“That shirt makes your armpits look great.”

In seventh grade I subscribed to the ‘tight tank top under loose tank top’ style made possible by The Gap and several trend-setting pre-teens.  In fifth grade I embraced the gloriousness of hypercolor fabric with a classy tank that changed from blue to pink during the hotness of kickball at recess.  I got out of the habit of wearing any sort of tank throughout high school and college because my swimming-enhanced shoulders advised against it, but I generally think tank tops on women work just fine.  To all men everywhere: I never need to see your armpits.

Armpit shirts are going off this summer in Holland. Going off! Every teenage boy and a large hunk of men are wearing t-shirts with the sleeves cut off and the armpit holes enhanced so that they start at the shoulder and end at the bottom of the ribcage.  “Dude, your pits look sweet in those holes.” “Dude.”

The armpit shirts in Holland don't even come with muscles.

Armpits aside, I’ve now lived in Holland, Michigan for a year.  Yesterday, on July 3rd, I attended my first repeat event in the Midwest: July 4th.  When Sunday belongs to the Church in your town, you make the necessary adjustments. July 3rd has a nice ring to it too.  “Yay, we’re almost independent!”

It’s probably time to admit that this isn’t my first time in the Midwest.  During the summer of 2003 I lived in Minneapolis, MN for 40 days and 40 nights. I was doing a geology project making giant plaster models of river channels and measuring how they eroded as water flowed through them.

It was oppressively hot that summer in Minnehaha (the locals will know it), and I needed to take desparate measures.  I spent my time in clothing coated in plaster, but underneath my clothes, I was covered in powder, by choice.  With each step I took, a poof of white dust emanated from every angle of my body.

I didn’t care that I was a walking chalkboard eraser. I needed to douse myself in powder every day in order to ward off the heat and humidity of the Midwest.  Powder? If you have to ask, you’ll never know. Sidenote: I’ve been waiting to use that phrase ever since it was the theme of my high school yearbook freshman year.  Each morning I would arrive at work with my right hand covered in hot coffee and my body drenched in Minnesota heat.  I had a shared office, and by getting into it first each morning, I was able to dump powder down my clothes and then stand in front of our fan for 10 minutes while coaxing my core temperature down ten degrees.  Inevitably, the fan blew the powder all around the room, and my office-mate always commented on the persistent white fog, but I had the cover story of my plaster experiments.

It’s been seven years since my biblical stay in our neighbor to the Northwest, and here I am again in a Midwestern summer. I’m really hot.  I don’t know if anyone noticed the white dust under my chair at work last week.

Do armpit shirts count as business casual?