FASHION OR WHATEVER: Blankets of laziness keep us warm with ridiculous trends

I wish I had invented the Snuggie.

It’s not because I’m mental or anything, because a wearable blanket does sound pretty ridiculous. It’s because everyone and their mother and their mother’s mother seems to own a Snuggie, and if I had invented the backward robe, I’d be making bank right now.

The wearable blanket industry has capitalized on those whose hobbies include sitting, couch warming and sprawling. I’ve seen Snuggies wrapped around Bruins in the dorm lounges as they study for chemistry or some other South Campus nightmare.

First-year biochemistry student Joanna Martinez said that she thinks Snuggies are useful for keeping warm when it’s occasionally cold in Los Angeles. There is no arguing that those who are fans of being toasty and curling up with a cup of hot beverage are buying Snuggies by the load.

And it makes sense that the concept behind the wearable blanket was conceived by a college freshman. According to a February 2009 New York Times article by Andrew Adam Newman, the wearable blanket trend began in 1998 when Gary Clegg, then a first-year student at the University of Maine, cut a hole in his sleeping bag so he could use his television remote control. Then he told his mother to sew a sleeve on it for maximum warmth, which became the Slanket, the self-proclaimed original blanket with sleeves. Then the Snuggie came along and outsold the Slanket, and the rest is history.

But that’s not the end of it. What I didn’t expect to find on a recent excursion to the local Urban Outfitters in Westwood was a book titled “The Snuggie Sutra,” featuring all sorts of positions sexual and flexible.

Involving Snuggies.

Now it makes so much sense why college students are into Snuggies.
Megan Morrison, one of the co-authors of “The Snuggie Sutra,” is a staunch advocate of the wearable blanket, which provided an impetus for the book.

“Someone brought up my irrational love for Snuggies, and there I was trying in vain to defend them. Without much to go on, I did what any logical person trying to win an argument would do ““ add some sex to the equation. Before I knew it, I was miming positions you could perform in a blanket with sleeves. I had a vision, and I knew I had to share it with the world,” Morrison said.

And then comes the list of blanketwear that have caught onto the Snuggie wave, including the appropriately titled Forever Lazy. What makes me filled with all sorts of perplexity about the sheer laziness of the Forever Lazy is one of its most defining features, which is a zipper hatch in front and back for number ones and number twos, respectively.

I must applaud the Forever Lazy’s unapologetic honesty about the fact that it caters to laziness. But if it takes too much work to literally pull down your pants and use the restroom, there seems to be something more indicative of the all-time slothfulness of the average American person.

But I myself am not entirely removed from this trend of blanket fashion, since I have bought Snuggies as gifts for people who I think would totally use Snuggies. But I think I’ll lay off the Forever Lazy trend for now, because you never know if that zipper will get stuck at the wrong time someday.

What are your favorite activities to do while wearing blankets? E-mail Jue at [email protected]