Thursday 18 February 2010

By all means, aim high. Just dress the part.

I'm just gonna come right out and say it: I don't like sports. And I really don't get why people watch them. Every now and then if there's nothing to watch on TV — and when I say nothing, I mean no Simpsons, no Jeopardy, no Seinfeld or Friends reruns, and the Food Network is running a Giada De Laurentiis show — I may stop for a few minutes on, say, a tennis tournament or a Formula 1 race. But that's only under extreme duress. And don't even talk to me about soccer. My father's burning passion for the sport has completely soured me on it. I remember as a child waking on Sunday mornings to find him in the family room watching one soccer game on TV and listening to another on his transistor radio. I firmly believe that if my father were forced to choose between his children and a soccer match in a Sophie's Choice kind of situation his knee-jerk response would be "Who's playing?"

I've tried to relate to the sports lover's high, but I simply cannot comprehend how a goal or a match point or a touchdown can elicit the same ecstasy as scoring Lanvin pumps at 65 percent off. Where's the personal satisfaction in a win that had nothing to do with you?

I don't really watch the Olympics either, which is a statement that often results in scowls and gasps from my friends and family. Just because it's on an international stage, it doesn't mean the sports are any less sporty. I'm proud of our fine Canadian athletes and I rejoice when someone far younger and more disciplined than me brings home a gold. But I won't lie, when watching an Olympic event, I'm usually more fixated on the better looking competitor and the snazzier outfit. Which brings me to a question that's been on my mind for days: was Seth Wescott, the American snowboarder who won the gold in snowboard cross, wearing ripped jeans? Or were they pants designed to resemble ripped jeans? Because if it's the former, I'm gonna need to step in.

Wearing jeans to the Olympics is like wearing Chanel to a Dior show. It's disrespectful. From their beginnings in the 8th century BC, the Olympic Games have stood for precision, excellence and cleanliness. Why do you think torch bearers to this day still wear white? Those Greeks are a fastidious people! I doubt Ancient Greece ever saw a rogue runner in a plaid toga or a chariot with graffiti scrawled on its side. So Wescott shouldn't sully the good name of European sartorialism with ripped jeans. Oh sure, snowboarding is an x-treme sport and snowboarders by extension are X-TREME, dude! They thumb their noses at conventional skiers in tight pants and Jean Claude Killy sweaters by wearing their clothes as big and baggy as possible. Unkempt and slack-jawed, they amble up to the chairlift with one boot strapped onto their board and the other dragging them along in a sloppy, simian fashion. It's not what one would call graceful. 

My cousins and I used to make fun of people in jeans on the slopes when we were younger. We called them yetties. I don't know why. But they were usually beginner skiers who after a couple of runs on the bunny hill would hit the steeper slopes and barrel down in a semi-snowplow all the while yelling a raucous "yahoo!" as warning of their unstoppable approach. There was something so local-yokel about their baggy, high-waisted 501s tucked into a pair of rental boots. As far as I'm concerned, artfully distressed and fashionably slim though Wescott's jeans may have been, he still looks like a yettie to me.

Of course, if he was in fact wearing pants made to look like jeans, then...well...congratulations, dude. That's, like, x-tremely cool.  

1 comment:

  1. you scored Lanvin pumps at 65% off? May I say miss Racco I totally share your thoughts on sport- except of course when Manchester United is playing, oh and last year when I took my old shirt to Cannes with me and wangled my way into supper with Eric Cantona to get him to sign it, but it was an Armani supper which counts for something n'est ce pas?
    The answer to the all important jeans question lies here: http://allday.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/02/16/2203454.aspx

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