This election is about what kind of country we want. Do we want a nation led by the spoiled lovechild of Yosemite Sam and a late-night tweeting Twitter egg, running around inviting foreign countries to spy on us? Or do we want someone who maybe at least knows how to do the job? Do we want more of Obama’s legacy, or risk it all and take what’s behind blood-soaked curtain No. 2? Do we want diversity or jingoism, fear or hope, Logan or Jess (but never Dean, obvs)? We also need to decide what kind of attire we want to wear in this new country: Do we, as a nation populated with millennials and an obsession with why millennials are Bad, want to be able to wear jorts wherever and whenever we want? Should you be able to wear jorts when casting a historic vote for the nomination of your party?
This is an important question raised by our own Rachel Eve Stein, who is on the floor of the DNC right now as a delegate from New York and has seen at least two people wearing jorts in her own delegation. Yes, it’s hot in Philly, but maybe bump it up to at least business casual, she says.
We are noted jorts advocates, for both men and women and everyone in between. The world is full of stuffy, rigorously boring people who consider themselves adults, who want to tell you what to wear all the time. They especially love foisting the horrifying constraint of pants upon our nation’s young men during these, the hottest, best, most clothes-eschewing months of the year.
Jorts, the cut-off kind, are the most freeing form of summer wear, literally cutting down fashion standards and reshaping them into your own piece of customized apparel (and if you buy your jeans to cut from the thrift store, they’ll only set you back $5-$10). Dress codes fall into that whole “who really gives a shit?” attitude young people have towards workplaces, the idea that old rules don’t matter so long as the job as getting done (see also: all-gender rest rooms, unlimited vacation time). What does wearing khakis and a polo shirt accomplish for productivity except to make everyone more uncomfortable?
Jorts are symbolic of a generation that was handed a shitty situation (the economy/old pants) and did the best we could with them to make ourselves comfortable, while rewriting the rules of what counts as socially acceptable. Our predecessors never wore jorts to a convention, but they sure never nominated a black person, a woman, an openly gay person or trans person before either. You might make a case that as the old rules fly out the window about who makes an acceptable candidate, we should care a lot less about what’s on people’s legs and more about what’s in people’s hearts.
Should we not, therefore, be allowed to nominate a president — even the first-ever female nominee — while wearing jorts?
I mean, probably not, because you’ll get mocked online like this:
Oh shit this person solved the mystery of why people don’t have jobs:
The cops are wearing shorts too:
It’s not just this year either:
Of course, people at the RNC dressed like this, so maybe we should all relax:
When will we nominate our first jorts-wearing president? That remains unclear, but we’d settle for an intersex queer person with a sick sleeve tattoo for next time around.
Follow Tim, Twitter’s Jorts Authority: @TimDonnelly.