From my personal Facebook feed this morning, someone has a question about athletic fashion during the 1980s:
“What exactly was the point of wearing athletic shorts on top of sweatpants [in the 1980s]?”
I was a teenager in the 1980s, and an avid runner. I don’t really remember seeing this all that much. I do remember seeing it on occasion, and thinking that it was a little odd, or pointless.
I can say with 100 percent certainty that I never went running with gym shorts worn over my sweat pants.
I did, however, often run with gym shorts over my tights. Athletic tights, then as now, were much more form fitting and much less modest. (Athletic tights are also far better suited to running.)
If you didn’t actually experience the 1980s (or any historic period, for that matter), there is a danger in conflating the anecdotal with the common.
And even some common things weren’t all that common. For example, I never wore my hair in the style that is now called a “mullet”. (We didn’t call those hairstyles “mullets” back then, either.)
-ET