DUNCAN BARKES: Number of grown men in onesies is a worry...

Society can now be divided into two types of people: adults who think it is perfectly acceptable for them to wear a onesie, and those of us that believe that fully-grown men and women sporting this ridiculous garment should be shot on sight.

A tad harsh, perhaps, but this growing phenomenon troubles me deeply.

For the uninitiated, the onesie is a loose fitting all-in-one jumpsuit-styled garment, usually made from fleecy material.

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High-street stores including John Lewis and Marks & Spencer sell various ranges.

I have no problem with children or infants wearing onesies. A romper suit is about right on a two-year-old who has not quite mastered the art of eating without dribbling and who still needs someone to wipe their bottom. Small children and onesies were meant to be.

A fully-grown adult wearing one, especially a man, is downright peculiar.

Why would any self-respecting chap think that wearing a onesie would be a good idea?

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There are pictures circulating on Facebook and Twitter of men I know to be reasonably intelligent; men with responsible jobs and of good character. And yet there they are, wearing their onesies with pride. Several decades ago such behaviour would have seen them banged up in the local home for the bewildered. And quite rightly so.

I understand the need to unwind at the end of the day and slip into something more comfortable, but to regress to toddlerhood is pretty disturbing.

One can only imagine that when ‘Pete’ or ‘Dave’ hang up their suits after work and don their onesies, they are going back to a time when mummy used to wind them after tea and they got a lollipop if they had been good.

Tabloid newspapers used to make a fortune when they published sensational stories about celebrities or officials who paid money to a ‘specialist lady’ for services that included dressing them up as babies and feeding them rusks.

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Now it seems a variation of this behaviour is happening in living rooms up and down the land and nobody is batting an eyelash.

Some defend the onesie, comparing it to the siren suit, a garment that many believed was invented by Winston Churchill and that was often worn throughout the second world war by men ducking into air-raid shelters.

This is nonsense.

There is a big difference between wearing a garment to keep you warm and preserve your modesty as the bombs drop, and slobbing out on a sofa, dressed as a giant baby, watching Eastenders.

The growth of the onesie among adult men is a worry. Next they will be demanding a story before bedtime.