I was dragging my feet to the local stationery recently when I passed by a colouful, concrete area masquerading as what I imagine is meant to be a children’s playground. Since it was nearing the middle of the day, there was plenty of unshovelled dog poo and no children around; however, there was a small smattering of teenagers that should have probably been somewhere else entirely but had congregated around a bench instead.
As I passed by, one of them jumped onto the bench and lifted her very short skirt. What I saw next horrified me more than any threadbare, Lycra, poor excuse for an undergarment ever could; the skirt was not a skirt at all; she was wearing skorts.
For those of you who don’t remember what it was like to wait for your mum to get off the telephone to use the internet, skorts are an unholy marriage of a skirt and shorts sewn into one odious piece. Perhaps only slightly better to wear than the I-hope-you-don’t-need-to-use-the-bathroom-for-the-next-eight-hours romper, skorts tend to dig into your stomach every time you sit down because the shorts part of it fit one way and the fake skirt piece at the front has an entirely different mind of its own. There was nothing more disappointing for the men of my generation than to think that they were going to get lucky only to find another layer of clothing in their way.
Of all the things to bring back from the 2000s, this is probably one of the most heinous. Right up there next to low-rise jeans that have literally never looked good on anyone except Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears when they were both starving themselves, the skorts are an abomination of nature that had me shaking my then little fists at the fashion gods some 23 odd years ago and are now back to haunt me like some long lost lover that periodically loses their path and lands themselves in my inbox.
In the few milliseconds, between this girl lifting her skirt and her saying to her friends: “Look, they’re shorts too!” I had already given up on living. Or at least I thought I had till her friend replied: “My mum used to wear them, and they’re vile.” And just like that, this aging millennial’s faith in humanity was restored.
For more Sunday Circle features check out this interview about the Maltese camino.
