Hey girl
I went to move my truck for street cleaning this morning a little before nine. In my peripheral vision I saw what seemed to be a homeless lady that was maybe a little bit nutty, walking towards me in a pretty rose colored short bathrobe and white slippers.
Well those aren’t going to stay clean for long, I thought to myself. I mean you just cannot wear white slippers on the streets of San Francisco and expect them not to become dingy. The homeless bathrobe lady seemed to be coming right for me. I reached my truck and stepped in right as she lifted her hand and beeped her car’s alarm.
Oh my god, I realized, she’s not a homeless crazy person she’s a person living in a home, that probably has a job and a regular life who thinks it’s appropriate to walk outside in a shortie bathrobe and slippers. Slippers!!! Slippers that she’s going to walk around the filthy streets of San Francisco in and then shuffle the vile germs all over her apartment all day!
And a bathrobe. A bathrobe??? My god, I totally disapprove of adults wearing PJ pants on the street but PJ pants are high class compared to a short robe. I’m a stranger, I don’t want to see what another stranger wears in the privacy of their home on a Thursday morning.
Maybe she works at night, Sunde, you say to me. Fine, she had just rolled out of bed, but how hard is it to throw a pair of jeans and a t-shirt on? Or if that’s too much, some yoga pants and a sweatshirt are good too.
To me this is two things, a combination of strange, boundary-less over sharing and adult toddlerizing. I think I’ve covered the boundary-less issue but what’s toddlerizing? It’s when an otherwise normal, functioning adult walks through the world like a gigantic baby that we all have to deal with and roll our eyes at.
Wearing sleepwear in public is a great example of that. For example, there are adults that have early morning flights and literally cannot imagine wearing jeans in the airport and on the flight because it would be too uncomfortable. I’ve seen babies and toddlers , who, in my opinion, have every adorable right in the world to wear onesies and koala bear slippers in the airport, dressed more appropriately then these PJ clad adults.
Come to think of it, this toddlerizing phenomenon seems to be specific to women. I find this disappointing. One way that society has tried to disempower women over the ages is to suggest that we are child-like and need protection or help with most things including decision making about our lives and our bodies. Like maybe we shouldn’t be able to have bank accounts or sign leases without our father or husband co-signing? When women walk through the world toddlerizing themselves they are projecting to the world the concept that women are like giant sexy babies that stumble through the world—and airports—helplessly.
I sighed as the bathrobe lady plopped into her driver’s seat, tucked her bathrobe underneath her and drove off into the city in search of parking.
