My dad and I have this argument. He says that playing in short shorts made it was easier to move. I think that today’s baggy shorts give you more comfort and keep your legs warmer. Which are the best shorts for basketball? —Butchie, 14, East Village
Comfort depends on context, particularly in matters of sports attire. In part, we feel comfortable because of the actual clothes we wear, and the ways those clothes help us compete. Sports clothes have undoubtedly improved over the decades in this regard. Wicking fabrics, rubberized shoes and thermal lining garments are but a few of the innovations that improve performance in sports like running, basketball and skiing. But it is much more the case that sports clothes “feel” comfortable because they reflect cultural aesthetics. Confidence depends on looking good and feeling like you are dressed like a dork can certainly hinder your ability to perform. In your father’s era, tight shorts were the norm in gym classes, playground pickup games, and, most important, college and professional ranks. It makes perfect sense that casual ballers would have emulated their pro heroes, and someone who showed up to a game wearing today’s baggy lowers would have likely been laughed off the court. Today however, we are more comfortable in baggys, and tight shorts seem geeky in the extreme. Players in games from the 1980s on ESPN Classic appear as if they are playing in their undergarments. Anyone who would dare to show up to a game in such attire would surely open the door to jokes about cutting off circulation, fannypacking, or worse. Thus, I would say that your argument with your father is in part about whether particular types of shorts enable freer movements; but it is much more about how growing up at particular moments shape our perceptions about what is cool and what is not.
--
Jonathan Metzl, MD, PhD, is an avid basketball and softball player who wears only the baggiest of shorts. When not playing sports, he works as a professor of psychiatry and culture at the University of Michigan, where he also directs the Program in Culture, Health, and Medicine. His most recent book is The Protest Psychosis (Beacon Press, 2010).
wasss
