Short Shorts in Halifax

For people who live in a touristy beachfront town in Mexico like Playa del Carmen, where it’s common to see people in all places hardly wearing anything at all, it’s difficult to find a place where they can be surprised by the revealing clothing.  This is the case for me and my wife, but on a recent visit to Halifax, we were, indeed, surprised by the shortness of the shorts that women were wearing there.

About two weeks go, my wife and I were parked at Tim Horton’s in Halifax (a very popular doughnut shop chain in Canada) for her to use the washroom.  Just before she came back out to the car, a group of young women walked out of the doughnut shop; I couldn’t help but to notice how incredibly short their shorts were.

When my wife got into the car, she looked over at me and asked, “Did you see those girls?”  She had also noticed.  I don’t suppose too many people – male or female – couldn’t notice.

As we were driving, we came to several conclusions:

• This was not an isolated incident; short shorts are much more common – and shorter - in Halifax than any other place we’d been recently. Out of pure curiosity my wife and I counted as we drove down the street and it seemed that half of all the young women were wearing these really short shorts.
  
• Coming out of Mennonite country, this sight was probably surprising because of its sharp contrast. But …
  
• even in less “modest” parts of Ontario (like Toronto) we were sure we hadn’t seen this many short shorts.  My brother said it was because Halifax is a university town.  But Waterloo is even more of a university town, and I can’t recall seeing ANY short shorts there; I visit the city once a week on average, usually driving right through the university district.
  
• The most important fact is that for the past few years we were living in Playa del Carmen, on a Mexican beach where “modesty” is not an idea that really factors into clothing styles.  Sure, on the beach women wear bikinis, and off the beach clothing is often fairly scanty, I don’t recall seeing shorts as short as the ones in Halifax, or in that frequency.  While you can easily predict the shock of a couple coming out of Mennonite country, clothing really does have to be revealing to shock people coming from a touristy beach town like Playa del Carmen.

I don’t why, but Halifax seems to have a trend towards really short shorts.  The weather most certainly doesn’t justify it; Halifax was no longer hot at this time, and the evenings were actually getting cool, at least by our standards. We’re not sure how they managed not to feel cold.