Euphemistically Speaking

January 6, 2025

Thr word “gown” is often used to add social class or prestige to a basically simple low class, sometimes undesirable object like a dress. “ Night dress” becomes “night gown”, “wedding dress” becomes an excitng event while a “ball dress “ lacks a certain romantic flair until you float acrosss the dance floor in your “ball gown.” Even men have joined the parade, wearing a “dressing gown” of Jacquard silk and a fringed sash instead of a “bathrobe.”

And so I come to my latest life experience, the hospital, where I am instructed to strip to my birthday suit and helped into a ”gown”. What? Who invented this? A garment made of paper, vaguely cut into the shape of a shirt (two arm holes and a neck) and designed not “one size fits all“ like a hat or slippers but instead fits NO ONE Not only does it not add to alleviate the humiliation of the occasion it simply adds to the gloom. Couldn’t we call it something else? The hospital cover up? Your temporary pajamas? Life can be improved in the simplest of ways.