The Sweatshirt: The Novel

Yesterday's post, which by the way didn’t post until this morning [I never said I actually remembered to hit post] left me stuck on the idea of the sweatshirt, namely my personal sweatshirt phases throughout my life.

As a kid, I spent much of my time in sweatshirts that were either way too big, way too small, or way too tacky for my liking. There was never that Goldilocks of a sweatshirt that fit just right. Don’t get me wrong: I will absolutely be dressing my children in the same god-awful sweatshirts I was forced to prance around in, but I know that I will be doing it because they look cute, not because they are fashionable. Regardless, I will forever be scared by sweatshirts with giant, goofy, puffy-penned faces plastered on the front in the same way that I will always be scarred by the vest-turtleneck combination. Thank you Christmas photos of 1992.

Middle school was the covering-up phase. Things were changing, and no one needed to see my body morph itself into something new. I was going for the before and after look, no one wanted to see it during construction.

High School had three phases. The first being high school sports gear. You either had a letter jacket, team pants, team shirt, team hat, team windbreaker, team mouthguard, team underwear and team spirit, or you didn’t. The younger you were to receive a letter jacket and/or other cool varsity apparel, the cooler you were. It is relatively simple. For us dancers, we pranced around in our dance team gear, so that people knew we were dancers, and not just plain old lazy and/or geeky. [Side note: we weren’t allowed to have letter jackets as dancers, but chearleaders were? And further, now pretty much anyone at LSRHS can get a letter jacket because no one should ever feel left out, right Mrs. O’Neil?]

The Second High School Phase was bragging rights. Did you get into Duke? You wore the sweatshirt. Didn’t get in to UVA, but wanted people to think you were smart enough to visit and buy a sweatshirt? You wore the sweatshirt. Huge Penn State football fan, but also wanted people to think you might go there on full scholarship? You wore the sweatshirt. Applied to a state school as a safety school? You wore the sweatshirt. Are we sensing the trend here? People defined you based on what letters where sewn onto your sweatshirt. All of a sudden wearing a sweatshirt isn’t the easy way out anymore, is it?

The last phase of high school was college pride. You have been accepted to St. Lawrence University, and damn, were you proud. Everyone else should be just as proud of you as you are. It is time to advertise. Not only did you buy the SLU sweatshirt as a way to celebrate your amazing in-person interview on campus, but once you were accepted, you also purchased half of the online bookstore’s clothing selection. You now find it appropriate to wear your SLU sweatshirt, sweatpants, shorts, hat, sandals and t-shirt anywhere, and choose to accessorize my ensemble with a SLU water bottle, koozie, keychain. There is nothing abnormal about this, since every one of your peers did the exact same thing with their future university, but don’t worry, your school is much better than theirs.

College also had multiple phases.

The freshman phase is very similar to the last phase of high school, only now you are on campus and wearing everything you own that says St. Lawrence University. To top it off, you decide that since you love college so much, your entire family will love a Christmas gift from the SLU bookstore, because they also want to associate themselves with such a fine institution. You bring a couple sweatshirts from high school so that all your potential new friends will know that you played varsity lacrosse and were popular in high school. Also, if you joined an athletic team in college [ahem, dance team] you started to prance around in order to form your collegiate identity.

The second phase of college continues with greek pride. You rushed and pledged and are now a member of a greek house. You collectively order everything from lettered sweatshirts, tshirts, skirts, sweatpants, hats and belts in order to distinguish yourself as a member of your house, God forbid anyone associate you with the wrong house [which they won’t since you are fashionably toting around your custom vineyard vines sorority bag.] Conversely, if you didn’t go greek, you either hated or were jealous of the people who were decked out in sorority gear. This is one of the many Greek to GDI battles that occur while in college.

Third phase of college was the "I don’t care what I am wearing, I just want to be comfortable when hungover and freezing in class" phase. Usually, you didn’t care what it was you were wearing, so long as it wasn’t on inside out or smell of anything you drank the night before. This phase is fairly simple and easy to understand.

The most recent sweatshirt phase, which I believe I am still in, is the “I am too poor to purchase anything, besides produce and alcohol, so I will continue to wear the sweatshirts I already own until I wear straight through them” phase. Right out of college I still insisted on wearing my Tri Delt letters, because frankly they were the only sweatshirts I had left after three years of constant purchases [I mean a girl can only have so many sweatshirts] but I slowly started to wear my SLU sweatshirts again, with the obvious exception being when I am hungover, and then everything is fair game and non-judgable.

Does anyone have other sweatshirt phases they went through?