July 17, 2007 - Right To Bare Arms

Two young women walked into the coffee shop where we were putting together today's Edhat. One was wearing a tank top and shorts. The other was wearing very short cutoffs, a pink, long sleeved, low cut scoop necked t-shirt over a white tee with a not so low cut scoop. She had a gold chain around her neck with the attached charm falling just under the white tee. As she ordered her iced coffee drink with whipped cream, she rolled her hands up into her sleeves. It was a cozy little gesture one might use while snuggling up next to the fireplace on a cold winter night.

We all know that neckties in the middle of July have been much maligned by Peter Pan and friends, but a long-sleeved shirt … or worse, a long sleeved sweatshirt, must clearly be just as bad.

On Monday afternoon, the dedicated staff of edhat.com took a long walk around a small mall. We went to Paseo Nuevo to look at the fashionable crowd dressed up for a day of clothes shopping. By the time we arrived at the mall the sun was high, the clouds had dissipated, and the smoke plumes were off in the north. For those of normal heat sensitivity and metabolism, it was a hot day under the summer sun. It was likewise thus for the policeman we saw writing a traffic ticket under the shade of a tree, standing more than an arm's-length from his squad car.

To shed some light on the matter of heat and sun - the longer your sleeves, the hotter the heat both under your collar and on your forearms. In other words, when it's hot, you wear your hot on your sleeve.

We were at the mall to count the number of women who liked it hot, and wore long sleeved articles of clothing to achieve the effect. For the purpose of our count, we did not distinguish between types of sleeved clothing. So a long sleeved t-shirt and a long sleeved dress counted the same. Likewise, tank tops were counted the same as short-sleeved tees. It was our observation that the long-sleeved crowd was made up of all demographics, shapes, and sizes. And, it was our unproven theory that sleeve length was not a good predictor of pant length. In other words, we didn't see any particular pattern where wearers of long pants wore long sleeves more often than wearers of shorts.

In all, we counted 31% of women wearing long sleeved garments. With nothing up our sleeves, we announce that the winner of the Edhat Contest is Flotsam who guessed 31% on the nose.

After we left the coffee shop we saw two young girls sitting at a bus stop. One was wearing short pants, a tank top and Ugg Boots! We'll guess she was hot.