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It’s a tale as old as time. You spend ages deciding on the perfect outfit, and just as you step outside the house, your parents stop you.
They ask you if you’re crazy, and thrust the ugliest jacket you’ve ever seen into your hands. “Wear it,” they say, because apparently the temperature is below freezing. You think they’re crazy.
Except now, in Evanston, with snow on the ground and wind chill cutting like a dagger, the nagging voice isn’t telling you to wear a coat. It’s an anonymous user on college forum apps like Fizz telling you you’re crazy for wearing a coat in 50 degree weather — “Move back to Florida,” they say. When deciding on a coat to wear, should we be paying more attention to our weather app, or the people we see walking outside our windows?
Is it cool to be cold?
Grace Jordan-Weinstein is one of the editors-in-chief of STITCH, Northwestern’s fashion magazine.
GRACE JORDAN-WEINSTEIN: I just wanna stay warm, like that’s all I want. About style, like, obviously I prefer a lot of my jackets that aren’t, like, my heavy duty long winter jacket, but sometimes it kind of feels like it’s the best option.
The Medill junior is from Philadelphia, so she’s no stranger to the cold.
JORDAN-WEINSTEIN: I’d say I’m used to it, definitely not this. You think it’s cold, but like you can’t actually conceive of how cold it is. I feel like I’m with the status quo of temperatures, temperature dressing. I probably bundle up a little bit more than people from, you know, the Midwest or maybe less than people from California.
But she loves to see people get creative with their cold-weather outfits.
JORDAN-WEINSTEIN: Early fall is kind of peak self-expression, you can show off an outfit and show off a cool jacket. But it’s getting pretty cold out now and I feel like you just buy the warmest available jacket, which is typically not very exciting looking. It’s kind of a sea of big black parkas. When I see people with, you know, bright colored jackets or, you know, like responsibly thrifted vintage fur jackets or something like that’s really, it’s really exciting. I feel like it’s very fun to have little pops of color.
Including some outfits that have definitely surprised her.
JORDAN-WEINSTEIN: Specifically shorts and a t-shirt. I remember last year, you know, like dining hall life seeing boys just like show up in shorts like no matter the temperature. It’s just mind boggling to me. They did not look like they were in pain at all, they looked perfectly comfortable, but I know that I would not be having fun if that’s the outfit I put on.
Seeing someone wearing shorts while you’re wearing seven different layers is a jarring, but surprisingly common, experience. As one Fizz user wrote, “No matter how cold it is, there’ll always be a man in shorts.”
The idea of dressing inadequately for cold weather can be associated with coolness, especially among teenagers. A 2023 article from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interviewed teenagers about the coats they choose to wear — or not wear.
One teenager interviewed said style should be prioritized over warmth. “If you look good, you feel good, even if you’re freezing,” she said. She shared that she didn’t “want to look like a snowman.”
The article also suggested such decision-making could be caused by under-developed prefrontal cortexes, which only fully mature at age 25.
But don’t be so quick to judge. The men in shorts don’t necessarily think they’re cooler than you. They may just be going for a run. That’s why Weinberg grad student Nick Zosel is wearing shorts in sub-freezing temperatures.
NICK ZOSEL: I’m going for a run and so I do have very warm clothes inside. However, for my running clothes, I dress a little bit cooler.
As a grad student, Zosel says he doesn’t feel the need to dress cooler than what the weather demands.
ZOSEL: I think I have a different set of experiences being a grad student versus like an undergraduate student as far as peer pressure goes.
He, like Jordan-Weinstein, dresses for comfort.
ZOSEL: The cold doesn’t really bother me. So usually I’m just trying to think like, OK, what’s the most comfortable and what’s going to keep me cool when I get way too warm.
According to researchers in Germany, the first usage of clothing was for warmth. But clothes have also long been indicators for culture, class, and group affiliations. The clothes we wear carry baggage, allowing people to make snap-judgements about ourselves. What are the sociological mechanisms that determine the clothes and coats we wear?
YI MING NG: Descriptive norms is like, it’s based on the actual proportion of people doing it, like you see many people are doing it, therefore we should be doing it simply because of the prevalence.
That’s Yi Ming Ng, a PhD student studying sociology at Northwestern.
NG: Prescriptive norms is more normative. And what that means is that it’s something you’re supposed to do. We are not supposed to wear thick jackets when it’s like in the middle of fall.
These norms are what make us, subconsciously, conform to external standards for what coat to wear. But Ng hasn’t been as affected by such norms. Ng is from Singapore, where he says the weather is above 90 degrees Fahrenheit all year long.
NG: When I moved here, you could say that I wasn’t socialized into the norms, right? Like the pressures around like, you know, winter clothing, fall clothing. So for me it’s very much driven by utility.
As a PhD student, he and his friends don’t have as many conversations about fashion norms. But he understands why younger students may feel the need to fit into these norms.
NG: I presume college students, you talk about, you know, you look at people and talk about their fashion style, but yeah, my personal level, I don’t get any of this feedback. So there isn’t any diffusion of like norms or like any penalties that happens.
I don’t really observe what people are wearing, nor has anyone told me I shouldn’t be wearing a jacket.
So when you’re deciding on what coat to wear, keep in mind — it’s not that cool to be cold.
For WNUR News, I’m Supriya Akella.
