Can U Not, Crop Pajamas?

Being awake is torture enough. Must sleep be just as bad?

Most of the time, crimes are committed by human beings. But sometimes they’re committed by inanimate objects. I, a left-hander, suffered long-term abuse from every can opener I’ve ever met. Don’t even get me started on how we’ve all been personally victimized by child-proof caps. 

But surely, the most heinous of all non-human villains are our clothes. And truly, is there a more egregious clothing crime than a garment moving in a direction you don’t want it to? 

From untied shoelaces and off-center bodysuit crotch clasps to slipping socks and north-bound underwires, our clothes seem to want to escape. As IF the feeling isn’t mutual you stupid fucking bra. 

But since our clothes can’t spontaneously fly off our bodies (Oh Shallon, how quickly we forget the great bikini-top-meets-wave incident of 2004...) they seem content to just torture us. We’re in a constant cold war with our fashion and everyone seems to accept it. 

However. 

Knowing this, as every woman does, knowing how hard we already have it, I need to understand what the fuck fashion designers are thinking when they come up with CROP TOP PAJAMAS. 

Why. Why is this happening to us. What kind of psychopath comes home after a long day in something as awful as pants and shoes and says “You know, I want this really drafty situation around my fatty bits as I sleep, and hopefully I’ll wake up with this crop tee way up over my nipples, choking me half to death.”

It feels like we’re living in the golden age of all the wrong things: Fuckboys. TV shows about storage units. And surely, crop tops. 

As someone who’s always carried her weight in her middle, this era of high-waist jeans and crops is my own personal haunted house. And that sounds wrong, right? How can I hate both fabric on and NOT on my midsection? Trust me, if you’re apple shaped too you get it. My fashion watchword is forever flowy. Breezy and loose and tent-like. 

But even if I had abs of steel, I cannot imagine any dimension of time or space in which I’d purposely wear something designed to ride up. I have a great butt, I don’t wear a thong to bed like some kind of demented masochist. I like my boobs, but I’d rather eat glass than sleep in a push up bra. 

No, this isn’t about function or even body positivity. It’s about blind, idiotic trend chasing. 

“I know,” says Gary, the balding, paunchy chief designer for Target (as I imagine him), who seemed to pioneer the crop PJ brutality, “those kids in Generation Tiker Tocker or whatever, they love crop tops, so let’s cut 4 inches off everything.” 

You know what Gary go to hell. 

Regular crop tops at least are meant to be seen by others. Why wear something ugly and uncomfortable to bed? 

What’s next, stiletto house slippers? Spanx bathrobes? How about “sleep makeup”—a full beat while you slumber, just in case someone breaks in and you need to look your best!

So many things have changed this year, “not normal” is the new normal. But I have taken comfort in, well, actual comfort. Our nighttime grubbiness is all we have. Our oversized sleepy tees are the one constant in our lives.  Please just let us have this.