I hear from a lot of people these days who are avoiding, with age and with weight gain and with generally changing body shapes, that they’re not comfortable wearing shorts.
The timing isn’t great. Things are getting warmer, and it was hot this year in May.
If you don’t want to wear shorts, that’s fine, but not wearing shorts because you don’t feel good in them because you’re embarrassed about what your legs look like, that’s not so fine.
I’ve written about this before. See Sam’s Thoughts about Shorts.
This tweet below hit home with me.
I have big legs, and I remember even when I was in high school and thin, being self-conscious about that. The magazine reporting on women’s weights and who should and shouldn’t wear shorts didn’t help.
Last week I read another piece about shorts which I liked, Are you anti-short?: “I find myself wondering if people in the anti-shorts camp just feel weird about their legs, which would be perfectly reasonable considering the many, many ways we’ve been socialized to feel bad about our bodies. I remember my dad, who was tall and thin, complaining about the way his “knobby knees” looked in shorts and Fran Lebowitz famously said, “men in shorts are disgusting.” It’s hard to forget this stuff.”
And then there’s my snazzy knee scars. Check them out!
I’m pretty happy with my new knees, scars, and all. I’m less happy that my legs aren’t as muscular as they used to be, but I’m working on that.
But I’m still determined to wear shorts in the summer.
Oh shorts. I have had a mixed relationship with them. I don’t think twice about them in a workout situation–running, cycling, hiking etc…But for just wearing around. For years, from my late twenties until my late forties, I never really wore shorts. Mini skirts yes, weirdly, but not shorts–since the self consciousness was around my bare legs and not being tanned and having freckles and moles and not being perfectly smooth etc… Then suddenly, late forties, I decided I would wear them again and did so quite proudly for almost a decade. And now I find myself again, looking at the skin on my legs and seeing its age and wondering if now is the time to stop wearing shorts again. That somehow it’s more dignified if I make a switch now to linen pants instead. Sigh.
I mean yes linen pants if you like linen pants, but linen pants b/c more dignified b/c aging skin? Nah. I’m saving Coastal Grandmother (or whatever the linen pants for older woman trend is called) until I’m actually a grandmother. Since that might be never, I’m good with shorts.