Arnold Zwicky's Blog

This year on the Pride catwalk, it’s shorts and one-piece garments. In stunning show-off colors.

Rainbow shorts. They come in various styles, and the rainbow ones mostly have the flag colors in horizontal stripes, as in these spiffy drawstring shorts designed by illglitterate:

(#1)

But then from the H&M 2019 Pride Collection, these cotton jersey cycling shorts, in two views:

(#2)
(#3)

(Hat tips to Opal Armstrong Zwicky, Karlyn Geis, and Max Meredith Vasilatos.)

All in one piece. First, not designed for Pride, but nevertheless gay-stunning, this hot pink garment described on the web as a onesie, modeled by rock star Freddy Mercury in the 1980s:

(#4)

A wonderful head shot of Mercury, in satisfied repose (in most of his pictures, he’s in action, or at least talking or singing). #4 has been reproduced on many image sites, but without information about the occasion for his picture — I assume he wore it in a concert. (No, I don’t know why two belts, or indeed any belts at all, though a belt does accentuate the masculine V shape of his torso.)

I’ll go on to the lexicography in a moment, but first a Mercury rainbow costume from another performance (fortuitously encountered on the net just now):

(#5) Mercury peacocking (Photo credit; Steven Jennings/Getty Images)

The garment in #4 has been billed as an adult version of the child’s onesie. From NOAD:

(#6) From little faces apparel: Rainbow Baby, a rainbow pregnancy announcement

noun onesie: North American an infant’s one-piece close-fitting lightweight garment, usually having sleeves but leaving the legs uncovered and fastening with snaps at the crotch. ORIGIN 1980s: from Onesies, a proprietary name for a garment of this type.

Well, Mercury’s garment is actually closer to a jumpsuit than to a classic onesie. From Wikipedia:

(#7) A women’s rainbow jumpsuit from the TipsyElves site

A jumpsuit is a one-piece garment with sleeves and legs and typically without integral coverings for feet, hands or head. The original jump suit is the functional one-piece garment used by parachuters.

Finally, the excellent item that originally inspired this posting:

(#8) The Getonfleek gay pride rainbow romper for men (it has a zipper fly)

From NOAD:

noun romper: (usually rompers) [a] a young child’s one-piece outer garment. [b] a one-piece outer garment for adults, typically worn as overalls or as sports clothing: cashmere bodysuits and alpaca-jersey rompers.

Romper Room. My immediate association to the noun romper is from tv. From Wikipedia:

(#9) Miss Lois on KTVI in St. Louis (1962-74)

Romper Room is an American children’s television series that was franchised and syndicated from 1953 to 1994. The program targeted preschoolers (children five years of age or younger), and was created and produced by Bert Claster and his presenter wife, Nancy, of Claster Television. The national version was presented by Nancy Terrell [there were many localized versions]. Romper Room was also franchised internationally at various times in Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Finland, New Zealand and Australia.

romping. The noun romper(s) is a derivative of the verb romp, among the “verbs of playful movement”, a semantic class I looked at a bit in my 6/11/19 posting “Come frolic and cavort in the water”: in that posting,

frolic, cavort, gambol, caper

(to which we can now add romp, and also frisk, prance, skip, (dated) rollick, (dated) sport). Verbs in this class (and their nounings) are inclined to pick up sexual tinges; this is true of the four above, and also of romp.

From NOAD:

verb romp: [no object] [a] (especially of a child or animal) play roughly and energetically: the noisy pack of children romped around the garden. [b] [with adverbial] informal proceed without effort to achieve something: the Vikings romped to victory. [c] informal engage in sexual activity, especially illicitly: a colleague stumbled on the couple romping in an office.

noun romp: [a] a spell of rough, energetic play: a romp in the snow. [b] a lighthearted movie or other work: an enjoyably gross sci-fi romp. [c] informal an easy victory: the 45–28 romp over the Owls yesterday at Alumni Stadium. [d] informal a spell of sexual activity, especially an illicit one: three-in-a-bed sex romps.

Sense c of the verb and d of the noun are the immediately relevant ones, but here’s a nice example of sense b of the noun (especially relevant to Pride Month), in a San Francisco Chronicle piece “‘Boys Will Be Boys’: An over-the-top gay romp” … New Conservatory show, making its West Coast debut, focuses on ‘fabulosity’ of being gay” by Maureen Bogues on 5/27/10:

(#10) (Photo by Lois Tema)

Andrew Nance may just be directing the gayest show ever.

Chock-full of innuendo, Pride flags and plenty of can-do spirit, “Boys Will Be Boys” embraces show-queen stereotypes and sashays right over the top in a campy 90 minutes of song, dance and skits.

Bonus: Rainbow Romps. A name chosen for various playful events of lgbt interest. For instance, the Rainbow Romps, with bands and dancing, sponsored by the Rainbow Service Organization at the Historic Red Dog bar in Peterborough ON:

(#11) Poster for the April 2018 Rainbow Romp

The name certainly conveys the primary sense, a, of the noun romp, but also alludes indirectly to the sexual sense, d.

The scene of the Romps:

(#12)

This entry was posted on June 25, 2019 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Clothing, Fashion, Language of sex, Lexical semantics, Movies and tv, Music, Names, Rainbow clothing, Semantics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.