The Casualization of American Society

In my daily trips to Starbucks or another caffeine provider, I’ve noticed a trend: young people wearing pajamas out in public. Sometimes they are complemented by bed slippers and, if so, usually a specific type: those warm, fluffy shoes made from suede and adorned with fake fur.

I live near a major university and many jammy-clad are students. But I’ve seen some older adults out and about in outfits that used to be limited to one’s bedroom at nighttime or if one was home sick.

The casualization of American fashion was a gradual process that goes back many decades. A century ago, men routinely went out wearing black suits, white shirts, ties, and hats, even to baseball games.

By the 1950s, however, dress codes for both men and women had relaxed considerably, reflecting the new suburban lifestyle designed to convey comfort and leisure. The counterculture revolutionized dress (or undress) codes, of course, and the emergence of “casual Fridays” in business culture further pushed suits into the dustbin of history.

More recently, the dot-com revolution made shorts and hoodies perfectly legitimate clothing to wear anywhere, anytime, bringing us up to today when it is acceptable to go out in public in Star Wars jammies and bunny slippers. It was COVID-19 that triggered this beddy-bye fashion style, I believe, with working and doing everything else from home becoming literally business as usual. Going out in such an outfit can be seen as making sense for practical reasons and exemplifies the new normal in which pretty much all the rules that used to guide our behavior no longer apply.

Some critics have bemoaned the casualization of society, arguing that it has contributed to a decline in civility. In 2018, for example, Ron Way wrote in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that “24/7 dressing down is fraying the fabric of democracy,” taking exception to the tank tops, flip-flops, and purposely ripped jeans that he saw around town. One could only imagine what Way and the experts he consulted would think of the unicorn jammy pants and M&M slippers I saw on a young woman the other day while sipping my latte.

I take a different view than such critics who think the casualization of America portends the end of civilization as we know it. I see the trend of wear-whatever-one-wants-anywhere-and-anytime-one-wants as a good thing as it rejects established norms that confine and restrict behavior. Say what you will about the aesthetics attached to the Snoopy long johns that a 20something happened to be wearing at the Publix supermarket I go to, but they are an expression of freedom and individuality and are thus entirely consistent with the Founding Fathers’ concept of liberty and self-determination.

I just don’t want to see an all-pajama interpretation of Hamilton.