Are You Anti-Shorts?

Or do you love the breeze on your knees?

A few of my favorite people claim to be anti-shorts. My friend Ash Stockham, a chef in Seattle, claims that “footwear is hard with shorts.” One of my most stylish pals Marjory Sweet, who cooks and bakes in Maine, told me she is “not convinced shorts cool you significantly more than a lightweight pair of pants.” More than 75 of you completed my Shorts Survey (thank you!!!) and shared A LOT of complaints about thigh chafing, shorts riding up, and the awkwardness of grabbing at your crotch to solve these problems.

I find myself wondering if people in the anti-shorts camp just feel weird about their legs, which would be perfectly reasonable considering the many, many ways we’ve been socialized to feel bad about our bodies. I remember my dad, who was tall and thin, complaining about the way his “knobby knees” looked in shorts and Fran Lebowitz famously said, “men in shorts are disgusting.” It’s hard to forget this stuff.

But whether you like shorts or not, it has been scientifically proven that less clothing equals more sweat evaporation and therefore more cooling. And we all deserve to stay cool. (We do also need some clothes to prevent sunburn.)

So today we’re talking about shorts—which shorts are trending, what I’m loving right now, and the ones you can’t stop wearing.