You know what confuses me? Sweatshirts.

You know what confuses me even more? The fact that almost everyone else I meet seems to inexplicably love them.

“I can’t survive without sweatshirts,” gushes basically everyone.

From my point of view, sweatshirts are useless pieces of clothing. They’re alternatively baggy and tight in all the wrong areas, they’re impossible to pair successfully with anything other than skinny jeans and leggings and they don’t provide any utilitarian benefits that can’t be replicated by a sweater or coat. I remember days I’ve worn sweatshirts to school as some of my most awkward and disconcerting sartorial experiences.

Recently, as the weather has gotten colder and more students choose sweatshirts to combat the cold, I decided that it was time to plumb the depths of my psyche and get to the bottom of this. What is it that makes sweatshirts uncomfortable for me?

I realized, I feel uncomfortable because of how I perceive myself in sweatshirts. As far as I can tell after a few days of introspection, I dislike sweatshirts because I dislike what I see in the mirror when I wear them.

I’m not sure if it stems from my own personal preferences, societal standards of beauty or deeper-rooted body issues, but wearing sweatshirts, even in the privacy of my own home, evokes feelings of self-consciousness. I’ve always lived on a philosophy of “dress well, feel well,” but after coming to the conclusion that my happiness is profoundly influenced by my self-image, I started to doubt the healthiness of this attitude.

But just when I was starting to doubt all of my life decisions, I remembered something else. Whenever I would read blog posts defending casual clothing, the authors usually responded with something along the lines of, “I don’t want to dress how society endorses women to dress.” And I, even though I didn’t understand their decisions, accepted them.

How is dressing a certain way because of society any different than not dressing a certain way because of society? Choosing to wear something expressly because other’s don’t is just another form of conformity.  If I can accept others choosing their clothes to counter society’s expectations, I can accept myself choosing clothes to meet them.

No matter what the reason, the fact remains that I am happier without sweatshirts. If I am the most comfortable in cardigans and heels, no one, not even my own, feminist self, should tell me to change.

So I’ll end with an open letter to sweatshirts: I appreciate all you do to keep Harker students warm and to protect my friends from the elements. But for my part, I’ll be sticking to my trench coat.