It’s a debate that’s rehashed every summer: should men wear short pants in public? I thought we’d settled it: yes, sometimes. But recent revelations of gender inequity in office air conditioning (short version: the thermostat is set to dudes) inspired Washington Post writer Christopher Ingraham to take business casual a step further: he wore shorts to the office. His argument is basically that going from business formal dress to business casual in the 1990s was an evolutionary step in bringing workplace dress in line with a less formal world, but that now it’s time to consider shorts, for everyone’s comfort. Says Ingraham: “Men’s business casual is stiflingly uncomfortable for a significant portion of the year… We need to get over our squeamishness about our own legs.”
Ingraham offers some tips for wearing shorts that are pretty valid for shorts in general:
- Wear simple shorts in similar fabrics you’d choose for pants
- Wear a decent shirt, untucked
- Wear good shoes (always sound advice).
But I think he’s mostly trolling. Wear pants to work. Hell, even Chippendales dancers wear pants to work.
–Pete
