By looking at these pictures, you might not think that living in the U.S. is that much different from living in, say, Europe. But happiness seems to run short in the United States nowadays, at least according to the World Happiness Report. Since 2023, the U.S. has been out of the top 20 happiest countries in the world.
It's even worse for young people: if researchers were to measure the happiness of Americans who are 30 and younger, the U.S. wouldn't even place in the top 60. In comparison, the Nordic countries in Europe – Finland, Denmark, and Iceland – took the top three spots, respectively.
In most of these pictures, you will see women for whom the main change after moving to the U.S. was their preferred wardrobe. While that's not a scientific phenomenon by any means, it's still quite a peculiar matter that people online have observed. This isn't the first time someone has observed that Americans prefer casual dress, too.
Fashion historians agree that Americans are perhaps the most casual dressers of all. Deirdre Clemente, an associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who specializes in clothing and fashion, told The Washington Post that the United States "is now associated with casual dress on a global scale."
In the U.S., casual fashion is much more "casual" than, say, in Europe. As Clemente explains, "their version of casual is still a scarf and a stylish leather jacket, whereas ours is a starter jacket and jeans." Although American culture permeates a lot of barriers and has seeped into almost every culture around the world, Americans are still the most casual dressers. "It just never gets as down and dirty as the American version," according to Clemente.
However, that wasn't the case in the past. People would dress up in suits to go to work, and students would go to college classes in suits and ties. Unsurprisingly, most of the people doing both of those things were men, because that was the case up until the 1920s. The rise of the sports coat and pants for women led to people dressing increasingly casually.
For many foreigners, Americans in sweatpants are associated with being sloppy. Clemente disagrees that casual dress is about laziness. As a fashion historian, she views it as people exercising their freedom to express themselves through dress. "We dress more casually because we can," she argues.
"In American culture perennial appearance has become an expression of individuality and not social class to the degree that dressing up is dressing up the socioeconomic ladder. I think that we dress more casually because it's a middle ground for Americans," Clemente explains.
It's not just high school classrooms, college campuses, and grocery stores where people show up in sweatpants and hoodies. Many workplaces have ditched dress codes and allow employees to wear casual clothes. In Silicon Valley, for example, it's now supremely uncool to show up in business casual. Just think of Steve Jobs's iconic black turtleneck and blue jeans – long gone are the days when even CEOs had to dress in suits and ties. T-shirts, sweatshirts, and jeans are the new business casual.
