{"id":3729,"date":"2023-05-30T21:44:09","date_gmt":"2023-05-31T02:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=3729"},"modified":"2023-05-30T22:06:03","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T03:06:03","slug":"soft-pants-the-postpandemic-benefit-thats-here-to-stay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/05\/30\/soft-pants-the-postpandemic-benefit-thats-here-to-stay\/","title":{"rendered":"Soft Pants: The Postpandemic Benefit That\u2019s Here to Stay"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

NYT<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less than three weeks into the March 2020 lockdowns in New York City, my boyfriend turned to me with a revelation he was having while in the snug living room that had become our co-working space, wine bar and prison chamber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A finance lawyer who used to wear suits, he lately had found himself toiling in a series of baggy sweatpants and sweaters. (No judgment: I wore the same crusty, forest-green hoodie and gray sweats for over three days<\/a> straight.) As we prepared to throw on some jeans to head to the grocery store, he told me he couldn\u2019t remember the last time he had put on a pair of \u201chard pants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I shared his utterance on Twitter<\/a>, the site on which I have wasted much of my life, and \u201chard pants\u201d went viral. Dictionary.com<\/a> even credited us with popularizing the term, although it\u2019s been around<\/a> in some form since at least 2009<\/a>. It was probably my greatest cultural contribution to the pandemic \u2014 it may prove to be the most influential piece of writing I produce in my career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three years on, while I have mostly stopped wearing masks, my soft clothes remain. All the pieces I gravitate toward feel more \u2026\u00a0casual<\/em>. If a set of pants has an elastic waistband, I\u2019m sold. On an ideal day, you shouldn\u2019t be able to tell if I\u2019m going to the club or to my couch. Think airport chic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think this makes me or my fellow softies slobs. We haven\u2019t given up, per se. We\u2019ve merely let go of what was previously expected of us. If anything, it takes a certain grizzled hardness to emerge from the chaos of Covid and embrace softness. It feels liberating, both for my spirit and for my legs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The divider between formal and informal spaces, between the professional and the unprofessional, has become as thin and faint as the line on a Covid test. I spent much of the past few years looking at my colleagues\u2019 bedrooms and seeing their toddlers crash Zoom calls \u2014 something that was once so unimaginable that when it happened in 2017 on the BBC<\/a> it became<\/a> international<\/a> news<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had no choice but to allow others into our private spaces. And as days turned to months turned to years, any pretense of formality went out the window. Please recall that someone once seemingly\u00a0flushed a toilet<\/em>\u00a0during audio oral arguments<\/a>\u00a0for the Supreme Court \u2014 whose members, it should be pointed out, have been enjoying loosefitting robes\u00a0for over two centuries<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYT Less than three weeks into the March 2020 lockdowns in New York City, my boyfriend turned to me with a revelation he was having while in the snug living room that had become our co-working space, wine bar and prison chamber. A finance lawyer who used to wear suits, he lately had found himself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":3730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychological-and-sociological-impact"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-2023-05-30-at-22.42.46.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3731,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3729\/revisions\/3731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}