Why Do We Wear Clothes?

<p>Have you ever been threading one leg through a pair of pants in the morning and wondered…why do we wear pants anyway? Or wondered why pockets in clothing designed for girls are sometimes smaller than the pockets in clothing designed for boys? In this episode we’ll tackle your questions about clothes with fashion historian and writer <a href="https://www.amberbutchart.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Amber Butchart</a>.</p> <p><strong>Download our learning guides: <a href="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/82/a7/699538a441c38bb2bba0216e45a5/why-do-we-wear-clothes.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">PDF</a> | <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11Mb9vWWLdis-ROKfJNUzgJkSag6XOQByODL7Szu6_tc/copy" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Google Slides</a> | <a href="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/8d/91/d88e690942979346f7cff1735530/but-why-kids-159-fashion-transcript.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Transcript</a></strong></p> <blockquote> <p><br> “Why do we have to wear clothes?” - Bhakti, 9, Australia</p> </blockquote> <p>Many people think we started to wear clothes for practical reasons of warmth and protection.</p> <p>“We don’t have fur like other animals, so when modern humans started moving into colder parts of the world, we needed to protect ourselves somehow if it’s cold and snowy. This is one answer, that we wear clothes for protection,” said Amber Butchart. Butchart is a dress historian, author and broadcaster. She studies how the clothes we wear are connected to where we live and what kind of culture we grow up in, and what time period we’re growing up and living in.</p> <p>Butchart says, while the protection theory explains why we have to wear something—to cover our skin from the elements, there are a lot of other answers that help explain the style of clothes we wear, or don’t wear. These have to do with culture and society, and ideas about modesty as well. In this case modesty means what’s considered proper, broadly accepted as not being too wild or “out there.” A lot of how we dress comes dow