Are short shorts ever truly acceptable? – British GQ
The argument for short shorts
By David Levesley, GQ.co.uk News And Features Editor
Short shorts are the sartorial equivalent of fugu: delicious, in part because of the risk they present. Not only is there the inevitable downstairs slippage that a truly perilous pair present anyone with, but also any number of other challenges: choose the wrong cut and you’re Richard Simmonds, the wrong fabric and you’re someone who forgot to pack trousers in their gym bag.
But then short shorts don’t have any interest in being easy. Nothing worth celebrating, after all, ever was. Much like all my friends in sixth form testing how far they could hitch their standard-issue skirt before double German, short shorts offer, in all their forms, something men are so rarely good at engaging with: an ability to test just how sexy you can be.
Is the fear then, for so many men, that a thirst trap of an outfit is loaded with homosexual panic? Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick would say: potentially. Men either think it’s tops off or a full suit if you want to show yourself off, but short shorts offer something slightly more subtle and therefore ever terrifying to a gender famed for an obsession with black-and-white binaries: “What if my outfit choice is both completely appropriate and yet also makes you think I might have a nice pair of pins?”
Although it is easy to suggest that an aversion to short shorts only exists because straight men have come to associate them with the societal belief that male self-love is a bit gay, it’s worth noting that actually sometimes the call comes from inside the house. I, a queer man, have probably been a more vocal opponent of the short short than any straight man I know, who have probably got very used to wearing them for sport. No, in fact, I too fell victim to homophobia in my distaste for a fashion item I now wear so often I fear it’ll become some kind of running gag.
Once upon a time, I was deeply anti-short shorts. To me they were a symbol of a kind of queer aesthetic that I felt was in some way unsuitable: a rogue’s gallery of lithe sodomites who dressed like 1970s porn stars from San Francisco. They were a symbol, to me, of a sort of nefariousness, vanity and peacocking that I felt was setting gay men back. Though if you asked me against whom, or how, I couldn’t have told you.
As time has gone by, however, I’ve realised that the problem was never the men wearing short shorts, but entirely in myself: if a man wants to wear the tightest, highest set of Ellesse shorts for London Pride, the only person they are making a statement about is themselves. The muscled bodies and erotica-adjacent style of queerness wasn’t trying to say I wasn’t good enough; it was simply saying that this was something men could, potentially, be.
Listen: I’m not exactly a beanpole of a guy. Short shorts are not supposed to be something I wear. But you know who told me I’m not supposed to? Me, myself and I. The same internal voice that told me mesh was unsightly and taking your top off in a club was narcissistic. Now there is nothing more glorious in my life than putting on a pair of short shorts (which, almost by the very nature of their design, means I’ll also be in a jockstrap) and a tiny crop top and hitting a nightclub. They’re comfy! Ventilated! And allow me to show off a tattoo I got in lockdown on my right-hand thigh, specifically placed so that I could show it off in the summer, sprawled outside a Tottenham warehouse at six in the morning.
Where once I feared I would be ignored or mocked for choices like this, now I’ve realised everyone is thrilled to have me be part of the short shorts club. To see this love of male body positivity and queer fashion trends reach nearer and nearer to the mainstream? Well, it can only be beneficial for growing my ever-expanding collection. Come join me: the membership list is, ironically, quite long.
The argument against(ish) short shorts
By Teo van den Broeke, Style And Grooming Director
Having just read my esteemed colleague’s answer above, and having looked even harder than I already have at the lead image of this piece, I think I might have to change my angle somewhat.
There was a part of me – a more prudish part perhaps – that was determined not to be down with the kids and their five-inch rule (for those not in the know, the omniscient TikTok tweens last year decreed that any short longer than five inches should be cancelled, and the argument is still blazing on social media), but it’s undeniably true that there’s something excellently brazen, brilliantly bold and ever so slightly batshit about wearing shorts in public that could just as easily double as a boxer brief, and it’s making me waver.
It’s a state of affairs that the more sartorially astute portion of my brain is struggling to grapple with in particular, not least because I’m a very tall man and short shorts have a habit of making me look like Treebeard in hot pants. And there’s the fact that any and every etiquette rule book one could ever care to consult dictates that short shorts are simply not the done thing. Even Tom Ford – a master of sartorial acuity, yes, but a sexual being too – famously said, “A man should never wear shorts in the city. Flip-flops and shorts in the city are never appropriate. Shorts should only be worn on the tennis court or on the beach.” And, well, what Tom says goes.
But following our past year of utmost discontent, a time during which we’ve become more closely acquainted with comfortwear and workout gear than ever before in the history of our wardrobes, there’s something about short shorts which feels, well, both timely and correct. Life is short (and the period in which we can feasibly get away with wearing thigh-grazing legwear even shorter), which means that, right now, it almost seems amoral, pandemic positive even, to wear anything other than teeny-tiny crack flossers at any given moment.
The truth is, after all, that short shorts demonstrate nothing if they don’t demonstrate commitment. Where Bermudas and tailored shorts, which end just above the knee, might, on the surface at least, denote good taste and a certain stylistic diffidence, they’re also a bit of a cop-out. Sitting in the same sartorial wheelhouse as pedal pushers and bum-length overcoats, there’s a halfway house-residing laziness in their ease of wear – the clothing equivalent of ordering a Cesar salad with the dressing on the side because you “don’t like anchovies” – which makes them moot. An un-celebrate-able sartorial nothingness which only those who simply do not care would ever care to wear.
Then there’s the fact that I’m a gay man and, as per Levesley’s assertions above, the very idea that I could even consider being anti-short shorts is nothing short of the most egregious form of internalised homophobia and I must therefore simply accept them as my destiny.
And aside from anything else, short shorts are fun. They’re the kind of thing you would only ever wear to somewhere you’re going to have a really good time. You’d pull on some short shorts for a pool party, for instance, or for Piña Colada hour at a beach bar, but you’d be unlikely to wear short shorts to a funeral (unless you were this magazine’s short shorts-loving Fashion Director, Luke Day) and life is not a funeral, people, so, well, be like David Levesley and Luke Day, be less like me and wear more short shorts. You’ll get a better tan too.
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