The Curse of the Legwarmer

For years, women have gone to great lengths in the quest for perfectly toned, slim calves and ankles - hours on the treadmill, dreadful deck-sized portions of chicken breast dinners, myriad nights spent aimlessly doing aerobics in front of the TV (although if you consider thrusting ferociously along with Jane Fonda in her pink leotards value-added, you may want to seek some professional assistance). Some have even founded their careers on great gams and slender ankles - Tina Turner, Jennifer Aniston, Rachel Welch. We’ve even coined a potpourri of terms, most infamously the “cankle”, to express the social dislike for the tree stump-like convergence of the ankle and the calf. [Also see: Summer Sausages, No Ankles Burg, and for the sickest of f*cks, Thankles] And yet, we still find an allure in hoof-ifying our limbs with the legwarmer.

At least with woolly socks there is some balance; the foot is marginally swollen to balance the chunkiness of the calves. Nope, not with legwarmers. These hedonic accessories - because, let’s face it, no one wears them for warmth - are the temporary equivalent of 2 Ding Dongs and a Whopper strapped to your calves. The only time legwarmers are acceptable is if they are worn peeking from the tops of boots, but this brings us to the philosophical debate of, “If it looks like a sock and everyone thinks it’s a sock, then is it still a legwarmer?” To which I answer “No!”, goddammit, and so should you.

The fact is that these legwarmers succeed in only being indecisive. They are not classically chic, nor are they fugly enough - like moo-moos and clunky platforms - to warrant some charm. And to borrow an argument for anti-polygamy activists, if we permit legwarmers, where do we stop? Do we give reason to the Avril Lavigne-friendly armwarmers? How about cleavage warmers? As for the whole warmth thing, I think this is another case of the past having the most fitting solution. They’re called “long johns”. Google it.