Staying in tonight? Read this.

By Emma GANNON

One rainy evening at the end of last year, I had an epiphany. I breathed a sigh of relief and realised that everything was calm with the world. I realised that sometimes, it’s okay to be by yourself and it’s okay if you decide to hang out in no other place than your very own living room.

The moment I realised that this behavior was socially acceptable and nothing to be ashamed of, this happened: Lady Gaga admitted on the UK Jonathan Ross show that she had been turning down prospective dates to instead “be at home heating up a chunky soup watching Will and Grace.” (Post continues below)

Wait… what?  I really couldn’t believe it. So, I thought, does this mean that Lady Gaga, a crazy high-powered fashion and music extraordinaire (who whilst speaking was dressed  in an Atsuko Kudo emerald green PVC get-up) has just admitted to often removing her towering shoes and lying horizontally on a couch?

To my impressionable media-obsessed mind, this meant one thing: you can be one of the busiest, most successful women in the world but there is never ever a schedule so busy that can stop you from putting on a pair of sweatpants and granting yourself a good old-fashionable night in. Every girl sometimes just needs to be passed some make-up remover wipes and a pair of old slippers.

Sometimes, it’s just nice to know that everyone needs the same time-out. Especially in these times of social media mayhem, we are constantly having other people’s fun shoved in our faces. Instagram pictures of cupcakes and walks in the park, Facebook check-ins to exotic countries, Twitter updates about celebrity spotting or cool new hang-outs – it’s exhausting living in this day and age and if we aren’t posting photos, no one knows if we’re having fun.

And the point is we want people to know we’re having fun, right? I kind of hope that one day we return to the days of asking our friends what they’ve been up to instead of knowing  their activity per minute. Sometimes we assume other people are having more fun than us. Funnily enough, people probably think the same of you. However, the conclusion is: we are now expected to be always having fun.

Of course, our mission should always be to enjoy ourselves, but by that I mean we should be in control of what that definition of fun is to us (and not thinking what will look fun to our Facebook friends.) If you want to have a night in, away from iPhone push notifications and a sea of unread news stories, so be it. Grab a book/turn on the TV, put on something that would have you arrested by Vogue and give yourself a treat of having a night off from the crazy, busy, one-hundred miles per hour life you lead. Your work inbox will not implode. Your blog can wait. Twitter won’t forget you.

So, with this in mind, I order you, with no further ado, to go and get into your pajamas. Log out of Facebook, put your phone away and feel nothing but satisfaction as you snuggle down to watch your favorite movie. We all like to look our best for those special occasions in life, but there is absolutely no shame is casting aside the social world in the safety of our living room every now and again, reveling in the pleasure of knowing we won’t end up looking tragically dressed on Perez Hilton if we accidentally forgot to get milk.

Would you take a night in over a night out right now? How many times a month do you go out to dinner or to a club, when you really would have preferred to stay at home in your trackies? Why is it socially unacceptable to be a homebody?