Is it Acceptable for Grown Adults to Wear Sweatpants to the Airport?

Photo byMike VononUnsplash

Back in the glory days of aviation, flying was a dress-up affair.

Getting on a plane meant donning your best suit or dress. Flight attendants in crisp uniforms would walk around the cabin, topping up your champagne and serving you full steak dinners in flight.

Not any more!

Today, airplane passengers are basically glorified cattle, crammed into seats that are as small as legally allowable. Some airlines squeeze as many as ten passengers into a single row.

Ten people, all crammed into the same space that used to hold a few well-heeled, well-dressed souls.

Perhaps as a response to the cattle-like treatment, passengers have stopped caring about how they look (or often, act) while on airplanes.

One expression of this trend? Instead of putting on a well-pressed suit to get on a plane, many travelers are now opting for the same kinds of clothing they'd wear to bed--hoodies, pajamas, and (gasp) sweatpants.

Wearing sweatpants to the airport has become a strange point of social conflict. People magazine reports that some people find it liberating to wear moth-bitten sweats through the TSA checkpoint and onto the plane.

Others think it's distasteful. Sure, you don't need to wear a tux to fly anymore. But maybe dress in the same way you would if you were going to the office, or at least going to the grocery store?

Yoga pants and a worn-out workout shirt don't exactly scream high class.

The retort to this is often that airlines treat passengers so poorly that we've learned to rebel by acting like glorified children, and donning the kinds of comfy, un-presentable clothing that children wear.

Some people even remove their shoes on airplanes, as if they're relaxing in their own living room instead of being crammed into a little vertical gurney in a metal tube at 35,000 feet.

It doesn't help, of course, that most flights began with a government official telling you to take off your shoes. That doesn't quite set the tone for classiness.

What do you think? Is it okay to wear sweatpants on a plane, or is it childish? Let us know in the comments.