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  1. Politics
14 May 2013

The animal onesie: the fluffy scourge of Generation Y

Adults, myself included, are regressing to childhood - moving back in with their parents, job-hunting in between porn-viewing sessions and eating bowls of Frosties for dinner. Who could blame us?

By Eleanor Margolis

Even as a ten-year-old, I couldn’t stand fancy dress. One World Book Day, where primary school children dress as their favourite literary characters, I loopholed my way out of wearing a humiliating Harry Potter costume by writing Ellie; a two-page semi-autobiographical novella. I went to school that day dressed as the book’s protagonist: me. The last Halloween costume I wore (2011) was similarly half-arsed. I scribbled the Euro symbol onto a white shirt in permanent marker and told everyone at the party I’d come as failing currency.

But grown-up fancy dress is no longer purely the stuff of stag nights and themed parties. It’s seeping into everyday life with the insidiousness of something truly sinister. I’m referring to the fluffy scourge of Generation Y; the animal onesie.

In recent years, my fellow twenty-somethings have taken to dressing as cuddly fauna. Pandas, giraffes, monkeys, foxes – one-piece suits shaped like all of these critters can be seen covering a young person near you. They wear them everywhere from parties to nights out, to lying comatose on the sofa in front of Deal or No Deal. So ubiquitous is the animal onesie that I wouldn’t look twice if I were stuck behind a human kangaroo at the Sainsbury’s checkout, or fighting for bar space with a set of badgers. In fact, I recently spent a train journey tightly engulfed by a sweaty-crotched tedium of humans dressed as the contents of London Zoo.

As a recent Time cover story reminded everyone, millennials are widely disliked by older generations. They call us lazy, they call us entitled, they call us mollycoddled. The animal onesie brazenly confirms that we are all of these things and more. From Thatcher to Britain’s Got Talent, a great number of socio-economic factors have paved the turd-strewn way for my generation. These various obstacles have resulted in what’s been referred to by many as prolonged adolescence. Adults, myself included, are moving back in with their parents, job-hunting in between porn-viewing sessions and eating bowls of Frosties for dinner. Who could blame us? The graduate job market looks like a recently-flushed toilet. (Yes, yes, I know, but at least if it were un-flushed there’d be something in it). And there’s one bear/rabbit/chicken-shaped item of clothing that so neatly encapsulates the pathos of the situation.

Wearers of animal onesies are resigning themselves to the overgrown child stereotype. This isn’t even prolonged adolescence; it’s prolonged infancy. When a person in his or her twenties puts on a rabbit costume, they’re saying: “I give up.” Nihilists with bunny ears are collectively curling into the foetal position and jamming their thumbs firmly into their mouths. No act could be more submissive, more docile, more supine.

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Admittedly, I’ve flirted with the idea of buying an animal onesie myself. One afternoon in bed, my eyes glued to an episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, while periodically shovelling Haribo Tangfastics down my throat, I thought to myself: “What could make this better?” My conclusion? Being dressed as a giraffe. As my cursor hovered over the “add to basket” icon of an online animal onesie shop, I had an epiphany. It was this: “Margolis, you suck.”

When I nearly bought that animal onesie, I was about to contribute to a generation-dooming stereotype. Not only this, but I also ventured dangerously close to the realm of kookiness. Kookiness – that self-conscious, wide-eyed, nail-biting effort to be “different” and, oh God I hate this word… “quirky”. This brand of cutesy, pseudo self-deprecating, supposed originality touted by the likes of zany (ugh) actress Zooey Deschanel is yet another element of the zeitgeist that badly needs exorcising.

Just consider this: animal onesies are the opposite of funny. They’re so unfunny, in fact, they make me want to stick kebab skewers in my ears. They’re malevolence with a bushy tail. And, for the love of all that’s holy, please stop taking pictures of people in them. They’re not “genius”, they’re grown-ups pretending to be hilarious squirrels in a land where you can pay off your mortgage in fondant fancies. Stop encouraging them.

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