One winter, I look around and see that girls, women, children are walking along the streets of the city, in this case Moscow, in ski pants, in overalls, and someone in full gear, only without skis. I take a closer look and understand that often entire families, including men, leave shopping centers in ski suits. Oh, I think Moscow is now a ski resort?
It sure is comfortable and warm. And this is very important for a person in winter. Except it’s just as bad taste as pseudo-Adidas synthetic suits in the 1990s. They also seemed to be very comfortable.
Three generations of Soviet and already post-Soviet people grew up without a generally accepted example of beauty in urban culture: both mass architecture and mass urban clothing are all terrible. We all dressed in what we could buy, and not in what we wanted, and not in what was beautiful. We have a full pipe with «combinatoriality», as the heroine Liya Akhedzhakova, secretary Verochka from «Office Romance» called it.
And even today, our people are easy to distinguish in an international crowd. Our ladies in the morning with evening make-up, combine stilettos and a sports jacket, and they have a light plush sports suit for the top of chic. Men in flip-flops and shorts in the summer, in sandals with socks, in sports trousers and pointed boots — I will stop the list here.
And, of course, everyone is comfortable in this, and, probably, only fools and spiteful critics pay attention to such trifles as someone else’s clothes, but, of course, people in a plush and a ski suit in the middle of a metropolis simply have not been instilled with taste. And how great and beautiful it would be if they instilled.
Does it untie our hands that others walk like this? Does this give permission to be guided only by the word «convenient»?
And, of course, «plush and ski» will defend their right to dress vulgarly, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Let’s take a look at the question. What, for example, is still convenient in winter? Sheepskin coat and downy scarf. Quilted jacket and felt boots. And in a rainy autumn, for example, it is convenient to walk around the city in a wetsuit for surfers. I put it on and it doesn’t blow, it’s not wet. Very comfortably. In the heat, you don’t have to bathe on the streets in shorts and T-shirts — it’s much more convenient to walk in swimsuits and swimming trunks. It is very convenient to leave the house in a bathrobe, you do not need to change clothes at all. Inappropriate? Finally a good word.
To what extent does it untie our hands that others walk like that? Does this give permission to lower the bar and be guided only by the word “convenient”? I think yes. It’s like with smoking — people smoke less when others do not smoke around. Defenders of ski pants in online disputes often begin to determine where it is appropriate to come in a ski suit in the city, and where it’s not, you know. And then the boundaries begin to move out.
“Walking through the streets in pants — yes, with a stroller, with a dog, yes, to a shopping center — no,” the defenders say. Personally, I see «skiers» in shopping centers all the time, so obviously not everyone thinks so.
“In ski pants to the park, yes, but to a restaurant, no.” You see, there are a lot of “skiers” in restaurants and cafes. All the “trouser guards”, in principle, agree that it is still not necessary to go to the theater in them. However, we recently went to the opera at Rigoletto, there were people in ski pants there too. And they are also in museums, at exhibitions and in the cinema.
Well, really, who will stop us and explain that we are not dressed like that, inappropriate for the place and time? None. I wanted to comprehensively study the issue of ski pants and identify the most common opinions about them. In Moscow, the world did not converge like a wedge — here, for example, what they think about the expansion of ski pants in real Siberia.
“I only wear pants. I do sports. But to walk around in a ski suit around the city is even too much for me. ”
“They also wear suits with leather black ankle boots with 3 cm heels, with a curl on the head, with painted eyes and lips and a leather handbag.”
“Now, in my forties, with a sense of accomplishment, I go with pleasure wherever I want, in the most comfortable suit, and I don’t care what others think about it, who in their mink from the back do not differ from each other at all. I am warm, comfortable, I walk with the child where I want and how I want.
“My foreign acquaintances, having got to Novosibirsk in winter, turned their heads for a long time in search of mountains. At first I didn’t understand what they were looking for. It turned out, looking at the clothes of the locals, they decided that there was a ski resort somewhere.”
“I didn’t know that there were so many sick people around who react so painfully, with hatred to the appearance of an outsider …”
“I treat those who are dressed in comfortable, warm, windproof overalls or pants with a jacket for a walk with a child or a dog much better than those who walk in thin tights and elegant boots with heels and a short fur coat at -20 C.”
Where will our people set the boundary of what is appropriate if there is no external prohibition?
“A year ago, friends from Russia told me that their girls go around the city in winter in ski suits. It’s funny, to be honest. In the States and Canada, I have never seen anyone wear a ski suit in everyday life — for example, to the store for bread.
“In general, no offense will be said, the author of the topic seems to be from the village. Everyone there is always concerned about who walked past the hut in what on the street.
“With the same bewilderment I will treat people who have appeared in a cafe or shopping center in camouflage uniforms, even if they are very good ones. I am a hunter and I feel comfortable in it, but in public places I will not allow myself this.
“There is a social contract. Nobody accepted him. It just exists and includes the national mentality, traditions, the level of tolerance for «not like you.» Walking in the nude will be condemned by the whole society, and wearing ski pants by a small part of it. Therefore, the other part of society has the same right to walk around in ski pants as you do — to condemn such a wardrobe. Sportswear is not allowed into a restaurant, theater, exhibition, and quite rightly so.
However, the street is a public place, there are citizens with trash cans and slippers. No matter how unpleasant it is for you to see citizens in sweatpants, you have no right to condemn them (with the exception of places where it is not customary to be in inappropriate clothing).
The last speaker from the Novosibirsk forum even convinced me. Question: nowhere, except for the office and nightclubs, is the dress code checked, where will our people set the boundary of what is appropriate if there is no external prohibition? And what are these places where it is not customary to wear ski pants, if people in them are just everywhere?
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