Here's What Happened When I Pulled a Rihanna and Only Wore Bathrobes For a Week

It's 11:30 p.m. on the Sunday before I start the Great Bathleisure Experiment of 2017. My roommate watches as I pair this J.Crew Flannel Robe ($89) with some slippers. "You look like a mom from the '90s going out to check the mailbox," she says.

I don't know exactly what that means, but it doesn't sound like something Rihanna would be into. To glam things up, I decide to pick a theme inspired by the robe's checkered pattern: Western-wear. I pair the robe with a Stetson Rockway Wide-Brim Fedora ($110) and decade-old cowboy boots.

When I get to the office, our POPSUGAR Moms editor compliments me on my "wrap dress," thus kicking off a day when no one knows I'm actually wearing a bathrobe. It's a little bit of a letdown. I want to look like Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen in New York Minute, but instead I end up resembling the fashun version of Frances McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

On the plus side, this piece of cotton is almost obscenely comfortable to wear. I'm supposed to meet up with a friend after work, but I'm so cozy that I sleep through dinner.

For round two, I pull a personal favorite out of my closet: the celestial-printed Margo Shorty ($150) from Sunday Forever. During my lunch break, I try to be cheeky with my cashier and ask them if they like my outfit, thinking they'll know it's a bathrobe and get the joke. They don't, and I end up looking like the most vain princess who ever lived. Because of this, I can never go back to the Flatiron Panera for the rest of my life.

According to one friend, the aesthetic of the day is "art teacher chic." I love looking like the cool prom chaperone, but I resolve to really go for it tomorrow.

No more f*cking around. I enter hump day ready to slay. Today, I slip on a Diamond Waffle Robe ($94, originally $125) that I copped from a boy who stole it from the Ritz. I believe those two misdemeanors cancel each other out and make us both law-abiding citizens.

On my way to work, a well-intended woman comes up to me on the subway, a motherly look of concern growing on her face. "You do know you're still wearing your bathrobe?" she asks.

"It's a dress — do you like it?" I respond with a twirl. She promptly changes cars.

During a midday break, a man on the street catcalls to me, "You make me smile, bathrobe girl!" I guess that is better than him telling me to smile.

That night, a dude on Tinder says that I "look chill." I show him just how chill I can be by showing up to our date in full waffle weave.

Over the course of the night, I find a weird sense of empowerment in my get-up. I think it's because I'm not "trying" at all; unlike most of my dates, I haven't spent an hour or more changing outfits in front of my mirror. I'm not presenting myself as someone who's trying to impress people. I'm just being the authentic me: home alone in my bathrobe, dancing to Motown.

The date goes pretty well until the boy makes a bad joke about never having seen me in clothes before (zing!), so I bounce. But before I leave, a man in a Santa outfit accidentally spills his drink all over me. Luckily, the material is so absorbent that I don't feel a thing.

Thursday, I go for extremes and pair the UGG Blanche Robe in Port Heather ($98), aka the softest thing I've ever worn, with the four-inch, death-defying Chrissy Teigen by Raye Como Stiletto Boots ($268). I feel like I need to amp up the sex appeal because I notice that all this sitting around in ill-fitting bathrobes has resulted in me gaining two pounds. I need to remind myself that there's an actual human body burrowed beneath all this terry cloth.

Although I trip more often than not, Thursday is perhaps the coziest day of the week. The UGG bathrobe is sort of like the brand's ubiquitous warm, fuzzy boots, except it covers my whole entire fine self. I would wear it every day of my life, even though a bartender doesn't let me into cocktail hour because I don't meet the "dress code."

How does one make the already informal bathleisure trend appropriate for Casual Friday? By slipping on a unicorn bathrobe ($28), duh. I match the baby pink cover-up with fire-engine red Blocked Boots ($205) from Jaggar.

It's my last day of bathleisure, and I'm feeling a little nostalgic, so I reflect on my week as a walking shower caddy. Maybe I spend too much time on the internet, but it was hard for me not to associate the rise of bathleisurewear with the #MeToo movement.

After all, so many of the sexual harassment horror stories we've read in the past few months start with something like, "He opened the door to his hotel room wearing just a bathrobe, and then . . ." Perhaps bathlesiure is a sartorial coup, where women are taking control of a narrative that too often results in their victimization. At the very least, by putting on a robe and saying, "F*ck it, this is how I look today," women are attacking society's frankly bullsh*t expectation that we should look pretty and polished at all times.

On a personal level, after five days of touting terry cloth, I have gotten better sleep. My stress acne is in check for the first time in weeks. Heck, I actually smiled at my M15 bus driver. Is this what life becomes once you allow yourself to chill the hell out?

I've since traded my loose robes for skinny jeans and control tops, but I've kept my bathleisure mentality. After my experiment, I requested a work-from-home day for the first time ever. That may not sound like much by itself. But as I curled up with my laptop, draped in a plush robe and sitting atop a throne of comforters, I think I attained the closest feeling to nirvana this stressed-out b*tch will ever get.