Sorry Paul Mescal, but shorts are for kids and slobs

Look at any Hollywood red carpet these days, and you’ll see them valiantly on display: men’s legs. Thighs bulging like pink cold-packed gammon; red kneecaps grinding tectonically; inky tendrils curling all the way down like cobwebs on a ghost gum. And this is just Paul Mescal’s legs I’m talking about.

Pedro Pascal has done it. And Jacob Elordi. Wicked star Jonathan Bailey, too. In the northern hemisphere, 2024 marked the “summer of the slutty shorts”, where short-shorts became acceptable – fashionably forward, even – evening wear for grown-ass men. As someone who wears jeans to the beach, I don’t like this.

As far as summer trends go, Paul Mescal’s shorts must die.Credit: Sydney Morning Herald

This is not a tirade against men’s legs. Some people like men’s legs. UFC fans, for example. Suffragettes fought valiantly for Paul Mescal’s right to playfully unsheathe his thighs. Rather, this is a tirade in defence of aesthetics and standards. Sorry, but shorts are for kids and slobs – Adam Sandler, obviously, excepted – and you can’t convince me otherwise.

“Mate, what about the hot weather?” you’re probably thinking, as you glance down at your Hard Yakkas (or whatever) and question your life choices. Please, weather is no excuse. As if that barely perceptible summer breeze bouncing along your shins is reducing your internal body temperature. Fan yourself with a street pamphlet, have an iced matcha: there are other ways to stay cool beyond removing your pants.

Also, if weather defines all your wardrobe choices, then we’re in more trouble than I imagined. I thought the greatest danger from climate change was a burning planet, but turns out we’ll also have to navigate a near-future where men publicly walk around in just their underpants yelling, “What? It’s hot!”

Like most horrible things, the blame lies with the military and/or sports. It was during WWII, when colonialist soldiers were serving in tropical locales, that shorts first became popularised beyond schoolboys. I don’t know about you but, as a pacifist, I can’t endorse the efficiency of wartime killing machines. Shorts? More like “killing pants”.

Rene Lacoste, perfectly dressed for sport.Credit: AP

And while Paul Mescal has even traced back his trend-setting fancy shorts to his longtime fondness for wearing “rugby shorts”, there once was a wonderful time when sports clothing was slick rather than merely functional. In the 1920s, a tennis star like Rene Lacoste would hit balletic drop shots in a tucked-in polo, slacks with a belt, a hat, and dress shoes. These days, you see rugby league players getting their dirty shorts dakked 15 times a game. You call this progress?

Along with red carpets, we should make sports beautiful again – and that means losing shorts. Imagine Devin Booker or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, NBA stars and off-court fashionistas, crossing over opponents in baggy denim and fur coats. Or Spanish footballer, and menswear aficionado, Hector Bellerin slide-tackling a striker in a wide-legged suit pant and suede loafers. Let’s go all the way back to the beginning of professional sports and revive the knickerbocker, and put the leg back where it belongs: inside pants.

Years ago, as I was enjoying a solitary mid-afternoon dip at Nice’s Plage Publique De l’Opéra, a glamorous French couple, straight out of Jacques Demy’s Bay of Angels, took a spot in front of me. Dressed like the stars of a perfume ad, they proceeded to remove their evening wear – he, a three-piece suit; she, a black cocktail dress with matching stilettos – to, weirdly, reveal swimsuits underneath. They went and splashed in the water for 20 minutes or so, returned to shore to air-dry like delicate laundry, and promptly got back into their evening wear. Then they walked off into the sunset, arm-in-arm, probably to drink pastis and listen to bebop.

This is the world I want to live in, where jeans at the beach is perfectly appropriate day wear and I don’t spend all summer being side-eyed like a crazy. And it’s for this reason that Paul Mescal’s shorts must die.

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