Social media will tell you that all millennials dress one way to work out, while gen Z dresses another. The truth is more complex and far more interesting
Around me, a group of women in skintight gym sets are side planking. Some are wearing full-coverage unitards, others leave slices of midriff bare. No one is wearing a baggy T-shirt from 2008 with a naked Rufus Wainwright on it, and hardened flecks of damp-proof paint. Except me.
If TikTok is to be believed, my gym-mates must be millennials, born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s; gen Z would find such skin-tightness a bit retro, or basic, or even “jurassic fitness”. Another generational schism has opened online – to add to socks, jeans and boundaries – this time over what millennials and gen Z are wearing to work out in. Tight-on-tight outfits supposedly single you out as a millennial – it is “giving middle school”, said one gen Z user witheringly – while gen Z prefers something baggier. Looking around me at pilates and in the park, though, I suspect some of the women wearing a second, seal-like skin are younger than 30. And here I am, days after turning 40 – squarely a millennial – wearing an enormous T-shirt. It is a muddled picture.
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