Weathering Chicago

Baby it's hot outside. So why all the clothing?

As our plane touched down in Chicago’s Midway airport, the national weather service was issuing a heat advisory for the area, expected from Sunday afternoon through Tuesday evening, and possibly longer. Friends from the Windy City who knew my boyfriend and I would be visiting for the seventh quadrennial Gay Games warned us of searing temperatures, which reached around 100 the first day or two of our visit. Having grown up in the mountain West, I was no stranger to high temperatures. But as the saying goes, it’s not the heat--it’s the humidity.

I had never understood that expression before. The first time a high-school friend of mine visited Hawaii he described the experience as stepping off the plane and immediately being hit in the face by a wet wash rag. My own Hawaiian experience (which, granted, was at another time of year) was different. I found the warmth comforting, like the presence of a big, tropical blanket. I acclimated and felt no particular aversion to humidity in general throughout my two-month stay in Hawaii or my several month stay deeper in the South Pacific, in Western Samoa.

Now the tables were turned. The concentrated water vapor in the Chicago air (or, more specifically, Evanston, where we stayed for my partner’s sporting event) was stifling, oppressive. Breathing felt labored and difficult. I was instantly grumpy.

Weather, of course, affects different people in different ways. In fact, I’m starting to think regional reactions to weather may be one of the few ways in which America has not become completely homogenized. Take Seattle, for instance. At the first glimmers of spring sunlight in February, many Seattleites doff their long pants and sleeves and throw on a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt. This despite average temperatures for that month that range from 37 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. “Seattleites are crazy,” was one friend’s explanation.

But no crazier than the behavior I observed in Chicago. During the warmest days, my boyfriend and I peeled off our shirts and walked around the city bare chested. But after several hours, it became apparent to us that this was not a normal Chicago reaction. Most men kept their shirts firmly in place despite the heat. Downtown a few business men strolled through the streets in suits, complete with coat and tie. Sure, this was part of their required work attire. But it was after 6:00 p.m. and these suits didn’t even bother to remove the jacket, unbutton a few shirt buttons, or loosen the necktie.

I had expected to find a little less of this extreme (and, to my mind, irrational) modesty when we visited the gay neighborhood, Boystown. But it was the same story. Of the many hundreds of men walking the street, only one or two besides ourselves were stripped to the waist. This behavior could not be explained as a concern for skin cancer or sunburn, for the sun had dipped behind the skyline during our Boystown stroll. It didn’t make any sense to us, but at least we stood out and got some desirable attention with our extra display of flesh.

Thankfully, some dramatic thunderstorms rolled through the area after a few days, bringing temperatures down to something more tolerable. But the heat wave had lasted long enough to teach us something about the extent of Midwestern modesty, and, perhaps body shame.

A classic, if not particularly funny, joke observes that everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Turns out the joke is about Chicago.