Fashion police
Published Apr 18, 2026 12:05 am
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Updated Apr 17, 2026 06:22 pm
MEDIUM RARE
Hot days call for cool looks. So what’s wrong with going topless?
Nothing wrong as long as the topless person — a guy, I imagine — stays home, indoors. Not everyone who goes topless is a pleasing sight. On the other hand, a three-piece suit complete with jacket and necktie looks not only incongruous on a guy but out of place (and out of his mind?) when the ground temperature outside his airconditioned office hovers between 39 and 40 degrees Celsius.
Once upon a time decades ago, when a similar problem of accessing petroleum from a finite source reared its ugly head, I remember the secretary of Energy showing up for work every day in a short-sleeved, lightweight cotton shirt, not for him the jacket with silk lining and padded shoulders. He then decreed that as in his department and other like-minded departments of the government, the rule was to keep the aircon at 26 degrees and no less. You chill or sweat together or you stay out.
On the other hand, it’s a crime to insist that policemen go to work in the same uniform during the dry and wet seasons. How about a summer uniform for them during the extremely hot months of March and April? Their long pants could be shortened to a snappy Bermuda length and they would remain as efficient and effective as ever. The wives who wash their clothes would only be too glad to save on soap and water and drying time on the clothesline.
Bermuda shorts on cops? Why not?
Our streetsweeper, who goes to work even before the sun has time to rise in the east, wears no uniform but she is faithful to her job and to us, her “clients” whom she serves with a smile once you start a conversation with her.
But the work is getting harder, she says, as more and more cars are being parked overnight on our street, which the office of the barangay captain has classified as a Mabuhay lane. Repeat, “no parking, day or night” — nor does it help that once or twice the barangay captain has announced the prohibition on a loudspeaker as he cruised our subdivision. Maybe he should get himself and our barangay a tow truck.