After sending out a tweet yesterday about business people wearing running shoes and that being sexy, I got to thinking about the polarized relationship we have between clothes and sex, specifically how some clothes are deemed sexy and others aren’t.
For a long time, I was really limited in what I considered attractive. I had, for a long time a personal punk/goth aesthetic and I spent most of my time dating or fantasizing about people who looking similarly. This isn’t to say that others wouldn’t catch my eye, but for the most part, if there weren’t tattoos, piercings, dyed hair and outrageous clothes, then I wouldn’t be interested.
But as time went on, I got busier with kids, I moved, and many other live changes came along. I wanted to spend more time on my projects than on dying my hair and shaving my head. And I wasn’t going out as much, my usual haunts became ghosts of the past. Through all of this, I started to notice changes in myself and what I deemed attractive.
As I replaced my leathers with jeans, yoga pants started to look hot. As t-shirts became my norm, I started looking at t-shirt clad dudes, wondering what ours would look like in a pile on the floor. Sportswear? Well, okay, that has always been a minor fetish but now more than ever watching people rollerblade on a hot day in shorts and spandex is amazing.
The list goes on and on. Saddles instead of big boots! Naturally wavy hair instead of slash and colour styles! Track pants—yes, they make those things sexy now!
This is not to say I’ve sworn off the other look. Not at all, I do enjoy looking. But now I’ve expanded my field of vision to include more.
I’ve considered a lot of factors in this. Is it just that my tastes are evolving? Has fashioned changed? And I just getting older and “settling”? Have the suburbs addled my brain? Am I just boring now?
All of these could be an influence. We all evolve, in all aspects of our lives. Some of the casual fashions have changed. I am older, and I may seem settled, but there is still a rebel heart beating in my chest. The burbs? I don’t think so, place has never influenced me significantly.
But am I boring? And is my own boring aesthetic driving me to fetishize casual wear as sexy? That intrigues me.
Are my tastes just a reflection of my personal state?
If I look at what I found attractive in the past, and what I looked like, I guess have I to conclude, yes. It seems that how I choose to look is what I want people to look like. Apparently I just want a bunch of homogenous me clones out there.
This is a disturbing thought!
I also don’t think it is valid.
I may be all up on myself here, but I don’t think I want everyone to look like me. Instead, I think I’ve found a good place in being comfortable. This isn’t to say my leathers, makeup and boots didn’t make me comfortable. They did—back then (and on occasion now).
What it is I want to see, and what I get turned on by, is people who as themselves, people who are comfortable. That ease my come from being physically comfortable in runners, sweats, t-shirts. Or it might come from the emotional comfort certain clothes bring.
My old clothes brought me a type of comfort at the time. They made me feel really sexy outwardly. They made me feel hot. These days, I’ll admit, aren’t about feeling super hot on the outside. But I know how I’m hot, what years of knowledge have brought me. I feel okay in jeans and t-shirts because I feel confident. And people wearing what they want, when they want, is the epitome of confidence.
Really, that’s what I’m all about.
