| Y’all. My wife is so smart. She figured something out that has completely baffled me. Why do “kids these days” wear sweatpants and PJ pants SO MUCH? One of our kids will NOT wear jeans, khakis or any other pants besides sweatpants. It’s a little aggravating and totally baffling to me. Pretty much all I wore in school was jeans. Now, sweats are not just acceptable, they are a fashion statements. All of the leading brands sell them and Hollister even has several walls of sweats that look like our jean walls of old. They even have 5-6 different “fits”. Baggy, super baggy, tapered, etc. It had me so stumped that I asked my wife. She immediately told me the reason. Kids always want to dress under their teachers and other influential adults. It’s their rebellion. When we were kids, teachers wore khakis and ties. A small handful wore suits. So we wore jeans. Now, teachers wear jeans pretty regularly. And parents do too to work and such. So the next lowest is sweats and the next lowest after that is PJ pants. Youth rebellion is not new. It is always evolving though. It is reacting. It is watching. And the fun part is that every generation, when it hits my age, tries to still “be cool” and relevant and grasp their remaining youth. The youth say, “nope.” It is a cycle as old as civilization itself. I don’t think there is anything we need to do about it. I don’t think we need to change it. Instead, acknowledge it and observe it. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Smile a little because you know that when your rebellious teenager hits their mid thirties-mid forties, they will see the same things out of their kids. All the kids that think they are doing something new and unique and rebellious, they are just repeating the same things we did at their age to be new and unique and rebellious. Nothing new under the sun. |
