. But a person who wears sweats to the grocery store shouldn’t be any more self-conscious than a person who wears a t-shirt or sandals.
People can’t help judging others. I get this. But there are such thing as unreasonable judgements. For instance, it’s unreasonable for me to assume that someone who wears high heels to the grocery store is a slut whore, even though I’m well within my rights to think so. IMHO, it’s unreasonable for someone to assume a person who wears sweatpants is a slob. There are high heel wearers who are slut whores and there are some people who wear sweatpants who are slobs. But the majority of both are regular people.
I couldn’t go out and about in sweatpants without feeling like I had given up on life. Even my 2AM trips out are prefaced by the 30 second ordeal of putting real pants on first. Whatever the rest of you want to do, have at it.
As I tell the wife, “You know the homeless guy who’s always standing on the exit off I-55? He was wearing real pants. I’ll be damned the day I can’t manage to dress at least as nice as the homeless guy.”
If sweats have to go for this reason, then so do denim jeans. All too often, people go out looking like this and this, when they really ought to look like this and this. Jeans never look good on women with no back and/or too much front.
I don’t wear sweat pants in public because they make me look dumpy, but… how is it “lazy” to wear them? They take the same amount of effort to put on as other pants. If they are clean and fit the person, I don’t even notice them. The older lady in the linked photo looks fine. I would not think she was lazy or slobby.
I was at the grocery store today, and after reading this thread, I am hard pressed to remember what one single solitary person was wearing. The only thing I remember was the girl who could hardly walk in the heels she was wearing, and I only noticed her because I thought she would fall down. Other than that, zero recollection. Do other people really pay attention to these things? Now, at a wedding, funeral, or job interview, I’d notice. Grocery store? I’m busy.
I’m retired and about the only time I go out is to do the shopping. In the last year I’ve put on a lot of weight and as a result if I try wearing most of my regular pants in public I run the very real risk of a “wardrobe malfunction” (and trust me, you don’t want to be around if that happens). I could go out and buy some pants that fit better, but I see that as giving in to the fact that I’m never going to lose weight so I might as well bow to the inevitable.
So I go out in sweat pants, which are loose enough that my fat ass is in no danger of offending anyone. They’re clean, and frankly I don’t care what anyone at the store thinks of me for wearing them.
I was wondering that too. Sweatpants = tracksuit bottoms? They’re so common as to be unremarkable here. I suppose some people would look ridiculous in them but most people look fine.
Maybe that’s the worst that can happen to you. But here’s what’s going to happen to me:
-I will run into an old flame I’d really rather have impressed, making him sorry he dumped me.
-I will run into the person I had a job interview with last week, who is still considering. (But maybe she won’t recognize me!)
-I will get stopped by the cops, who will wonder why I don’t want to get out of the car and who will figure it’s because I’m up to something, and things will accelerate. You know how people always look AWFUL in their mug shots, right?
Okay, the third thing has never happened to me, but I do find it kind of scary. That said, and even though I myself am judgmental as all hell, I do sometimes go out in my sweats.
I wouldn’t wear trackpants for a day out doing the shopping or going to the movies or Doing Something, but I don’t see a problem with them for going up to the shops because there’s no milk in the house, or getting petrol for the car, or heading into the Post Office to pay some bills or something informal like that.
I can’t say I pay a lot of attention to what other people are wearing, unless it’s a woman wearing slutty clothes, someone with a mis-spelt (or particularly clever) T-shirt, or someone who is well under or overdressed for the situation (eg wearing boardshorts to a job interview or wearing a Tuxedo to a “smart casual” event ).
My problem with trackpants outside the house is that their pockets aren’t big enough for my stuff and when I put anything in the pockets, they cause the pants to sag and I end up worrying they’re going to fall down.
I’ve gone to the store in sweatpants right after a dance class or after the gym, but I usually don’t plan on going to run errands while wearing them. I think they’re certainly a step above pajama bottoms, which I think are about as appropriate as wearing your boxers out in public.
I’m going to go ahead and chalk this up on the Top-10 list of most idiotic opinions I’ve ever seen on this board. I hate sweatpants. I don’t own a pair of them, and I can’t remember if I ever have at any point in my life. (They really aren’t needed for exercise in Atlanta.)
That being said, how in the world could anyone possibly say that sweatpants don’t belong in public? The fuck?
If I see someone in them, I assume they were running out the door quickly, coming back from the gym, or just don’t really care. They aren’t particularly flattering, but they aren’t going to cause people to stop and stare.
