By Caroline Jenkins, Staff Writer
It’s dead winter. The temperature is dropping below freezing. You, wrapped in 10 layers and a giant winter coat, are quaking in your boots. The chattering in your teeth can be heard from miles away as you quickly make your way to the front of the school. You look to the right and see a boy with toothpick legs hustling into the school because he, too, is freezing.
But there’s one crucial difference between you and him. This boy has nothing on but a thin T-shirt, basketball shorts and Nike Elite socks perfectly matched to the color of his shirt.
There seems to be this stigma that if boys disrupt the nice balance of shorts and Nike socks, they will be singled out by their little buddies and shunned for the entirety of their lives. Which, I’m not sure about you, but I have never once even thought about wearing shorts in the winter, nor have I been encouraged — or should I say forced — by my friends to wear them.
This seems like an extremely odd phenomenon, yet this actually happens everywhere, not just on the beach. Maybe boys here could get a free pass because “they’re just beach kids,” but considering this happens everywhere, something just isn’t quite adding up.
Today.com, in fact, covered a story involving just this scenario on Dec. 20, 2016. The responses on why kids wear shorts in the winter vary, but I’ve picked out some of the best.
- “He has a husky build. I let him get away with it just because of his body.”
- “That’s right, no matter what the weather, my boys are in shorts. Yup, it’s a balmy 26 degrees this morning, definitely shorts weather.”
Then there’s just the fashion aspect that comes with wearing pants, or more importantly jeans, that just doesn’t sit right with boys. Now, I thought it would be the giant gold chains that would be the fashion no-no, but apparently I was mistaken. Or perhaps boys wear those gold chains to distract you from the fact they are wearing shorts in the 20 degree winter. But hey, the world may never know.
As said by Anna Wintour, “You either know fashion or you don’t.”
Junior Caroline Jenkins can be reached at jenkinsca0616@daretolearn.org.
