Girls wear less clothing in summer, colleague reports

In what really could have developed into a conversation about anything else, a co-worker today argued that girls wear fewer articles of clothing in warm weather, and felt confident enough in this claim to prosecute an open-ended commentary on the phenomenon and its implications.

"It's cos they can't stand the heat!" he said.

The basic argument went as follows: If you think of clothing as something that covers the skin; and skin, or at least its "underneath part," clocks in around 98.6 degrees; then as the ambient temperature of Philadelphia rises, so too does the willingness of "females" to discard needless accoutrements, like "bras" and "drawers," because they are "already so hot on the inside."

This in turn informed the speaker's preference for warm-to-hot weather because -- unlike some of his Muslim neighbors -- he'd rather observe for himself what clothing might otherwise conceal.

"I don't care what they say about global warming. Give me the heat!" he editorialized.

Whether or not the conversation, an elaborate restatement of something I had clearly taken for granted, can be counted as a constructive use of time is a question best weighed against the total amount of time wasted at work while considering it.