Pajama Day was once a novelty at school, the chance to be silly and wear attire usually reserved for the privacy of home. But these days many young people are wearing PJs in public, anytime and just about anywhere.
Eleven-year-old Haley Small’s favorite look: a T-shirt, flip-flops and pajama bottoms, with designs on them ranging from Snoopy to monkeys, basketballs to smiley faces.
“Part of it is because it’s cute; but the majority of it is because it’s comfortable,” says the sixth-grader, who lives in Glen Rock, N.J., and often wears her PJs, “so I can sleep the extra five minutes.” Pajama bottoms are better than jeans, she adds, because they’re cool but less constricting.
Public pajama-wearing grew out of college students’ long-standing habit of rolling out of bed and into class. Now pajamas are a fashion statement, with such retailers as Old Navy, Target and J.C. Penney offering myriad styles for adults, teens and preteens.
The trend isn’t popular with everyone, though. School officials in, for instance, Houston County, Ga., Katy, Texas, Southfield, Mich., and Bakersfield, Calif., have banned pajama-wearing at school.
And even some under-30s think it’s inappropriate to wear them anywhere but home.
“It isn’t a matter of being too casual,” says Olga Shmuklyer, a 28-year-old New Yorker who readily acknowledges to being a member of the “flip-flop” generation. She simply thinks pajamas aren’t flattering, for anyone. “They look like vagrants,” says Shmuklyer, whose own college-age sister wears pajamas in public, much to her “dismay.”
Others have noted adults getting in on the act. Preston Kirk says he was taken aback when one of the twentysomething cast members in his community theater group in Marble Falls, Texas, came to rehearsal in pajamas. “It took me an hour to figure it out,” Kirk, who’s 60, says of the woman’s outfit. “But then, I’m ‘old school.’”
Haley’s mom, Ellyn Small, says that the first time her daughter wanted to wear pajamas to school, “I was dead set against it.” Then she realized other kids were doing it and didn’t mind so much.
“The pajama bottoms and T-shirts cover just as much of her body, if not more than the clothes she would normally wear,” Small says. “I’m sure there will be plenty of times down the road for me to put my foot down and tell her she can’t do or wear something.”
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