Someone upthread addressed the saleswomen in Pretty Woman. I will say that, when doing retail, I wouldn’t mind waiting on someone wearing sweatpants, if no other customers were around. But, frankly, a woman who cares so little about her appearance that she appears in a retail store in sweatpants is, in my mind, probably not the woman who is going to spend $200 or up for a handbag. Which is what I was selling.
I mean, why would she bother? She could carry her stuff around in a plastic bag.
If another potential customer came in, dressed more like someone who was about to spend a big hunk of change on her handbag, I would brush off the sweatpants-clad woman PDQ. And yeah, she might have had all her belongings burned up in a fire and was spending her insurance settlement. But probably not.
This is a bit different from someone grabbing a carton of milk on her way home from the gym, though.
I had this exact same discussion with our Sales Trainer at my previous job; the company having spent a vast sum of money to get us all onboard with the latest American Fad Sales Technique Du Jour.
And his point was “The last time I went to (Upmarket Department Store), I was wearing boardies, an old T-shirt, and sandals, and the staff ignored me. I wanted to buy a $500 cappucino machine, but since I wasn’t all dressed up the staff ignored me and they lost the sale. When I went back in the next day in my business suit, the staff couldn’t have been more helpful. But I still didn’t buy from them because they wouldn’t help me when I wasn’t all dressed up. So the message here is: Don’t profile your customers, because you don’t know who has lots of money but didn’t feel like getting dressed up to go shopping.”
I disagreed with him, of course, because what this overlooked was that as management and staff, we were spectacularly overworked as it was, and had to profile our customers (to an extent) because otherwise we’d never get anything done, as we’d be wasting our time trying to sell products to people who couldn’t afford them (or needed to have “a bit of a think about it” first).
So, if you go into an electronics store dressed like you’ve been at Byron Bay (Beachside town in northern NSW, famous for being full of hippies, surfies, backpackers, and “free spirits”) for the weekend, then of course you’re not going to get served as well as the person in a business suit looking at the Laptops. Sorry, that’s just how it works. Most of the people dressed like surfies in our store were surfies, not Corporate Executives with Platinum Credit Cards. We might see 1 in 100 who were, but frankly that was a risk we were willing to take.
So, the moral of the story (at least when it comes to retail) is “Don’t dress like a surfie/hippy and expect to be treated the same as people who are wearing good clothes”.
Your results may vary of course, but that was my experience.
I’m not talking about going to Neiman-Marcus in sweats. I’m talking about the grocery store, gas station, Toys R Us, WalMart, etc… does that make any difference?
Grocery store, gas station–okay. WalMart and Toys R Us, I have no idea. These seem more like outings on their own to me, but that could be because there aren’t any close to me.
There is a Ross Dress for Less between my house and my gym. I’ve gone there in sweats, because sweats are easy to slip out of in order to try other stuff on. (But not on the way from the gym.)
I, too, am amused by the opinions expressed in this thread. I’m an Ivy League educated professor at a major research university. I’ve dined with diplomats and foreign dignitaries, belong to elite social organizations… and when I’m at home on the weekends hanging out with the family, I have the temerity to venture out to the H-E-B or Target in trackpants.
Until now, I had no idea that some segments of society were assessing me on that criteria.
I suppose I do notice people who seem to be wearing particularly unflattering outfits. Gaping holes in the crotch area. Unfortunate stains. Clothes that fit way too tight or way too loose. But my usual thought is that person might not be able to afford more flattering clothing, not that they’re a slob. I have incomplete data to make that assessment.
Now, I try to be relatively clean and groomed when I venture out in the public. That’s more of a self-pride thing. But the very idea that I might go out to Target and horrify some major philanthropist, who won’t fund a research study because I’m not wearing slacks? The possibility seems remote.
Hilarity, when I’m going to drop some serious cash on clothes, I typically wear trackpants - because I’ll be trying on multiple outfits, and I don’t want to waste time futzing with belts and zippers.
This conversation kind of reminds of an experience I had when I worked in a bookstore. This woman who worked my shift saw me ringing up a customer, and I happened to ask her a question. She answered, and then went into a semi-rant about how we college kids tended to come in for the summer and not do a good job. Her assumptions were quite mistaken. I was a full-time teacher, just trying to make a few extra dollars. I already had my degree, something that this particular woman was still trying to earn. But she sized me up based on a few data points, and essentially revealed her douchebaginess in the process.
Next time you see a guy in (clean) trackpants at the supermarket, watch out! He might be teaching your kids.
