Is there a message sent by wearing sweatpants at public spaces that are not sports or recreation places?
As it goes for any clothing: yes. What could be that message?
To be clear. I do not claim that those wearing swetpants on places communicate their garment consciously. Their clothes are used as any other language unconsciously to dominate, to manipulate, to manage their environment. We are all doing this all the time. It is a necessary tool of any living creature fighting against entropy. As such it (garment) is not so much a protection against physical environment, but one of tools of life, a weapon that organizes and reorganizes reality around us. this organization and reorganization is in fact the only possible fight against entropy, against death. As long as according to second law of thermodynamics entropy prevails.
Thus we should say that sweatpants are in fact organizing our reality. They are conveying a clear message of leisure, recreation, triviality. If placed in urban environment, they conflict with jackets, ties, shirts and skirts. They shout: “Why on earth should we, children of democratic society, freedom of choice, relieved from all kinds of religious and other big brothers and gods, obey any rule at all.”
Sweatpants in urban environment are one of malign symptoms generated from permissive western culture. Permission to transgress any border, that is so deeply inscribed in renaissance movements from ancient Greek times, is in fact silent coalition with entropy. Permissiveness as a system is as such a tendency towards thermodynamical equilibrium, death.
Thermodynamical equilibrium can be observed as a moment when a man or a woman in sweatpants enters public place of an urban market - as a moment of disrespect towards all those that carefully organize and reorganize borders between sellers and buyers. Accept difference does not mean to accept anything. It means to accept something that is clearly structured as different. Equilibrium shows no difference, no respect. Possibility to wear anything shows highest possible disrespect to any structure, to any one. Wearing sweatpants in urban environment is a clear sign that that society shows no respect to any authority, including judicial, political or moral.
