The Pants Stay On

Nine people signed a petition, and the internet treated that like an emergency. Someone named Samantha Scott in the UK opened Change.org on February 6 and decided the crisis in rave culture was Hello Kitty pajama pants, mass-produced sleepwear, she wrote, “not self-expression, it’s laziness.” The line that got screenshotted into every group chat claimed those pants say you got dressed in the dark and called it a fit. I saw the petition before I saw the pants, and that was the part that got me: the moral panic arriving fully formed, ahead of the outfit, like the internet had found a new door to stand at.

EDM.com counted the signatures. Nine of them, sitting there since winter, a tiny choir of disapproval. I asked around. Nobody I know who actually goes out had signed it, posted a door policy about it, or even finished reading past the first paragraph. The fashion police arrived with a Google Form. The chat treated it like a meme for about forty minutes and then went back to sending pins.

I keep thinking about someone last summer in pink drawstrings, a black baby tee, and a lip gloss they reapplied off someone’s phone flashlight. They looked like they lived there, not like they were visiting dance culture on a weekend pass. Half the room was in something you could sleep in: baggy jorts, an oversized tee that had already survived worse nights. Somebody’s older cousin is always waiting to tell you that’s not how it used to look. Fine. It used to look like furry boots and kandi stacked to the elbow and a pacifier you swore was ironic. Wearing cute like armor is not a new idea. You don’t owe a strobe a corset because 2003 had a dress code and somebody still remembers the photograph.

They say “standards” when they mean they don’t like who looks comfortable. “Raves are not sleepovers.” Some of the best nights of my life ended in a kitchen in socks, and the people who made those nights matter were not taking notes on fabric weight. The same kids who used to safety-pin a pacifier to a backpack are tying a bow on the drawstring and walking in anyway. That isn’t a crisis. That’s the culture doing what it always does, absorbing what feels good and ignoring the petition.

Glasgow is throwing a Hello Kitty rave this spring (hardcore, hardstyle, techno), and the flyer tells you to wear the PJs and not get judged. There’s a meet-and-greet with the cat. One petition wants the pants gone. The rooms that actually open are printing the cat on the paper, which is as clear a vote as dance culture ever casts.

If you’re twenty-four in pink drawstrings under a laser, you are not the problem. Wear them. Dance in them. Reapply the lip when the light is bad. Nine people on the internet are not the door, and the door that matters already decided comfort can be a fit.