Even without checking the definition of a “crop top” on Google, crop tops are seen as inherently feminine. This thought grinds callously against the central thesis which rules over my cabinet: clothes are fabric used to shield us amply from the elements, and windows for casual observers to peek at who we are. But in a piece of clothing with strict association, I have found comfort in it—a straight guy whose go-to weekend top and must-have piece of running wear is a crop top.
I can reiterate that I adore the crop top look. It survives my two-point central thesis.
Just as a crop top provides ample ventilation in this bloody hot environment which is undoubtedly getting hotter, it gives you a peek at an individual who loves athletics with a bit of a penchant for vintage pieces.
Just as a crop top provides ample ventilation in this bloody hot environment which is undoubtedly getting hotter, it gives you a peek at an individual who loves athletics with a bit of a penchant for vintage pieces.
An intersection of interests in vintage clothing and running culture prompted my willingness to lay a pair of scissors across my old t-shirts. It’s as though a whole universe of ideas was birthed in me the day I saw the “Moth Eaten T-Shirt” made by running wear company Satisfy Running and asked, “If they can put holes in their running shirts, why can’t I crop my band tees?”
I promptly tore my Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt out of my cabinet, set it taut against my bedroom floor, and set my scissors about the bottom of the shirt, sort of accurately cutting across where my stomach would’ve been. Now I’m not talking a Mick-Jagger-up-at-my-nipples sort of crop. Think more Harry Styles on the set of the “Watermelon Sugar” music video.
Let’s call this my neat and tidy, just at my belly-button crop.
Out on a run, it’s breezy—which is saying something because cotton isn’t typically given that descriptor. And atop a squarely cut pair of trousers accented with a heavy leather shoe, the top gains an edginess, as though that small slit of torso skin becomes a walking rebellion against what many would want to call feminine. And most definitely, a rebellion against Google.
After all, Google has it wrong
A number of writers point their fingers at American football as the genesis of the male crop top. Writing for i-D, Tom George describes the roughness of American football leading to ripped jersey fabric, leaving skin exposed while the game goes on. “This accidental exposure,” he writes, “then gave rise to a trend in the early ’80s of players deliberately cutting their jersey tops in order to show off their chiseled bodies.”
Another writer traces the heyday of this deliberate jersey cutting to the period between the early 1980s and mid-1990s, but only pokes guesses at who was first to do it.
I promptly tore my Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt out of my cabinet, set it taut against my bedroom floor, and set my scissors about the bottom of the shirt, sort of accurately cutting across where my stomach would’ve been.
This sort of masculine, athletic crop top genesis finds healthy expression in a suite of movies turned time capsules too. Think of Apollo’s deep blue cropped tank top from 1982’s “Rocky III” beach race, or “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’s” gray cropped Philadelphia 76ers cotton tee.
A still from the beach race scene in “Rocky III” (1982)
For more recent expressions, find Kid Cudi performing at Coachella 2014 in a super breezy heavy-cotton red—I want to call it a “square with holes in it.” This seemed like a nod to Prince’s matching crop top and pants look worn while performing at Wembley Arena in 1986. These two looks make a strong point; they distance themselves from the usual athleticism that’s dangled around the crop top so far in this article.
Hasn’t it begun to sound as though this thin, mangled piece of garment casts an inclusionary ring only around those who consider themselves at least athletically inclined? One of my favorite crop top looks is found in the 1994 comedy “Airheads” where Adam Sandler sports a cropped “MIT” cotton t-shirt bedazzled with the classic bro puka. The look had nothing to do with athleticism but plants an early seed of the edginess, maybe even a sprinkle of unapologetic energy, which I notion remains with the crop top until now.
Will Smith in a still of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” via freshprincesubs.tumblr.com
It wasn’t always about sexuality or necessarily being different
I wager that the crop top found its way onto the torsos of far more men in the ’80s and ’90s than it does now. It doesn’t take a whole bucket of imagination to picture. After all, men were also wearing itsy-bitsy shorts to shoot hoops and growing mullets out the backs of their heads at some point.
It could have been a normal piece of apparel to be at the gym in, or around and about in. Writer Tom George points his finger at the Calvin Klein ads from the ’90s in explaining the surviving misguided nuance crop tops took on. “In the ’90s the image of the top turned more towards fashion and sex,” he writes before pointing another finger at underwear brands like NIKOS which “were marketing the garment in a sexual, sometimes homoerotic, manner presenting models like Greek Gods.”
Whether this exact Calvin Klein ad featuring Kate Moss and Mark Wahlberg actually prompted the public view of crop tops to change will remain unknowable.
What I can relay pointedly, however, is the way I feel when I’m out and about in a crop top. You get an extra look, the occasional roast from a child and their accompanying troupe of friends; you have family and friends that wonder what exactly you’re trying to achieve.
What I can relay pointedly, however, is the way I feel when I’m out and about in a crop top. You get an extra look, the occasional roast from a child and their accompanying troupe of friends; you have family and friends that wonder what exactly you’re trying to achieve. A week prior to the national election, I was out for lunch with friends wearing a bright crop top emblazoned with the name of my chosen presidential candidate.
Be it owing to the candidate I chose or the fact the top was cropped—I got a whole lot of confused looks. People weren’t exactly subtle.
But that’s why I have a thesis
Google offers that a “thesis” is a statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved.
No problems with that definition.
Indeed, I maintain that the clothes I wear must function within the boundaries of my two-pronged thesis—that they serve as a form of protection and are a means to perceive a person. I conclude that only by wearing crop tops unapologetically, for the joy I get from wearing them, for the hint of nostalgia I grasp at as I see myself in reflections off buildings, I prove this thesis true.
This isn’t my case for normalizing anything, but rather it’s my invitation to peek behind the connotations we stack on top of the pieces of material we choose to adorn ourselves with.
This isn’t my case for normalizing anything, but rather it’s my invitation to peek behind the connotations we stack on top of the pieces of material we choose to adorn ourselves with. Not everything is truly feminine, or masuline, or athletic, or punk. Sometimes things just are.
And when I catch non-subtle glances as my crop tops journey above my belly button as my hands are raised in an expression of delight over whatever, you can bet that’s exactly what I’m thinking.
Things just are, so I’ll adorn myself with whatever I bloody want to.
Read more:
A list of ‘Euphoria’ season 2 ‘fits we’d actually wear to school
Why are Gen Zs so into Y2K fashion? Content creators weigh in
It’s time we stopped hating on Crocs
Jaden Smith’s photo from official Twitter @jaden, film still from “Airheads”, and film still from “Magic Mike”