as somebody who used to be a boy that wore shorts all winter (and who is now neither of those things) i thought this article was really sweet and not as condescending as other people here have taken it to be wearing clothes that don't match the cold is one of few the times boys encounter the "you can't go out like that!" argument with your parents - wearing shoes when there's snow on the ground, shorts in the winter, no hat, no gloves, no scarf - i had all those arguments. it started as me genuinely not being cold, or when i knew i would be inside for most of the day anyway re:kleinbl00's point, but as soon as my parents got on my ass about it it morphed into a rebellion thing ('i know what I'm doing, stop treating me like an idiot'-type beat). there's a bit of evidence out there to say men and women have different cold tolerances and anecdotally i can say that my hands and feet get much colder now than they used to before i transitioned, but i think a big part of it is age and weight - i was a chubby kid and i used to run around and roll in the snow like it was nothing so there are too many confounding factors to really draw any conclusion
As someone who has seen any number of incredulous comments and stares leveled at girls wearing miniskirts and boots in subzero weather, there's definitely a need among the hoi polloi to rag on everyone's fashion, no matter what that fashion (or lack of fashion) may be. Take pockets: women bitch that they don't get enough, then bitch at men when they have too many. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Fashion Principle: the ideal number of pockets is n plus or minus some number that as soon as it has been expressed will be either too many or two few, the error unknown until n has been expressed. My parents never gave the first fuck what I wore, other than making me feel bad for needing new clothing when I outgrew it. So it sure wasn't rebellion for me; I basically switched from jeans and boots to cutoffs and Tevas and vice versa at Memorial Day/Labor Day because then people leave you the fuck alone.