Sweatpants in Public? Not OK

Celebrities are allowing this disturbing trend to grow
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 18, 2010 11:55 AM CST
Sweatpants in Public? Not OK
Natalie Portman arrives at Venice airport during the 65th Venice Film Festival on August 31, 2008 in Venice, Italy.   (Getty Images)

It’s one thing for a “pill-addled trainwreck” to be photographed in sweatpants—but now that affable everyman Adam Sandler has been caught wearing a pair of the “home only” garments (and, worse, Ugg slippers) out to brunch, it’s time to be concerned. Sweatpants “are the universal wardrobe shorthand for sloth and lassitude,” writes Sean Macaulay in the Daily Beast, and it’s time to stop wearing them in public.

Though they started off as "legitimate" activewear, sweatpants morphed into couch-surfer-wear with the growth of VHS and Nintendo in the '80s. The proliferation of sweats-in-public “is partly downturn chic, partly recessionary despair,” but that’s no excuse, and celebrities must lead the charge against the “couch potato, crumb-magnet, man-cave leggings of shame in all their People of Wal-Mart splendor.” Because if Adam Sandler will brunch in them, “what hope is there for the rest of us?”
(More Adam Sandler stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X