Much like “is a hot dog a sandwich” or “does not liking Taylor Swift mean you hate women” (no and no), “sundress season” is one of those things that sparks perennial debate on the internet. The term entered the popular imagination in 2010, when an episode of How I Met Your Mother had Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) extolling the virtues of the garment. “The sundresses, Ted! I don’t think I can make it another eight months with no sundresses,” he says, then poses a riddle: “What piece of women’s attire most stokes a man’s desire?” “What lightweight outfit, pink or white, makes the front of my slacks abnormally tight?” The answer, of course, is the sundress, which has claimed cult status among horny straight men ever since and still, more than a decade later, manages to drive online debate.
“When you realize it’s almost sundress season,” reads the caption of one viral TikTok of a man smiling in the grass and listening to Natasha Bedingfield’s “Pocketful of Sunshine.” “If you’re a lady watching this, do your man a favor and buy ‘em all,” said another. But like, what is a sundress? In mid-April, Jacqueline Ryan, a 24-year-old in Baltimore, posed the question to her TikTok following.
“I see all these videos of men saying how much they love sundresses,” she said, “What is a sundress? I own every dress. Which one is the sun one?” The video ended up getting more than 9 million views, but even after thousands of comments, no one c.