stop the madness: where rompers can go and why

Romper. It's a word that conjures a veritable steaming cauldron of thoughts, emotions, and vitriol. Is the romper the next great piece of clothing? Is it better off left to those who traditionally have worn it (i.e., babies)? Is it the most hideous thing on the face of this planet? Is it flirty or foul? Cute or crap? Summery or scurrilous?

As a (self-proclaimed) fashion blogger, I cannot in good conscience refrain from comment. I refuse to sit back, sit on the fence, or sit anywhere wearing a romper. I am 100% on the against side in the Great Romper Debate.

Rompers have one big plus going for them that should, by all rights, thrill me. Speaking as someone who most often gets "what do you look so nice for?" comments on days I'm too lazy to put jeans on, I honestly do want to jump all over what is basically a grown-up onesie. I would wear footie pajamas if I could find awesome enough ones (the day that my Beauty and the Beast ones didn't fit any longer was a dark one indeed); I have no problems with getting pre-K up in here. The problem I have is that any ease of wear bonus is eliminated by the issues of wearing just one piece: fit.

I wear a lot of dresses. It's one piece, easy enough to put on, and most importantly, easy to fit (at least in the styles I like). A romper is a top and pants all in one, and the odds of both fitting properly? Slim to none. Now, the fashion industry (particularly the Pants Division) has done its level best to convince me I'm some sort of horribly misshapen beast, but though that very well may be true, friends of all shapes, sizes, and distributions have reported the same: the majority of stuff doesn't fit. I don't know what that one mysterious body type everyone is designing clothes to fit is--my research has shown it's not fat, thin, average, rounded, square, big hips, small hips, no hips, or any discernible combination of the above--but if you have it, congratulations! Feel free to buy anything you like without trying on every pair of pants in the store in three different sizes hoping to find one pair that doesn't look terrible. But for the rest of us, rompers represent that horrible sinking feeling. Allow me to provide an beautiful and instructional illustration:


Art by me.

I tried on a romper for, what else, the lulz and blogging fodder last time I went shopping. These are truths: it was baggy on top, giving the impression my chest had deflated, and tighter than a good pair of Spanx on the bottom, causing both thigh-bulge and stretching across anything in my general abdominal area I might not want accentuated. In short, it was the worst pair of shorts and most unflattering tanktop I ever tried on HYBRIDIZED like a multiheaded hydra of fashion horror.

Secondly...they're just silly, okay? I like to have a touch of silly in everything, be it my beloved computer key earrings or a bottle-cap necklace with Neil Patrick Harris' smiling face inside or a Threadless t-shirt. But rompers are woven from silly as surely as the tapestry of fate is woven from the individual threads of our destiny. You can't take someone wearing a romper seriously. If someone wearing a romper tried to give me advice or directions or something, I would say "Go back to California, Katy Perry, and take your whipped cream with you." And that's the truth.

How do you feel about rompers? What piece of fashion makes you go off on enraged semi-coherent tangents, as rompers obviously do to me?