Today I have to go shopping for workout clothes, so of course I’m planning the usual summer suspects: unflattering capris, unflattering shorts, some mildly flattering tanks. I’m hoping there are cute skirts in my future, because lately, that’s the only kind of gym clothes that aren’t making me bored.
What I really want to wear to the gym? Boys’ basketball shorts.
I had no older brother and God knows I didn’t play basketball, so I didn’t discover the wonder that is boys’ basketball shorts until I got to college and started to, as the Greeks like to call it, “shack.” Spend a night with a frat boy, and you score some gear. A hayride date party T-shirt circa 2004, maybe a hoodie. Spend enough nights, and you score a whole new shacker wardrobe. At some point in a girl’s shacking career, she’ll inevitably take home the coveted pants (and, probably, HPV, but that’s another post for another day).
I walked into the gym the other day and saw a teenage girl walking out in large, white shorts that came past her knees and had black racing stripes down the sides. She had that high school athlete look: tan, blonde, hair in a wet and very functional bubble on top of her head (with a tiny stretchy headband to keep her bands back, natch). I felt constrained in my slim black boot cut pants. I wanted to swim in my shorts like she did.
Basketball shorts (and pants, as is sometimes the case) just…soothe me. They are shiny because they are obviously made of magic. I put them on and imagine this is how a young RuPaul felt the first time he put on his mom’s slip. They make me want to be an athletic tranny. They are perfect for sneaking out of a boy’s house and then lounging on a lazy, hungover Sunday, when you’re inevitably sore from God knows what. I love to put them on after a tough workout and a hot shower, when I’m really limber, because they make me feel, I don’t know…somehow sexy? Maybe it’s because generally, you don’t buy your own–and we all know how you earn them.
I’m a girlie girl, so I don’t get very into “menswear inspired” dressing. I can count the number of pants and jeans I own on one hand. I don’t rock the low-maintenance work out look of “wife beaters” or, hell, even running shorts. (This is what I imagine girls like Megan Fox or Kendra from “Girls Next Door” wear to places like Gold’s Gym.) But for whatever reason, basketball shorts offer some sort of bizarre comfort in cross dressing.
I don’t know what would happen if I hit Zumba wearing the shorts of some poor frat boy with whom I shared a night junior year of college. (Actually, when you think of it that way, it seems kind of disgusting.) I can’t imagine they’d even stay up as I moved around. But…could I, should I buy my own? Could perhaps Lululemon start making them specifically for women like me? I think Adidas has some decent ones that actually are the required knee-grazing length.
But I’m torn. Ultimately, I’m scared to wear them to the gym, because they might give the impression that I earned them by being a serious athlete, as opposed to, you know, your everyday sorostitute.
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